T Minus Two Hours

In the week preceding my journey I scrambled to organize some final details. I set myself up with a number of ways to communicate internationally - a MagicJack, which turns my laptop into a mobile office phone, a Skype app on my iPad for inexpensive international calling through WiFi, and an international SIM card for my Blackberry with good rates on voice, text, and data in all the countries I will live in. I also blasted off a dozen or so final emails to line up some meetings in the American embassy in Iceland as well as a few potential projects in China.

On the 16th I flew to Boston after a really nice going away party organized by my parents (our backyard looked like a wedding reception with every surface covered in flowers from my aunt's garden, tiki torches and steak both in hazardous abundance, and friendships reaching back to grade school). My friend Dan and his girlfriend Marry picked me up at Logan when I landed. We shoved my rolling duffle, camping pack, and carry-on into Dan's Subaru and set off for Nantucket where I spent one last weekend with seven friends from Middlebury. We luxuriated on the beaches and surfed. It would have been nine friends, except one buddy fell asleep in Grand Central and missed his train, a circumstance that surfaced when his impatiently waiting chauffeur in Connecticut texted us the simple but entirely explanatory line, "I hate Ben." Those two never made it, but we had a great time despite their absence.

Before flying to Iceland, I spent two final nights in Boston in my friends' (Alex and Kevin) apartment. I got to talk with the founder of a California-based geothermal company (AltaRock Energy, www.altarockenergy.com/about.html) for about an hour on Monday, and my buddy Kevin also helped me meet a new friend, Dan, in the hybrid vehicle business. Dan hosted me to a great pizza dinner atop his Beacon Hill roof deck. We ate thin slices and drank smooth micro brews while a thunder storm rolled in some spectacular lightning fireworks over the Charles River. Dan has had a really interesting career in various parts of the alternative energy and clean tech industries, and he had some good ideas for contacts and projects in China through MIT.

I am currently typing onboard Iceland Air flight #634, headphones pumping MGMT, and fingers dancing on the iPad. I land at midnight, pop in my new SIM card to dial Carola, my host in Reykjavik, board a bus and tell the driver to let me off at "Viking Village," then meet Carola and walk ten minutes to her house. Of course I imagine an arrival scene of Viking marauders, drying fish heads, and exploding geysers backdropped by erupting volcanoes, all of which will be illuminated by the blazing midnight sun. Perhaps my imagination predisposed me to be underwhelmed. I recall my disappointment upon disembarking in New Dheli several years ago and not finding any of the stampeding elephants or snake charmers I assumed would be there to greet me.

That's all for now. My first week should consist largely of orientation, exploration, visits to the embassy, meetings with the economic attache in the consulate, and moving up to Akureyri, where I will begin a project with the Icelandic Geosurvey (ISOR, www.geothermal.is). I also hope to reconnect with a long-lost friend, Porter, who recently moved to Reykjavik to design video games.