More Pandemic travel---Iceland

 Well, some more pandemic travel.  

When I booked this flight in Jan, John and I had both gotten our first vaccines and I thought that travel would be possible and less stressful.  I didn’t count  on vaccine boosters, the Delta variant and other people still being stupid about wearing masks.  So, again, faced with the fear that we’re putting our family at risk travelling.  But Big Rapids Public schools are starting school without a mask mandate and I figure that Oscar is safer in the wilds of Iceland than in first grade, so we go.  We left with the intention of making the 12:55pm train out 

of Dunes Park, but made good enough time to make the 11:15am train.  John thought that I was being ridiculous and I probably am, but I would rather get to the airport early and then wait longer there than have something in the chain of events go wrong and not make it.  The most dangerous part of our trip for sure was public transport in Chicago.  Being in the CTA trains or the Southshore line

while most people were wearing masks, there were others that were eating all the time, not wearing their masks in the stations and it is the most people we’ve been around in over 16 months.  We have flashbacks on this trip because we came out of Chicago this same way and ate at the same places that were the only places open on the way out due to COVID.  We do get two extra Krispy

Kreme because of our vaccinations.  After a full day of travel, we get to O’Hare and I had forgotten that they’re redoing their transit system between terminals which means we have to catch buses out to the international terminal.  We finally check in as Icelandair opens their lines for the first time that day and make friends in the line.  Rodney and Kim catch Oscar’s eye immediately because they

are helping us name all the flags of the countries we can see in the terminal.  After time together in multiple different parts of this journey, we’ve exchanged emails and itineraries in Iceland to try to run in to each other.  We get to show our negative COVID tests as we check in our baggage which is a new one.  After some time spent

eating, waiting and chatting with Kim and Rodney more, we finally board our plane and I’m going to try to get Oscar and me to sleep as soon as possible because I have to drive when we get there and he doesn’t do well without sleep.  So, this goes like anything else that you try to plan and have work out in travel, like shit.  I can’t sleep, Oscar can’t sleep, John doesn’t sleep.  It’s a mess, there is maybe an

hour nap for me and two hours of sleep for Oscar and John.  The only good part about this sleeplessness is I get to keep looking out the window for meteorites because the Perseid shower is going on now and the aurora borealis.  We’re going steadily north the whole

plane trip and it’s night time.  I get to see a couple of meteors and three spots of aurora with only one really long swooping green shaft of it, but that’s it and then the sun rises again.  And now we’re flying over white stuff, but it doesn’t look like the ocean or clouds and I realize when the first huge boulder pokes up that we’re flying

       over Greenland covered in snow.  When we come to the edges of the land, you can see large icebergs in the bays and fjords.  It’s really bringing home that we’re not in Kansas anymore and why we needed to bring all of our winter gear with us.  We land in Reykjavik in the heaviest fog that I’ve seen a plane land in at 2 am our time.  But now we’re in a long snaking line for customs that is worse than anything I’ve been in a while…O’Hare was awesome this time, apparently a pandemic makes it so that they can keep up with the amount of people coming through, but Iceland didn’t get the memo that everyone thinks that their country is a safe place to be now.  So, we’re in line for about an hour to show our passports and get stamps.  Then, we pick up baggage and get in another line to show our vaccine cards and barcodes that say that we preregistered to get into the country. The only comforting thing about any of this is that we know that everyone has on masks and that everyone has had to be negative in the last 72 hours.