Our home mountain is Stevens Pass. This year the snow has been slow in coming, but in 2008, we got so much snow we could actually ride at home. This is my husband boarding down the sidewalk on our street.
ByGD
This is the End
My to-be-read bookcase (and floor pile)
The end of 2014, that is. And I feel like I should have something deep and powerful to say, but I’m all out of bang. All I’ve got is a whimper. Which is not to say the year was awful or ended badly, although Pneumonia November wasn’t what I had in mind. It’s just been a very family-filled couple of weeks (as it should be). I haven’t had a lot of time to think about blog posts (or to hear myself think). But as the year wraps up, there is one thing I’d like to celebrate.
ByGD
Ch-Ch-Changes – The Difference a Year Can Make
We tend to think of ourselves as a single, continuous existence. But even over the course of a single year, it’s amazing how much we can change. It doesn’t even have to be a year of upheaval. A while back, I posted a writing exercise I did for Geraldine Brooks’ workshop at Iceland Writers Retreat.
I actually took two of her workshops. The second writing exercise was to introduce yourself, to basically give your own personal elevator speech. I wrote this in April, and it’s amazing to me how much of it no longer applies to me this December. I can’t wait to see what I will write about myself in 2015. Read More
ByGD
Cactus Flower
A cactus flowering in a pot in my mom’s Arizona back yard. There is beauty in the desert. But to see it, you have to be either very lucky, or plant it yourself.
ByGD
Heavy Metal Road Trip: Iceland Northern Route
I’ve already written here and in other places about the close-knit Eistnaflug festival that drew me (and about 200 other foreigners) to a remote fjord in Iceland in July. Iceland really only has one main road outside of Reykjavik – the Ring Road, which, you guessed it, rings the island. The north route along the ring road to the Eistnaflug festival is only slightly longer than the south route; both take a solid day of driving. I would rather see as much of the country as possible. Wouldn’t you?
I caught a ride in a festival-sponsored van driven by the man responsible for Iceland’s Wacken Metal Battle. The organizational skills required to pull off a national battle of the bands was in evidence as we embarked on a customized, two day, heavy metal road trip, following the southern route to Eistnaflug, and returning along the northern half of Iceland’s ring road. This post is about the northern part of the circuit.