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new car
May 26th, 2020
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A funny thing happened to me on Saturday. I went to a lovely BBQ
with some friends in Reyjkavík and had to head home around 2300 in
order to catch the last bus from the capital out to my little
suburb. The bus picked me up and deposited me there 20 minutes
later as planned. While I was on the bus, I took out my kindle to
do some reading.
When I got off that bus I needed to make one transfer onto the #7
bus which would take me into my neighborhood, saving me a 1km walk
from the town center. I've done this many times and knew the bus
would be along any moment, so I kept reading. As expected, the bus
came around the corner and up the hill toward me. I hopped on and
kept reading.
See, here's where things get a little silly. I may have been
pretty drunk at this point owing to said BBQ earlier in the
evening. I was most certainly not paying attention as I was
reading. I also forgot completely that the number 7 bus travels in
both directions from the same bus stop I was at. I usually would
check the exact timing of the bus because there's no way to tell
from the signage whether it's headed to my neighborhood or away
from it. In fact, during that last nightly route both busses
appear at that stop within two minutes of one another.
So yeah, I was a little surprised when I looked up to find myself
in another town and not in my neighborhood. I was screwed. Ugh.
There were no more busses and taxis don't just wander the streets.
You need to call them and arrange a pickup. So what's a drunk guy
to do in this situation? If you guessed "walk 10km home around
a mountain in the middle of the night in Iceland" then you win
a prize!
I took a shortcut across the middle of a golf course at one point,
and marveled once again at the well maintained and numerous trails
and paths available in my area. Almost everything was well lit and
clean. It was lovely! It took me over two hours to get home and
I got a few hot-spots on my heels since I was walking in flimsy
slip-on shoes and not my boots. Still, no harm no foul.
Anyway, today I bought a car. :D It's a 2017 SsangYong Tivoli. It
is white and in pretty good shape with only about 60,000km on it.
I'm not sure you'll believe me now, but this was actually in the
works before Saturday's adventure. My wife and I were talking
about how nice it is here to be able to take the bus everywhere
and how it was probably better for our health to do all the
walking. We also admitted that it's frustrating not to be able to
go out into the countryside. We live only 25 minutes from
þingvellir, after all, but we never go. We want to head up north
this summer and we were considering renting. But there's little
annoyances too.
This summer there are a number of activities available to the kids
in the area. One is a little zoo and horseback riding place where
the kids can learn to take care of the animals. It would be
perfect for my boy. The farm is only 5 minutes away, but that's by
car. It's directly on the other side of the mountain behind my
apartment. To walk there would take an hour, each way. That's not
something we could sign him up for before. Now it's no problem.
People here also just assume you have a car or access to one. It
can be tricky when activites happen at odd spots. Even travelling
to IKEA from my place is a chore because it takes 4 transfers and
over 2hrs to get there. Now with a car it's an 18 minute drive.
We don't intend to use it for everything. Certainly we want to
have it to go out into the country and see the sights. We also
will use it for things like IKEA trips. But we want to keep using
the bus to go downtown and walk to go shopping for groceries.
I don't know how realistic that goal is, but we shall see.