i'm in iceland... and you're not!

here i am in iceland!

so usually the problem is when i fly, my luggage gets lost... seriously like 60% of the time it does... last night's trip, not so much.... instead i had new travel fun.

the plan was, catch the NJ transit train near my house to penn station in manhattan, take 10 minutes to get to the LIRR train to jamaica/queens, then transfer to the JFK air train and then checkin at least 2 hours before my flight.

instead, i caught the NJ transit train and then the power failed just as we were about to leave newark... no trains could make it through the NY/NJ tunnel for a bit so we were just stuck... after 10 minutes they announced "if you want to continue to NY get off now and board the path train in the lower level" (luckily we were stopped at Newark-Penn, not between stations)... instantly everyone crowds to path... for people going to manhattan that's fine... investigating the path train map though, the closest it was gonna get me to where i planned to be on tight schedule was 30 blocks south... BAD... so i withdrew an obscene amount of money against my credit card from an ATM, went out and hailed a cab for the hour+ ride to JFK... cost? $100... ouch. so instead of being over 2 hours early and paying $20 in transportation... i got there 80 minutes early and paid $109 to get to the airport... i was NOT a happy lara.

since then, things have cheered up.
brant, a seattle grad student i met in wisconsin in april, was 2 rows behind me on the flight... in baggage claim we ran into adam, a michigan grad student who was visiting rutgers all this year,... and on the hour bus from the airport to reykjvaik we ran into at least half a dozen older conference attendees, 2 of which expressed especial interest in the abstract i have posted online for my talk for tomorrow... that's affirming.

the landscape here is like from another world... as we landed we could see the southern coast, and then we drove through miles of lava fields... now, nothing's open for a couple hours, but i'm just blocks from the ocean and plan to do a bit of wandering.

in the 60 minutes i've been in town, at least 3 icelanders have stopped me (and other people i was with for breakfast) to chat and offer advice about good things to see and visit,... i've been here an hour and it's already shaping up to look like a good visit. :)

summary: NY irritates me, but it's fantastic to have a totally new world to explore. yay for iceland... look out for pictures in a week!