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After weeks of planning, vacation had finally arrived. The first
leg of our trip was an exercise in sleep deprivation - The plan was
to leave JFK in NYC on a 8:45pm flight that would arrive in Keflavik,
Iceland at 6:20am (1:20am NYC
time). We'd have just about 10 hours to explore Iceland before having
to catch a 4:10pm (11:10am NYC time) flight to Heathrow in London
where we'd be picked up by our friend Charlene and head out for a night
of partying in London.
Grant wasn't able to come along for the first
leg as originally planned because
he was
in LA
and the filming of the pilot for his TV show was running a few days
late (Seriously ladies, his own TV show. Fuck him now before
he's famous, kay?). Grant was bummed about missing
Iceland,
but
would
be
meeting up with us in London Wednesday morning. Ok, got all that? Ready?
Here we go:
I arrived at the Fatty's around 2:30ish to find him doing
some last minute packing. (We
had both gotten up that morning around 10am - Time
Elapsed With No Sleep: 4h
30m).
We headed to the McDonalds around the corner from his house to say
goodbye to America properly. Aw yeah, Big Mac.
Chris got to Fatty's around 3:45pm.
We spent the next half an hour going through all of our checklists
and making sure that we had everything we needed.
4:13pm: Outside of Fatty's apartment, bags all packed and double-checked
we coldlamped for one last photo before hailing a cab.
Before getting in the cab, we neurotically checked to make sure we
had our passports with us for the 11th time. You know, just in case
one
of
us had somehow
managed
to loose it on the 25ft trek from Fatty's apartment to the street.
I've been in hundreds of NYC yellow cabs, but I'd never been in one
that had...
...fucking hot-rod
dice on the door locks. This was clearly a good omen.
We spent our cab ride discussing tricks and traps we could employ to
scare the crap out of
Grant and capture it on tape.
5:35pm: JFK international terminal:
We breezed through security and made it to our gate just a little past
6pm (which gave us just over 2 hours to kill). We grabbed a snack in
the cafeteria, read a bit and (what else?) goofed out and took pictures.
(Chris and I had both just gotten new cameras so we spent a lot of
time familiarizing ourselves with how to use them.
And Fatty, not having a new camera, played around with his phone cam.
Here's three portraits I took playing around with my cam. Chris (not
so good, was getting used to some of the manual settings).
Fatty. Ahhh, much better!
And look, I even managed to figure out how to take a half-decent pic
of myself, which was no easy task, because it's a big, heavy, digital
SLR that
you have
to hold with a side-grip. (Which is why I've got that weird "look like
I'm pooping" expression on my face.)
8:30pm: We got our boarding call. Here's Fatty's picture of me...
...taking a picture of him. Hi, we're dorks.
Boarding.
Chris uses Fatty's inflatable neck pillow to do his impression of a
Greek Orthodox priest. (He's so going to hell now).
Fatty's big plan was to pop a few Tylenol PM and sleep for the entire
flight. But for some reason, he didn't stay asleep. He managed to
get, oh, about 25 minutes of sleep before he was awaken by the stewardess
who
wanted
to know
what
we wanted
for
dinner.
Our
Icelandic stewardess (who didn't really speak English) gave us the
choice between Beef Stroganoff and Curry Chicken - We all asked for
the Stroganoff but were given this dish (which was neither Stroganoff
nor
chicken). For about ten minutes I had Chris and Fatty convinced that
it was "most likely reindeer meat." Because, you know, "that's mostly
what they eat in Iceland." Maybe it was Curry Lamb? We're still not
sure. Yay, Mystery Meat!
9:29pm: Night portraits....somewhere over the Atlantic.
T-minus 3h 50 minutes until arrival.
No sleep yet. (Oh also: at some point during the flight, the three
of us watched one of those in-flight TV shows about "The Blue Lagoon,"
which is an Icelandic Spa Resort built around a huge geothermal pool.
Other than exploring Reykjavik, we didn't have any other plans. After
watching the video, we decided the Blue Lagoon looked amazing and that
we'd try to fit it into our schedule if possible.
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