Tried at least to cycle around Iceland

As time passed on, the day of leaving New Zealand became reality. I stuffed my bike in a box, said goodbye to my girlfriend, entered the plane and tackled a journey of 65 hours to the other side of the planet. From these 65 hours I was probably waiting for about 45 hours in empty airports. But fortunately I had my mandolin on me so I could kill some time and work on some new songs. But eventually I arrived safely in Iceland on the other side of the world. I arrived now here in Reykjavik or Keflavik and it's all quite messed up now. At least for me. So Germany is considered as a safe country. Germany has 1000 cases per day about right now. So German citizens actually don't need to do any COVID-19 testing. But I came from New Zealand which is a country which had like for three months no community transmission. After I left there were some new cases of community transmission. So I kind of left in the perfect moment. But Iceland doesn't consider New Zealand as a safe country. So I have to self-isolate for four days or kind of to stay in a hotel for four days. So I got just tested now. I put this thing in my nose, in my mouth. Anyway my bike kind of made it. The box after like six different flights looks a bit broken. It kind of survived. Just survived. I'm actually way too tired but I need to reassemble my bike now and then cycle to the hotel. After this testing stuff is done I'm gonna meet my friend Joss. Joss is a guy from Auckland. You probably saw him in the Auckland video. And we're gonna cycle actually together in New Zealand. So I was super excited for this but now this whole thing kind of destroys with the plan. I didn't expect it that New Zealand is not a safe country. Funny. Okay so anyway let's put the bike together and let's get moving. Just reassembled my bicycle and I'm sitting on it and I'm riding it. It's an amazing feeling and I've got tailwind. Even sweeter. In just a few hours I made it to the hotel where I had to stay for the next four days. Fortunately the geothermal pools of Havre Gardie were just a 10 kilometer bike ride from my hotel and a perfect destination for a day trip. It's quite scary here. I can feel on the ground there's some kind of earth shaking mechanism going on. There's like tiny earthquakes underneath me. A little bit scary. But very impressive here. So much geothermal energy that I thought New Zealand is like top of the notch. But Iceland is very crazy. This looks very very hot. Look at these bubbles. It's like you could cook pasta in it. Four days have passed and I'm ready to jump back on the bike and cycle to Reykjavik to get the second test done. And after this I'm going to meet my German buddy Joost with whom I worked together in Auckland for a while as a bike man. And we are going to cycle around Iceland together. So let's get some breakfast and then let's cycle out here. I can explain you a little bit my bike setup. So I've got here just usually camera, my mask, a rain jacket, an apple, a lens, power bank, wallet, passport. And here I've got clothes which I won't need right now which are warm clothes. Here I've got my tent. Inside here is my mandolin and my sleeping mattress, tripod. And this one are more clothes. I've got a bike lock here. My rain clothes are on this side. This includes as well a sleeping mattress and some other stuff. And inside here is tools, cooking stuff, food and random stuff. On the front I've got this surly nice rack. It's a pretty good rack. Very heavy though but extremely strong and versatile. And a surly ogre fork and some Arco panniers. This old Ortlieb dry bag which I'm using for like two years by now and it's doing fine. Look at one little hole which I patched. My old Brooks saddle. By now it gets a bit... here are some cracks. Not sure. I need to get some wax for it. And I've got Schwalbe Mondial tires, folding version. And one of my absolute favorites is this kind of bottle holder. SKS Top Cage. You can kind of squeeze in everything. Everything. It's really amazing. In Georgia I put in like three liter bottles. The handlebar is a Velo Orange. Crazy bar. It's quite nice. I'm kind of using this position quite a lot especially when I'm like cruising at some speed. But this is a very comfortable position. Kind of a bit like upright. You could also put your hand here and your elbow here. Put your head down. Then you've got this aerodynamic type of riding style. And on the rear I've got a Tubus rack. It's a Logo Evo model. Does the job really good. It's kind of new for me now. I used to have a Tubus Classic. Looks fine so far. I mean Tubus makes pretty good racks. Can't go wrong with Tubus. And the heart of the bike is the frame. It's a titanium frame made by Carvo Bikes. Really nice bike. So it's quite dark by now. I found a spot near the airport. Kind of a little kind of forest. And I'm just gonna pitch my tent behind this thing. It's pretty much the only flat spot in this area. But yeah. I hope there will be no rain. And tomorrow in the morning I've got to do my second Corona test. Wish me luck. The only issue is my knee. So after I hit my knee with this rock in Piha in New Zealand. Kind of quite bruised bone. Now it's still good. So I will see how it goes. But to be honest I don't want to risk my knee for this trip now. I've got some bigger plans coming up. If it feels worse I might turn around and try to find a job or go back to Germany. But fingers crossed. So I finished my Corona test. And it was quite nice today. Not too uncomfortable like at the airport. Anyway I met now Joris. My German friend who was waiting now for like five days for me. But now we finally reunited. So we went now shopping. Bought food for like a few days. Because we're gonna be a bit off the track and off the supermarket. So we need to carry food. We're heading now north towards the Westfjords. Now it's about 4 p.m. And we're leaving Reykjavik. So we just made it out of Reykjavik now. And we're following kind of a very calm road. A bit towards the northeast. And then about 20 km from here are supposed to be some hot ports. Might be a good spot for the night. Somewhere there we go. So we're almost at our spot for tonight. And the last thing we have to do is to climb this. Then another one of these. But it is very beautiful here. Very nice scenery. when he's kind of a ride could be better but just cycling more with the right leg try to relax a bit more on the left one the landscape here is absolutely stunning just go around the border like this big Wow so we made it to the top of our last time for the day and just on the other side of this little pass we've got beautiful clouds nice Wow Wow Wow Wow that's some seriously magic spot here this is kind of geodetic tent probably for some weather measuring I don't know but it's Wow what is this? that's interesting so we followed now this road a little bit more went down here this gravel road but it's all very misty and smells so strongly like egg I'm not sure how healthy it is to sleep in the area with so much sulfate so far but yeah it's a very eggy smell so we're just gonna sleep at a different spot which we saw a few meters back so we found a spot for tonight pretty good the ground is really really soft so it's like sleeping on a cloud green cloud behind us are some nice mountains and Jost is making dinner what's for dinner today? some self-made stuff from me from last evening that looks like vomit in the bag yes it's pretty nice it looks pretty nice and it looks pretty self-made and it tastes pretty good of course I made it hot I have no clue what this is we spent now one day here at this first campsite just waited out the rain and also my knee because my knee didn't get much better so I decided now to turn around to go right back to Reykjavik and to fly back to Germany and to get sorted out my knee something I should pay some more attention Jost is gonna continue this trip Jost I wish you a ******* big journey it's gonna be awesome it's gonna be really awesome I can see him riding he's got this awesome view there Wow anyway I'm gonna turn around and health first yes sometimes you have to be wise so let's go home so I'm back in Germany for quite some weeks by now and things turned out quite interesting I spontaneously got offered a position as an artist in residence in Heilbert Heiligenstadt a smallish city or town located about 50 kilometer from my hometown that kinda means I've got free accommodation in this crazy old mill which they used to make flour back in the days in exchange for art which in my case is music music on the streets music for any occasion and now since winter is coming and busking is not really an option I'm focusing mostly on recording new songs so let's talk about my knee it's definitely much better but I had some issues reactivating my health insurance basically I went to a doctor without all the paperwork completed and they sent me back home and gave me a new appointment on the 23rd of October so still 10 days from now on and then I will get probably an MRI soon and then I know definitely more but I'm quite optimistic that I can return to the bicycle soon and for this reason I'm setting up a nice old Koga Miata 26 inch Ridge Runner for my girlfriend Akira she's still in New Zealand trying to save up money and hopefully visiting me in two or three months so future remains uncertain but there are definitely plans of cycling together but as it is always with plans they never really come as planned kind of so let's see what life's gonna bring up but for now I'll be busy with some other projects as well I bought some cheap old decent bike frames where the paint is in a bad condition the plan is to remove the paint and together with Christoph one of my oldest friends who's a genius artist we're gonna try to turn these frames into something really beautiful and unique and hopefully to sell it afterwards so stay tuned for this videos about this process will follow furthermore I need to find a job I need to save some money and I need to work on some presentations about the journey I did some talks multimedia presentation video music and pictures combined so I'm really really excited for this as well and one last thing in case it happened that you enjoyed my music you could consider donating some money or buying the music and you would get a link and access to all the songs I have I'm right now creating more so more and more is coming but anyway I should probably stop working on this video now and get some real stuff done here so see you soon peace out and see you soon