“A man who wants to see something new loses nothing by traveling.” 

— Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days

Yes, but can you see something new by not traveling?

For example, writing right now I am not traveling in Iceland. Yet it is because I am not traveling in Iceland that I now write. Last August, we planned a trip to Iceland to celebrate the “end” of the pandemic. Allow me to repeat the punchline of that last sentence muted as it is in its opening clause: Last August! Hah! The hubris! We were fully vaccinated! (No one mentioned that a side-effect of a second shot might be irrational exuberance.) The world, it seemed, was opening up. This might be our last best chance for a proper family trip. The lockdowns had brought both our kids home. Presumably they would soon resume growing up and moving on. Our son was in his second year of college. Our daughter, just graduated, degree-in-hand, was plotting her escape to New York City.

Like a fireworks display celebrating the seeming opening up of the world, a volcano erupted in Iceland. Björk posted on Instagram that the eruption was happening near her, in fact, where she’d recorded a recent music video. You could watch the eruption live-streaming 24-7. You could see it. Glowing molten magma spouting up into the sky. A bright fountain of red surging up behind Reykjavík like, well, a large lava lamp.

Seeing the volcano via video screen made me want to experience it for myself in person. The danger posed by the virus was receding: why not hike to the mouth of a live volcano? What did the fumes smell like? It was probably horrible! Was it the sulfurous scent of hell Dante described? Was the air hot? Would I have to look away from the heat coming off of it? Was the video feed actually a better view than a live, risky, odorous, burning, in-person experience? I wanted to find out.

I didn’t have a “bucket list,” but suddenly seeing an erupting volcano with my own eyes was on my bucket list. Along with seeing a blue whale. Late summer brings migrating blue whales swimming by Iceland. We would travel in the footsteps of Professor Otto Lidenbrock from Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, who started his adventure bisecting the globe via a volcano in Iceland. Moreover, the weekend we planned to go, Björk had scheduled a concert in Reykjavík. It was a sign! I bought plane tickets, Björk tickets, booked passage on a sailing ship to see blue whales, a helicopter to take us to the eruption…

“Returning to health and peace of mind gave a new interest to everything around me. 

I sought to diversify my time by as many enjoyments as lay within my reach.”

—Herman Melville, Typee

Travel had required we all get tested within 48 hours before departure. My son’s phone dinged; he retreated to his room, shutting the door behind him. My phone rang. He had tested positive. What?! “This is impossible!” He had already had covid. And he was fully vaccinated. 

“It’s improbable, but not impossible,” my son corrected me. He is a dual major, one of which is philosophy. 

Exclamations, expletives, expressions of incredulity. But in only a few days, I was supposed to be riding a blue whale by an erupting volcano with Björk serenading me with “Pagan Poetry” a cappella! Was that too much to ask! Whines the inner voice of frustrated pampered privilege retreating once again into quarantine.

My phone rang. It was my son. He’d hung up sometime earlier. “Dad, the probably  that this is a false positive are greater than the odds that I actually have a breakthrough case after having already had it while being fully vaccinated.” I believed him; his other major is math. 

I said, “Get your mask on and get over to the testing site again. You want a second opinion.” Yet either way, we all already knew, we couldn’t get new results in-time. Our trip was cancelled. Indeed twenty four hours later, his phone dinged again—Negative— and forty-eight hours after that— again, negative. Yay! he didn’t have covid, he could leave his room. On the bright side we had a few thousand dollars worth of vouchers for Icelandic Air and for some of the nicest longings in the vicinity of the Arctic Circle.

“What does not kill you makes you stronger.” —Friedrich Nietzsche

After this experience of not traveling to Iceland, I began to ruminate on how else to seek something new. The world might not be opening up quite yet. I might not be able to enter the earth via volcano right now. 

I took my inspiration from another Jules Verne novel, Le tour du monde en 80 jours. I would I go around the world in 80 restaurants (in Chicago).. I set my itinerary. Northside. Southside. New York, New England, then Iceland and beyond… Come along, join me on my culinary quest.