“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 October, we planned a trip 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 October! 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 best last chance for a proper family trip. The lockdowns had brought both our kids home. 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.

The world was opening up. And like a celebratory fireworks display, 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. [link] You could watch the eruption live-streaming 24-7. [link] You could see it. Glowing molten magma spouting up into the sky. A bright fountain of red surging up behind Reykiavik like a lava lamp.

The fact that the volcano could be seen through a video screen only made me want to experience it for myself in person. The world was opening up: why not hike to the mouth of a live volcano. What did it smell like? It was probably horrible! Was it the sulfurous scent of hell Dante described? [link to tv dante] 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 was on my bucket list. Along with seeing a blue whale. Autumn brings migrating blue whales swimming by Iceland. We would travel in the footsteps of Professor Lindbröck 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 at Harpa Hall in Reykiavik. It was a sign! I bought plane tickets, Björk tickets, booked a passage on a sailing ship to see the 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

Then my son tested positive. Travel required we all get tested within 48 hours before we go. When his phone dinged from the testing place, he retreated to his room, shutting the door behind him. He knew the routine from when he had had it before. My phone rang. What?! Exclamations, expletives, expressions of incredulity. But I was supposed to be riding a blue whale by an erupting volcano with Björk serenading me with “Pagan Poetry” acapella! Was that too much to ask! 

My phone rang. It was my son. He’d hung up sometime earlier. “Dad, the odds that this is a false positive are greater than the odds that I actually have a breakthrough case after having already had it and am fully vaccinated.” I believed him; he is a math major. I said, “Get your mask on and get over to the testing site again. You want a second opinion.” Either way, we knew, we couldn’t get new results in-time. Our trip was cancelled. So 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—the only bright side was that we had thousands of dollars worth of vouchers for Icelandic Air and some of the choicest hotels in near the Arctic Circle.

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

It was then that I resolved, if the world was not open, 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.