All night daylight

Posted by at 10:52 AM, June 30, 2004

Hello everyone,

Nearly impossible to wake up and get out of bed, but I did it at exactly 8:00, in time to help with general cleaning. Still no Tomakint. Word has it he already left for the Greenpeace office in town. Good for him- go wake up those lazy bastards! Anyway, I signed up for toilets and showers again, and Irene added her name to mine. We were in no condition to clean toilets and showers of course, but clean we did. As soon as we were finished, we both went back to bed for a well-deserved nap. Maybe not well deserved, but certainly much appreciated.

Got a little more rest and then headed to the campaign office upstairs for some frustrating and exceedingly slow blog work. I’ve got writer’s block complicated by no Internet access and increasingly irregular downloads. Not to mention the distractions of the campaign and the city. I’m eternally grateful to Irene and Brian for the updates they have done and hope they will forgive my need for latitude right now.

Today was open ship. The tours came through the campaign office where I was working, so I met a lot of people and spoke to many of them briefly. Most of the Icelanders were interested in telling me about their ideas, and most of the people from other places were more interested in hearing about my purpose here and about my experiences in Iceland. I liked the dialog. I was especially impressed with a tall blond Icelandic teenager who was intent on challenging me about whaling in general and about U.S. policy in particular. Unfortunately he didn’t know what he was talking about, but he clearly had a lot of national pride, facts be damned.

The campaign office is a lot quieter these days. Brian left this morning. (Wow. That was fast. Brian, come back!) Erika is almost never here now that she has moved to the office downtown. Jari is usually in the video room if he is on the ship. Christian is sometimes here which is good for me because he is in charge of musical entertainment. Also, he showed me a slide show on his laptop that showcased his photos of skiers and snowboarders and skateboarders. He’s really good. He’s also mysterious in that "I’m cooler than you" sort of way. And his voice is pure joy. His speech has a cadence that matches perfectly with his accent when he speaks English. The result is that it hardly matters what he is saying. Listen to him and see if you don’t agree.

The weather is once again sketchy, and we don’t want to miss this evening’s shipboard reception, so whale watching will commence tomorrow morning at 9:00 and I will not be able to go on the trekking excursion with the rest of the group. I am really, really disappointed but hope that I will have another opportunity to go before I leave this beautiful place. Maybe Saturday.

The reception on the heli deck was quite nice and a bit of a coup for Greenpeace considering that not only did OSPAR delegates attend, but so did Icelandic politicians and officials. Drizzly skies pushed most of us into the hanger, which was fine because that’s where a big screen was set up for viewing the soccer game. Most of the crew skipped the reception but materialized for the match. It was rewarding to see the French Commissioner to the International Whaling Commission enjoying the same environment as the crew from the Esperanza.

I had a particularly good conversation with the Slovakian journalist whose crew was staying on the ship a couple of nights in the campaign cabin I once occupied. We discussed politics and policy, in particular the things going on in the U.S. and some of the worldwide implications. This led to me being interviewed by him and his video crew up on the bridge. He was interested in recording my views on tape for use in his work, and I was happy to oblige since I have pretty strong views on U.S. environmental policy, on George Bush’s tactics, and on climate change. We both enjoyed the interview and he told me I did a good job. Hooray!

After the interview I found Frank and dragged him to the campaign office. I’ve been wanting to show him my photos from the trip, but there never seems to be a quiet moment when we’re both available. He told me yesterday he really enjoyed reading my daily log entries, and that news made me determined to share with him the images I’ve snapped so far, especially one or two good shots of him. We browsed through the photos and chatted. There were a few he really liked and I promised to make him a CD before I leave. We also made plans to have dinner in town Friday night. I can tell you right now that I’m going to miss Frank.

Some of us skipped dinner on the ship (Irene and I were at the downtown office until 6:15), but nobody wanted to go into town for a bite to eat except for Jari and me. The two of us wandered around forever and poked our heads into quite a few places until landing in an excellent restaurant called Galileo. We ordered roasted seafood and risotto with asparagus and truffles. Oh my gosh (!) the risotto was so good. We ate every bite. We even splurged and ordered a nice red wine. What a great dinner! What a treat!

Then we went upstairs to a very cozy open-air lounge with wonderful couches and comfy chairs. It was crowded and smoky but we decided to hang out anyway. Jari is fun and funny and has only good things to say about other people. It reflects the way he looks at life I think and the way other people see him. When he laughs, it’s like he can almost not contain his happiness. He also told me about his family, pausing the longest to talk about his niece Zoe, who you can tell is at the center of his world. He’s absolutely in love with her. She is the one who gave him the "SWE" t-shirt he frequently wears. We also talked about his job some. He travels a lot to do video work, including a "Survivor" type show in the Philippines and the possibility of going to Athens to film the Olympics, not to mention months at a time with Greenpeace. Very cool. I had a really good time conversing with Jari tonight.

We stayed at Galileo until they closed and headed over to Circus to meet up with a few people from the ship. Not as many patrons as last night but still a blast. More good music, and drinks materializing out of thin air (which is notable because they are so expensive). Did I mention that Reykjavik is a party town? We didn’t get home until 4:00, just as Frank was coming on harbor watch. We all stood on the bridge deck for a while looking out at the city in bathed in daylight, chatting about nothing in particular, forgetting about time. Finally got to sleep around 5:30 or 6:00, thinking nothing of the late hour.

-Marnee