One if by land, Two if by [water]

Hello patrons of the China Shop. It is once again Friday, which means that it has been about a week since my last post. I will try harder to post more often, but certain circumstances that are beyond my control (laziness) have kept me from posting frequently. Anyway, this has been an interesting week in the lives of Team Midge. David and Kyle departed Kálfaströnd on Monday and headed to the south in order to pick up their family and girlfriend respectively. This created an interesting situation for those of us left behind. We were seemingly stuck at our house with no transportation. Seemingly, but in reality we were mobile. We had our beautiful 14ft V-hull boat complete with 10 horse Mercury outboard in which to commute around the lake. And commute we did. We made a number of trips back and forth from the research station to work on our various research projects.The real crown jewel of the week though was Wednesday. We finished up our lab work for the week in the morning. We counted around 25 samples in less than 24 man-hours, which is really quite impressive. Our determination, as well as efficiency was quite high. Also our long awaited Myvatn Research Station apparel from Cintamani showed up! We all agreed that our legitimacy as biologists increased many-fold with the arrival and subsequent donning of this gear. Nearly all Icelanders wear Cintamani jackets, and with the research station seal on our sleeves (text in Icelandic) we are looking more like we belong.

So this is a picture of whale on a Monkey Plate, but it should be down below the next paragraph, and due to technical difficulties it won't move down there

Another component of our great day was when Erica and Bíbí came by to visit with us for a while. Eventually it was time for dinner, and as a treat to our homebound selves, we prepared some Minke whale and hamburgers that we had bought earlier in the week when we still had a car. The whale was quite good. I grilled it to medium rare over Kingsford charcoal with just a bit of salt and pepper rubbed on. The meat is similar to beef, but more dense, a much darker color and quite flavorful. There is a bit of marbling throughout, but it is in no way tough. In fact, it is quite tender. Eating whale is taboo throughout much of the world, but here it is a part of the culture, just as eating beef is in the States. I don't really feel bad about it. Minke is a quite abundant and it has a fairly short generation time, so with responsible management it can be an ok fishery.

The day was capped off by a boat ride into the fabled North Basin of Lake Myvatn. I say fabled, because we have never motored that far and we were told that passing the strait into the North Basin was a dangerous affair, fraught with perils like pirates and sharp rocks (ok just sharp rocks). We made it through the strait with no problem, and pulled up to shore just in front of the church in Reykjahlíð, disembarked in front of a number of gawking tourists and headed right to the concert. Hjaltalin was great again, this was the second time we had seen them, the first being in Reykjavik.

After the show the signed our map that we used to navigate to town. We headed over to the local hotel bar where beers were flowing, despite the steep cost (~$8.50 US) and the locals were just hanging out. It is fun to see lots of people that we recognize from the region, even if we don't really know them. After a few rounds, we headed back home, navigating through some pea soup, which added a bit more adventure to our trip.