An interesting travel day

It was a long and very challenging process getting everyone here to Pangnirtung on Baffin Island. First my crew were late getting to Iqaluit from Greenland and missed the flight to Pangnirtung so they went off to a hotel in Ottawa. Ulla Lohmann, a German photographer we are bringing in to participate, did make the flight, but then it didn't land because of low cloud, and returned to Iqaluit. Apparently this happens all the time, flying into Pangnirtung is like a lottery. Meanwhile the helicopter we are supposed to fly on tomorrow to reach our location also wasn't able to make it in from Iqaluit. They said they would try again later but that the forecast wasn't good. So now I was missing one plane, one helicopter, one crew, 12 cases of equipment and one German photographer. I went back to the lodge, where a few minutes later the cargo guy from the airport wandered in to grab a coffee, and told me the plane was going to try again to get in a couple of hours later. So I jumped on the phone immediately and got the crew to leave the hotel they had just finished checking into, hump all the cases they had just unloaded back into a taxi, and go back to the airport. They managed to get there just in time, made it onto the plane, and as I headed up to the airport to see if the plane would actually land this time, I looked across the fiord and to my great delight, saw the helicopter flying in. The helicopter pilot headed off to the hotel, and a few minutes later the plane actually made it in and landed. The crew made it in, the photographer made it in, the helicopter had arrived, everything was looking great, then I was told there was an issue and I better talk to the helicopter pilot. I went over to see what was up, there were three gaping holes smashed in the windshield. Some guy had come onto the tarmac, high on something, shouting and screaming, and had decided to vandalize it. He had thrown three enormous rocks right through the front bubble. The police had caught the guy, but the helicopter is dead. For days. The whole thing we came to shoot is not going to happen. So that's how my day went. Now I'm looking for other stuff to fill our time.

  Picture by Ulla Lohmann

Quoth the Raven

Early in the morning in Iqaluit, I was walking along a little stream when I distinctly heard the sound of frogs croaking. That was surprising, I was pretty sure there wouldn't be frogs living in a place where there is still ice around at the end of June. It was a bit hard to tell where the sound was coming from, I thought for a minute that maybe it was my bag rubbing on my belt or something. Then finally I spotted the source of the noise. It was a great big raven, sitting on a post talking to himself.
I happen to know from another job that crows have an enormous repertoire of quiet little noises that we never hear, because they use them when they're sitting in their nests communicating quietly with each other. The loud caw we hear is the noise that means something like "this is my place, I'm sitting right here keeping an eye on you, don't even think about sneaking in here looking for a snack, I will open a can of peck on you and make you sorry you were ever hatched."
But this raven wasn't sitting in his nest whispering to his loved ones, he was sitting on a post and nobody was around but me. I guess he thought I spoke Raven.
Anyway, just so you know, it's pretty easy to confuse frogs and ravens. It's a perfectly natural mistake.

Helicam

We hired an Icelandic helicam operator to help film the departure of the Dax. First time for me with one of these things. It's a large radio controlled helicopter, like you might buy a particularly immature husband for his birthday. Mine is coming up in October, by the way. Attached to that is a gyroscopically stabilized camera mount. One guy flies the helicopter, the other remotely operates the camera.
Unfortunately the radio feed to the monitor wasn't working, the image looked like the last garbled transmission from the mysterious space vessel, before Captain Kirk beams onto it with an expendable guy in a red shirt. So they had to give up after a while. But I did get a bit of an education first.
There are others that have four or six horizontal rotors, I suspect they are more stable, this one I think is most appropriate for a particular kind of shot, which of course was exactly not the kind of shot I asked for first. I was asking them to fly along the water, then pan up to reveal a nicely composed shot of the Harpa concert hall with the Dax in front. Well, it's hard with this thing to nicely compose a shot and stay on it. It would be great for flying under a bridge or through a canyon, where the subject is the whole environment. For a particular subject you want to frame carefully, well, I can't say for sure how well we could have done if we could have seen the image clearly, but I think that it's a bit like asking a hockey player to figure skate.
Next time I fly a remotely controlled helicopter around a harbour in Iceland, though, I will be totally ready.

Graveyard

This graveyard is right next to our hotel. It's a beautiful and unusual spot, because there are trees growing right out of the graves. I assume that they sometimes plant a tree to commemorate the deceased, people sometimes do that in Canada too but in Iceland they do it right there on top of them.
I took a bunch of pictures but it was just frustrating, it didn't seem possible to capture the environment well within the frame of a photograph. At least not for me. I need John Tran, and  3 or 4 of his cameras.
There were informative signs posted at the cemetery but they didn't even mention the trees, which made me think it must be standard practice. Later on I asked the taxi driver if it was the common custom, he said "I think maybe so." Which didn't exactly confirm my theory. Maybe he doesn't happen to know any dead people.

No pics

Well, I have foolishly left the power supply for my tablet at an airport, and where I am now has internet that's too slow to upload pictures anyway, so I'm switching to text only for a while. I'll go back and put pictures in later, which I'm sure will be a disappointment. The power of your imagination, awakened by my glowing prose, will create a world far more marvelous than the one in which we really live. Prepare for a feast of spectacular internally generated visual beauty. Those of you who don't get one have only yourselves to blame.

July 10th - I am back in the land of broadband at last, and will upload the pictures. Prepare to have your expectations not met.

The Blue Lagoon

This has to be one of the weirdest places on the planet. It is a spa created using the output of a geothermal plant. Somewhere a couple of kilometers below the surface, volcanic processes heat sea water to a temperature higher than its boiling point, and the pressure prevents it from turning into steam. The superheated water runs turbines to generate electricity, then after that it gets used to provide the heat for a municipal hot water system, then it gets expelled into a giant pool in the volcanic landscape.
A big section of that pool has now been converted into a spa. You can float around in the hot seawater, you can get a massage while you lie on a partially submerged air mattress, you can buy very expensive blue slushies, and most of all you can coat your face in white silica mud. What that means is that this surreal pool of bright blue water surrounded by black heaps of volcanic rubble is full of people floating around in whiteface makeup, like a bunch of kabuki dancers embedded in blue jello. What a weird world we live in.
There is also some interesting science involved, I think. There is minimal information posted at the place itself, just enough to make me disbelieve everything they say about all the healthful and rejuvenating properties of the silica, the dissolved minerals and the algae. Yes, it's true, I'm very cynical, but if dissolved minerals were automatically good for you I could open a spa in a discarded hot water tank.
However there is more info on their website, apparently they have had good results treating psoriasis, and they are studying a number of species of microorganism that only exist in this one place on earth. They have a research institute attached to the spa, and although their focus is on creating skin care products, they actually have downloadable pdfs of their research papers online. So real scientists elsewhere can look over their shoulders if they want, and if they are talking rubbish, tease them at conferences and give them insulting sciency nicknames. So, who knows, maybe it is more than the marketing scam I initially assumed.
In any case, my knee jerk skepticism prevented me from smearing any mud on my own face. Consequently I have missed out on the chance to be rejuvenated, and continue to look as decrepit and scruffy as ever. My loss.

Trolls

I figured that sooner or later, in Iceland, I'd find the place where the trolls hang out.

The Northwest Traffic Jam

I got to chatting with a couple of French guys who were moored near the Dax in a very elegant catamaran. So elegant that I thought perhaps they would have figured out a way to build a wine cellar into a sailboat. Being French and all.
It turns out they were bringing the boat to meet its owner in Greenland, then sailing it through the Northwest Passage, with his wife  and three young daughters along for the ride.
Not only that, but a Canadian boat had left a couple of days previously, also headed through the Passage.
I realized that all of these boats, and perhaps many others, would probably find themselves time and again hanging around the same part of the passage, waiting for the ice to clear.
It sounds like the premise for a dramatic script. An unlikely assortment of strangers, thrust together by a shared obsession, on a mission to the ends of the earth. Someone should make a film about it.
Oh yeah, I forgot. I am.

The Brothers McMahon

These are my two producers, looking very much as if they have just recently released their new album of arty but aggressive Icelandic rock. Don't you think?

Harpa concert hall

I'm very fond of this concert hall. I've been staring at it all day because the Dax is moored right next to it. It is surrounded by great big holes in the ground - it was intended to be part of a great big complex including a luxury hotel, a conference centre and a bank headquarters, but all the rest of that fell through when the Icelandic economy went into convulsions. But the concert hall eventually got completed. It's very beautiful, not only that but a bunch of kids ride skateboards for hours outside the front door and noone asks them to leave.

John Tran relaxing

This is what my cameraman looks like when we go out for a little walk. Only three cameras on him today. He feels a little naked, it's true.

Jellyfish catchers

Here is a small glimpse of what Iceland is like. I saw these two young ladies on the dock, with a jellyfish in a bucket. (A bit hard to see in the picture, it was moving around). "Is that your ..." I started to say, then stopped myself, realizing that they were only about ten and I had started in talking to them in English as if I were at home. However, "Yes," they replied, "it is our jellyfish. We caught it." In pretty much perfect English. Then they grabbed their net and went off to catch another. How the heck do ten-year olds happen to know the word for "jellyfish" in English?

Hitting the road - traveling light, this time.

Only twelve cases.

Dax hair

I'm heading off to Reykjavik for the first shoot of the series. We're meeting a trio of Swedish gentlemen who are planning to sail through the Northwest Passage this summer. It's only been a few years since it was first possible to get through in a sailboat in only one summer; Amundsen took three years to do it. Maybe in a few years more every weekend sailor in the Northern hemisphere will be able to do it, but at the moment it's still quite an adventure to undertake.
Their vessel is called the Dax, which I believe is Swedish for something like "the time is now." Since I will be on the road for eighteen days, I figured the time was now to get one last haircut. Check out the hair products on the counter. My hair is now short and neat and full of Daxness.

Packing for the Arctic

This summer I'll be heading up to the Northwest Passage to show the world what it now looks like. As if I actually have a clue. Tonight, I'm stuffing things into a bag that though large, is clearly still too small for all the multiple layers of clothing I have acquired. Apparently I can expect weather ranging from toasty to nasty and need to dress for all of it at once. Luckily, I don't expect to have to wear a suit jacket at any point. I've also equipped myself with boot chains, a waterproof pouch for a tablet, high-tech underwear that costs more than a fancy dinner for two, and a first aid kit for which I have in fact received mandatory training. Now if a baby chokes while we are in the wilderness, I'll be totally prepared.
Apparently the early European explorers who first tried to get through the Northwest Passage brought along things like cast iron stoves and copies of The Vicar of Wakefield. They wound up freezing to death in the dark, while the natives managed just fine with less stuff than would fill a modern garbage bag. I have an ominous feeling that I am repeating someone's mistake here. And perhaps paying extra baggage charges too.