The Accidental Traveling Companion

Some vacation trips are family affairs, others are romantic getaways for two. Then there is the third type, the solo excursion. Traveling by oneself has some unique advantages. You only have to please yourself. You can set the pace, either fast or slow, according to your mood or disposition. So you can imagine my slight consternation when, in my carefully planned solo trip to Iceland last year, I was "befriended" by a somewhat clueless, flabby college counselor who was the "tour leader" for a group of teachers-in-training from a state school in Michigan. He had done no homework about this trip, about Iceland in general, and Reykjavík in particular. My schedule was complete, I had about twenty hours of things to do each day, but I was not a slave to that schedule, I just didn't have the time to babysit.

But I relented, I mentioned that I was going to Laugardalslaug, he was welcome to come along. "Do you have a car? How far is it?" Well no, I wouldn't have a car until later that week, and it was about 1500 km meters. to the pool from our guest-house on Bólstaðharlið- not really a long walk, but far enough to tax the feeble- in other words, my accidental companion. He did make it there, complaining all the way; we had to stop a few times to rest. We showered and changed into our speedos; he felt the need to wear a shirt into the pool. I did my laps, then soaked a bit to get the travel kinks out. I think my 'pal' spent the whole time wondering what he had gotten himself into.

Finally, it was time to go (the pool was closing), and we headed back. He had to stop at an 'American Style' resturant, where we drank Cokes, while he complained about his time in Iceland. Some date. When we got back to the guesthouse, he went straight to bed, I stayed up and talked with some of his 'charges', the students who were far more in tune with the idea of Icelandic exploration. Over the course of the evening, some of the students were complaining about being stuck with such a dud. I thought about this for a while, then said: "...yeah, but I had to see him naked!"