We left quietly in the morning.  Sigrun offered to make coffee, but I declined.  Outside it was cool and cloudy.  In the car I distributed the Krave bars I'd carried with me from the States for breakfast.

We stopped at Viðihlið after about an hour for a break.  Neither Kay nor Craig had slept well, and Kay was dragging.  Not long after Viðihlið, she pulled over at another gas station.  She was too tired to drive, and Craig hadn't gotten the hang of driving on the right yet.  I swallowed two caffeine pills and took over.

"Just don't speed too much, and look out for sheep," Kay cautioned.

We drove past Staðarskali without stopping, but soon after the road ascended into a cloud.  Visibility was bad, and I slowed down substantially.

"I can take over now," Kay volunteered.  "Of course you should be able to handle it; you've gotten us through worse."  The previous summer I met Kay in Cincinnati and drove her back to Indy through an alarming series of thunderstorms that required us to pull over at one point.  We had made it to Indianapolis in one piece, so fog wasn't looking like it would be that big an obstacle.  As the road descended we came back below the cloud, and it was clear driving on to Borgarnes.  We stopped for a quick snack, then got back on the road to Reykjavík.

We were starting to run short on time to get me to the airport.  We picked up the few things I hadn't taken to Akureyri and threw them in the back seat of the car.  While Kay drove, I packed, getting everything wrapped up about 5 minutes before we pulled into the airport parking lot.

In the terminal, we said our goodbyes.  The trip was already receding into the unreality of the past, as if it had barely happened.  I bought a few postcards and sent them before getting into the emigration line.

"What happened to your passport?" the customs officer asked.  She held it up to me.  The plastic sheet covering my photograph was badly bubbled, and the corners were torn.  I hadn't noticed that it had gotten that bad.

"Wear and tear," I said tentatively.  I could see why she was suspicious, it certainly looked like it had been tampered with.  Then it hit me what had happened.  "I was biking in Ísafjörður on Monday and I got caught in a storm.  I had it in my pocket and it got wet," I explained.

The explanation, along with some further examination of the passport, seemed to satisfy her, and she let me through.  Customs in Minneapolis was about the same.  "We'll let you in this time," the officer said after I explained what happened, "but get a new passport before you leave the country again, ok?"

I picked up my car and drove to the youth hostel downtown.  I was exhausted but too keyed up to sleep just yet.  "Anywhere I can get a beer?" I asked the guy at the check-in desk.  He pointed me to a convenience store down the street.

Tomorrow was a long drive back to Indianapolis, but now it was a cool late spring evening in Minnesota.  After eight days without darkness, I made the most of this time.  I sat on the back porch of the hostel with a six pack of Miller High Life, staring at the sky and watching night fall.

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