Vikings A Go Go

Where do I wish I was right now? Oddly enough, Manitoba. At the Icelandic Festival of Manitoba. Because, yes, you guessed it, there is a Viking Village. And people reenacting vikingness. And one of the best things is that the village in in a town called Gimli. Named after the dwarf in Lord of the Rings. Well, not really, but if I lived there, that's what I'd tell people.

It's taking place right now. I'm thinking one year I'll go be a Viking in this festival. I think I'd look very menacing and brutal as a Viking. And gross, because I bet it's part of the costume to have bits of chicken and human fingernails stuck in your beard. Although the discovery of 51 headless Viking bodies in a pit in England has lead me to believe that the Saxons found the Viking look offensive.

I do not want to get my head chopped off. No sir.

Speaking of Manitoba, I've never been to the west of Canada. Nowhere west-er than Ontario. But, with Newfoundland visited, I've covered all the eastern provinces. I've even been to the most easterly point in all of North America, called Cape Spear.

You know, other than the irksome fact that I was with my osodumb parents and my insane brothers every waking and not waking moment of my time in Newfoundland, it was the most perfect time ever. But I will never go there with them again. That was agonizing.

Here is a picture of a puffin. I took about fifty seven pictures of this particular one. They are just too damn cute.

Here is a picture of a post office in a...um.... very special town. (Notice the name on the sign. Click to enlarge)Ya, it's actually named Dildo. After a captain. The captain of a vessel full of seamen.

Here is an iceberg. We took a boat through a bunch of them, and I confess I said "ICEBERG, STRAIGHT AHEAD!" about 23 times. With the accent and all. There were tourists from England on the boat. Not sure whether they were more impressed by that, or my multiple renditions of "I'm on a Boat, Muthafucka." This one, while not from Dildo, was apparently inspired by one.
Sciencey side note about Icebergs: They aren't actually white. When they froze 10 000 years ago, they froze with air bubbles, and they reflect white light. So when you get up right close to one, it sizzles, because it's melting and the air bubbles are going into the water. Also, they taste very fresh.

This is a newfie speedbumpus, or a moose. On the island, there are something ridiculous like 100 000 of them things. They are so numerous and so stupid that when driving you have to constantly be on the lookout for them because they are apt to amble onto the highway and stare at you whilst you accordion your car against their massive bodies.
The locals would stare at us in horror when we told them we planned to drive through the night to our next stop..... as though night driving means certain death by moose.

This is an underwater graveyard. The blue buoys are the men and the white ones are the women.Nah, just kidding. It's actually a muscle farm. I ate a muscle while I as there that had a pearl in it.

So there you go, so pics of Newfoundland. It takes too long to upload them, so I'm gonna stop now. But there are some others like one of my fifteen year old brother frolicking among sheep that always give me a good chuckle.