It takes a few steps to get back into it, the weird and careful shifting of weight that allows one to walk comfortably on the winter slickness of Reykjavík's residential streets in civilian shoes. It can be done. The natives do it. Some foreigners, apparently, never get it down, having grown up in, oh, San Jose or something. Even in hiking boots (hnuss - klæddir eins og túrístar) they are unable to accustom themselves to not being able to fling, recklessly, each foot forward in turn, secure in their friction-based grip on the ground, and they tend to wipe out both spectacularly and often.
Mind you, the natives do also wipe out sometimes, spectacularly, even. Some tens of them went down with bone-jarring thumps over the past few weeks of fierce weather, landing first on the pavement and then in the emergency room. But I have never seen for sale here the little elasticized slip-on cleats that I have seen in Norway. Mostly, the good folk of Reykjavík are really very deft, moving from icy patch to dry pavement and back like seasoned travellers stepping on and off an airport's moving sidewalks.
But the truly dreadful conditions of earliest spring are yet to come: a hand's breadth layer of slick ice under a hand's breadth of icy water and above it all, speeding you along to your inevitable wet fate, a Beaufort 8 wind that catches you like a glímukappi and throws you down.
Gerast áskrifandi að:
Birta ummæli (Atom)
Engin ummæli:
Skrifa ummæli