November 26, 2025 • 29 mins
In this episode, Mike takes a break from Northern Michigan stories and heads far north—way far north—to share memories from his year living in Keflavik, Iceland in the early 1990s while serving in the U.S. Air Force.
Life on the NATO Base
Mike talks about being assigned to Naval Air Station Keflavik, a joint-base environment with Air Force, Navy, Marines, and other NATO personnel. He recounts working with the 57th Fighter Interceptor Squadron – the Black Knights, maintaining F-15 electrical and environmental systems, and occasionally pulling duty in “FISneyland,” the alert barn for interceptor operations.
The Journey to Get There
Before Iceland came a whirlwind of military orders:
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Originally headed to remote Galena, Alaska, the Air Force cancelled those orders at the last minute.
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The next day, new orders arrived sending him to Keflavik instead.
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He completed F-15 training at Tyndall AFB in Florida, drove across the country, shipped his belongings, and ultimately hopped a Hawaiian Airlines DC-8 from Philadelphia to Iceland—a strange but memorable experience.
Daily Life Before the Internet
Mike recalls what it was like living overseas before modern connectivity:
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Expensive phone calls back to the States ($1.06 per minute!)
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Mail arriving once a week on the “rotator” DC-8
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Magazines being precious entertainment
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Trading software, playing early PC games, and marveling at a 286 computer with 1MB of RAM
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A handful of TV channels including AFRTS, BBC, RTL4, and Sky News/Sports
Food, Weather, and Icelandic Oddities
Mike shares a mix of practical and quirky details:
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The legendary Icelandic hot dogs (a recurring theme!)
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Navy chow halls, the USO, and Friday fish fries with cod caught the same day
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Wild weather with winds over 100 mph, handrails along sidewalks, and dumpsters blowing around
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Surprisingly mild temperatures thanks to the Gulf Stream
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Extreme daylight shifts—near-constant darkness in winter and 24-hour light in summer
Exploring Iceland
During his tour, Mike bought a quirky little Škoda 120 and used it to explore beyond the base. He describes:
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Driving through the first roundabouts he’d ever seen
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Visiting the Hard Rock Café in Reykjavik, where one of his Idaho ham-radio license plates hung from the ceiling
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Cheap hops on Navy P-3 “airline-style” flights to London or Shannon, Ireland
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Customs rules that prohibited gas cans, extra cigarettes, and oddly… cassette tapes
Looking Back
Mike reflects on how much Iceland has changed—from relatively untouched in the early ’90s to a major European travel destination today. He also notes a past interview he did on the All Things Iceland podcast in May 2020, sharing more of his experiences from that era.
I appeared on an episode of All Things Iceland Episode 61 in May of 2020.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
[Speaker 0]Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Whatever the
[Speaker 0]case may be. This is Mike, and this
[Speaker 0]is Mike Dell's World number four thirty two
[Speaker 0]for November twenty six twenty twenty five. And,
[Speaker 0]of course, it's the twenty sixth day of
[Speaker 0]NAPOD promo, national podcast posting month, and I'm
(00:21):
[Speaker 0]on track to actually finish it this year.
[Speaker 0]So and I think I got some pretty
[Speaker 0]good content this year. And, you know, some
[Speaker 0]of it I've covered in the past, of
[Speaker 0]course, but, you know, a lot of my
[Speaker 0]listeners haven't been around that long. And even
[Speaker 0]though I've been doing this for twenty years,
[Speaker 0]a lot of people, maybe not even alive
[Speaker 0]twenty years or at least not listening to
(00:43):
[Speaker 0]podcasts that long. Maybe not this one anyway.
[Speaker 0]I don't know. Anyhoo, today, I'm gonna talk
[Speaker 0]about something not Northern Michigan related directly or
[Speaker 0]even indirectly. I lived in Keflavik, Iceland in
[Speaker 0]the early nineties for a entire year. And
(01:04):
[Speaker 0]I just wanna tell you some of my
[Speaker 0]memories of the place now. I'm sure it's
[Speaker 0]changed a lot. It's become more of a
[Speaker 0]tourist trap in, for Europe. But, back in
[Speaker 0]the nineties, it was pretty untouched. I mean,
[Speaker 0]you know, there was obviously people there. There's
[Speaker 0]a big city there. Well, big ish city,
(01:26):
[Speaker 0]Reykjavik, which is the capital. And then, of
[Speaker 0]course, I lived in Keflavik, Iceland, which is
[Speaker 0]the home of the big international airport and
[Speaker 0]the, at the time, NATO base. It was,
[Speaker 0]actually a US Navy, run, air station. You
(01:46):
[Speaker 0]know, Kovvik Naval Air Station, Iceland. And I
[Speaker 0]was, of course, air force, and we had
[Speaker 0]a little, little we had a contingent of
[Speaker 0]air force people there, plus there were people
[Speaker 0]from all the different countries. There were marines.
[Speaker 0]There were obviously a lot of navy. They
[Speaker 0]had a p three wing or squadron or
(02:09):
[Speaker 0]a couple squadrons up there. And, of course,
[Speaker 0]we had a a fighter interceptor squadron, the
[Speaker 0]fifty seventh, the the black knights of Iceland.
[Speaker 0]That's what our squadron patch was. They still
[Speaker 0]have the hat hanging on the wall over
[Speaker 0]here from, the knights. And, of course, I've
(02:29):
[Speaker 0]got my patch collection. One of these days,
[Speaker 0]I'm gonna make a shadow box with all
[Speaker 0]the patches in it and rank and whatnot.
[Speaker 0]But, anywho, I was stationed up there for
[Speaker 0]an entire year, and it was an interesting
[Speaker 0]place to live. Now this, mind you, is
[Speaker 0]before the Internet, and this was before, you
(02:52):
[Speaker 0]know, worldwide almost free calling and, you know,
[Speaker 0]video conferencing and, you know, all the stuff
[Speaker 0]that the Internet brought. This was before that.
[Speaker 0]And, you know, I guess I'll I'll tell
[Speaker 0]you tell you the story from from where
[Speaker 0]it all started. So here I am in
(03:13):
[Speaker 0]Mountain Home, Idaho working on f one elevens,
[Speaker 0]and I get orders to Galena Air Station,
[Speaker 0]Alaska. And Galena Air Station Alaska is right
[Speaker 0]on the Yukon River and, you know, it's
[Speaker 0]Outback Alaska. It is out there. You know,
(03:36):
[Speaker 0]the only way in and out of there
[Speaker 0]is either by the river or by airplane.
[Speaker 0]And it was not even a Galena Air
[Speaker 0]Station. It was Galena Airport, Alaska. It wasn't
[Speaker 0]even an air station, but they did have
[Speaker 0]a fighter interceptor, contingent there. They usually had
[Speaker 0]two or yeah. I think it was two
(03:56):
[Speaker 0]f fifteens, on interceptor duty on call all
[Speaker 0]the time, and that's where I was gonna
[Speaker 0]go. They had put in for a short
[Speaker 0]tour. I always wanted to get out of
[Speaker 0]Mountain Home. I'd been there for seven years,
[Speaker 0]and it was time. And, anyway, for whatever
[Speaker 0]reason, I got those orders canceled. I didn't.
(04:19):
[Speaker 0]The the air force canceled those orders on
[Speaker 0]Monday. And on Tuesday, I had orders to
[Speaker 0]naval air station Keflavik. So they they were
[Speaker 0]bound and determined to send me somewhere cold,
[Speaker 0]which was fine, you know, and come to
[Speaker 0]find out Iceland wasn't that cold. But, that's
(04:41):
[Speaker 0]a whole another story. I'll keep talking here.
[Speaker 0]So anyway, I had to go to school
[Speaker 0]in Florida to, learn the f fifteen electrical
[Speaker 0]and environmental systems, of which I worked on.
[Speaker 0]And so I got to go to school,
(05:01):
[Speaker 0]at Tyndall Air Force Base in the Panhandle,
[Speaker 0]Florida. The only problem was this was, I
[Speaker 0]think, July twentieth or something like that, and
[Speaker 0]I had to report down there no later
[Speaker 0]than August tenth. So I had to out
(05:22):
[Speaker 0]process Mountain Home, get myself down to well,
[Speaker 0]the other the option was to fly to
[Speaker 0]Florida, do the school, fly back to Idaho,
[Speaker 0]out process, move out, and and then, you
[Speaker 0]know, make all the arrangements to have my
[Speaker 0]stuff stored and shipped and blah de blah,
[Speaker 0]you know, all the normal stuff. Well, I,
(05:42):
[Speaker 0]I kinda flipped the script on them. I
[Speaker 0]said, well, let me out process here. I'll
[Speaker 0]drive to Florida with all my stuff, and
[Speaker 0]then I'll ship stuff. You know, I lived
[Speaker 0]in the barracks at the time and all
[Speaker 0]that much stuff. I had a pickup truck.
[Speaker 0]Had plenty of room to put all my
[Speaker 0]stuff, you know, the furniture. Now that I
[Speaker 0]was renting a place, and like I said,
[Speaker 0]it was just, you know, personal stuff. So
(06:05):
[Speaker 0]that's what I did. So I out processed
[Speaker 0]really quick, in Idaho, drove to Florida, did
[Speaker 0]the school, and then, drove home. I took
[Speaker 0]a little leave in between and drove home
[Speaker 0]and stored my truck. And and I had
[Speaker 0]all my stuff shipped from Florida to Iceland.
[Speaker 0]That worked out fine. And, you know, that's
(06:29):
[Speaker 0]how I ended up in Iceland. So I
[Speaker 0]I left Traverse City on a flight to
[Speaker 0]Philadelphia. And from Philadelphia, I flew to Keflavik,
[Speaker 0]Iceland on a d c eight. Even even
[Speaker 0]then, this was, you know, in the early
[Speaker 0]nineties. Even then, a d c eight was
[Speaker 0]an old airplane. In fact, they just retired
(06:51):
[Speaker 0]the final d c eight that was flying,
[Speaker 0]for Samaritan's Purse, which is a, a charity
[Speaker 0]that goes and, you know, helps out when
[Speaker 0]big storms happen or whatever, but they just
[Speaker 0]retired their d c eight. That was the
[Speaker 0]last d c eight flight. Anyway, so I
[Speaker 0]flew seven hours in an airplane that was
(07:13):
[Speaker 0]older than me, which I guess at that
[Speaker 0]point, everything was older than me, but, I
[Speaker 0]froze my toes off and roasted up top.
[Speaker 0]You know, the thing didn't have a very
[Speaker 0]efficient heating system, but, hey. We got there.
[Speaker 0]But the, the funny thing was that it
[Speaker 0]was on Hawaiian Airlines. So you never never
(07:35):
[Speaker 0]think that you're gonna be flying from Philadelphia
[Speaker 0]to Keflavik, Iceland on the, on on Hawaiian
[Speaker 0]Airlines. Oh my gosh. So that was that
[Speaker 0]was quite the adventure. And we took off
[Speaker 0]at seven PM, I think it was. I
(07:59):
[Speaker 0]I don't remember the exact time, but we,
[Speaker 0]we ended up landing in Keflavik at seven
[Speaker 0]AM. And, of course, you know, the big
[Speaker 0]time change. And they kept us up in
[Speaker 0]processing, you know, till, like, two or three
[Speaker 0]in the afternoon before I got to my
[Speaker 0]barracks room, got signed in there, and and
[Speaker 0]got to go to sleep. But I sleep
(08:20):
[Speaker 0]good on airplanes, so I I had plenty
[Speaker 0]of sleep. My day was definitely screwed up,
[Speaker 0]and clearing customs in Iceland was pretty easy.
[Speaker 0]No big deal there. And, yeah. So I
[Speaker 0]was, assigned to the fifty seventh CRS component
(08:40):
[Speaker 0]repair squadron, which, did all the in shop
[Speaker 0]maintenance on the, f fifteens at the time.
[Speaker 0]And, before that was f fours, I guess,
[Speaker 0]but, I was there when the f fifteens
[Speaker 0]were there. And we did, you know, phased
[Speaker 0]inspections and, you know, all all the stuff,
(09:00):
[Speaker 0]all the electrical, all the environmental, all the
[Speaker 0]all the stuff. And but we weren't, we
[Speaker 0]weren't part of the actual on call fighter
[Speaker 0]interceptor squadron except for once in a while.
[Speaker 0]We would have to take our turn at
[Speaker 0]what we called Fisneyland, you know, fighter interceptor
[Speaker 0]squadron, FIS, f I s. And, the area
(09:24):
[Speaker 0]of the base where the alert barn was
[Speaker 0]was called Fisneyland. Of course, you know, the
[Speaker 0]military, we make up names for for, different
[Speaker 0]things. But, you know, all the military stuff
[Speaker 0]was pretty standard except for, you know, Iceland
[Speaker 0]being Iceland. It was a little harder to
[Speaker 0]get parts and a little harder to, you
(09:47):
[Speaker 0]know, keep things flying, but, you know, we
[Speaker 0]did. We had, like, eighteen f fifteens, and
[Speaker 0]everything kept flying pretty good. And we always
[Speaker 0]had four on call, and they would go
[Speaker 0]out loaded, chase bear bombers through the, through
[Speaker 0]the straits there in the Northern Atlantic. But,
[Speaker 0]yeah, nothing too crazy there. And some of
(10:09):
[Speaker 0]the other things that were interesting, that was
[Speaker 0]about the time that computers were, starting to
[Speaker 0]be a thing. And I went to the
[Speaker 0]Navy Exchange there and bought a a two
[Speaker 0]eighty six PC computer with DOS five on
[Speaker 0]it. And, boy, I was styling. I had
(10:29):
[Speaker 0]one megabyte of RAM and a forty megabyte
[Speaker 0]hard drive. And, I mean, that was that
[Speaker 0]was the stuff, man. I would play flight
[Speaker 0]SIP and, SimCity and, you know, we had
[Speaker 0]this drag racing game that I would play
[Speaker 0]and, you know, had some friends, you know,
[Speaker 0]a navy guy that lived in the same
[Speaker 0]barracks, and another friend of mine lived in
(10:52):
[Speaker 0]another barracks nearby that I worked with. And,
[Speaker 0]you know, we would trade software, and we
[Speaker 0]got a bootleg copy of DOS six. And,
[Speaker 0]oh my gosh, we were we were style.
[Speaker 0]And we could use more than the six
[Speaker 0]hundred and forty k of memory, for primary
[Speaker 0]memory with DOS six, memory manager. Anyway, it's
(11:13):
[Speaker 0]not this isn't a geeky show, but, that
[Speaker 0]was we did a awful lot of, computer
[Speaker 0]stuff, but, you know, no Internet. Whenever I
[Speaker 0]had whenever I made phone calls off the
[Speaker 0]island was, on I would do collect calls
[Speaker 0]or or well, not collect calls. I don't
[Speaker 0]know how that worked exactly, but I would,
(11:37):
[Speaker 0]it was a dollar six a minute, back
[Speaker 0]to the states. And, of course, we didn't
[Speaker 0]make a lot of phone calls because of
[Speaker 0]that, because it was expensive. And, you know,
[Speaker 0]at that time, mail was really important. And,
[Speaker 0]you know, being that Iceland was a pretty
(11:58):
[Speaker 0]boring duty station when you were off duty,
[Speaker 0]we we had a nice club we had
[Speaker 0]nice clubs, and the food was great. Even
[Speaker 0]off base, I I would I would fly
[Speaker 0]to Iceland specifically to get one of their
[Speaker 0]hot dogs. Well, actually, I'd have to get
[Speaker 0]more than one, but, the the Icelandic hot
[Speaker 0]dog is legendary. It's, it's really good. Call
(12:20):
[Speaker 0]it a as I remember it. But, I
[Speaker 0]digress. And what was I talking about? Jeez.
[Speaker 0]Kinda lost my train of thought there. Oh,
[Speaker 0]yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mail being really, really, really
[Speaker 0]important. I volunteered to work at the, base
(12:42):
[Speaker 0]post office. And the funny thing about mail
[Speaker 0]there is it was contingent on what we
[Speaker 0]called the tater or the rotator, and that
[Speaker 0]was that, Hawaiian Airlines d c eight combi.
[Speaker 0]That was, it had cargo in the front
[Speaker 0]half of the airplane and passengers in the
[Speaker 0]back half of the airplane, and that's where
(13:02):
[Speaker 0]all the mail came in. So it would
[Speaker 0]come in from the States on Wednesdays. So
[Speaker 0]on Wednesday afternoon, I worked second shift. So
[Speaker 0]Wednesday afternoon, I'd go over to the post
[Speaker 0]office and sort mail for a while and
[Speaker 0]then go to work. And then the next
[Speaker 0]day, finish sorting the mail. I wasn't the
[Speaker 0]only one working there, but it took a
(13:23):
[Speaker 0]day or two to do that. And, of
[Speaker 0]course, that post office was the busiest place
[Speaker 0]on base on Wednesdays and Thursdays. And then,
[Speaker 0]the rest of the week, nothing was going
[Speaker 0]on there, really. People could ship stuff out,
[Speaker 0]but it wouldn't leave until the rotator left
[Speaker 0]on Wednesday afternoon. Or was it Thursday morning?
[Speaker 0]I forget. But, anyway, it was once a
(13:44):
[Speaker 0]week. We do had mail coming in and
[Speaker 0]out, at least from the states. We had
[Speaker 0]another airplane that went back and forth to
[Speaker 0]London that, you would get some stuff that
[Speaker 0]way too. But, for the most part, it
[Speaker 0]all came from Philadelphia. And and another thing
[Speaker 0]that was really, really, really, really valuable up
(14:05):
[Speaker 0]there was magazines. And and current magazines were
[Speaker 0]even more ridiculously important because it really wasn't
[Speaker 0]a lot of reading material. The library on
[Speaker 0]the base was was busy all the time
[Speaker 0]because, you know, not much else to do.
[Speaker 0]We did have cable TV in the barracks,
(14:26):
[Speaker 0]and we would get, we call it a
[Speaker 0]farts. Yeah. Okay. You know, military. They love
[Speaker 0]to have it, but it was armed serve
[Speaker 0]or armed what was it? Armed services radio
[Speaker 0]and television service or whatever. And and that
(14:48):
[Speaker 0]was you know, we had the a couple
[Speaker 0]of AFarts channels. One of them that would
[Speaker 0]play the Today Show, The Tonight Show, and,
[Speaker 0]you know, a few other things, and then
[Speaker 0]they would always have the live sports. Of
[Speaker 0]course, live sports when you're on GMT time,
[Speaker 0]was at oddball times of the day. But
[Speaker 0]I, you know, I work second shift, so
(15:09):
[Speaker 0]I'd get home in the morning, and The
[Speaker 0]Tonight Show would be on. And then about
[Speaker 0]noon, The Today Show would come on, something
[Speaker 0]like noon, one o'clock. So if I was
[Speaker 0]still up at that time, I would watch
[Speaker 0]The Today Show. But, yeah, it was, you
[Speaker 0]know, TV and radio. And then we had,
[Speaker 0]like, two or three other stations. We had,
(15:30):
[Speaker 0]BBC out of England, and we had RTL
[Speaker 0]four out of the Netherlands, and that was
[Speaker 0]in Dutch mostly. And then we had Sky
[Speaker 0]News and Sky Sports. So, you know, there
[Speaker 0]was, like, four, five channels, something like that.
[Speaker 0]So that was another pastime. Plus, you know,
(15:51):
[Speaker 0]we had day rooms in the barracks, and
[Speaker 0]we had, on the second floor was a
[Speaker 0]full kitchen. So if you wanted to cook
[Speaker 0]your own stuff, you'd go over the commissary,
[Speaker 0]get stuff, and cook it down there. But,
[Speaker 0]of course, that was always crowded, and I
[Speaker 0]didn't do that much. I just eat a
[Speaker 0]chow hall. Chow hall was good. We also
[Speaker 0]had a Wendy's on the base of all
(16:14):
[Speaker 0]things. Or I would go over to the
[Speaker 0]barbershop. There's a little barbershop there, and, there
[Speaker 0]was also a hot dog stand. Well, guess
[Speaker 0]what I eat a awful lot of was
[Speaker 0]Icelandic hot dogs. That, but, you know, for
[Speaker 0]breakfast, I'd go over to the chow hall.
[Speaker 0]And the navy food wasn't as good as
[Speaker 0]the air force food, but it was okay.
(16:35):
[Speaker 0]I didn't mind it. When I was pulling
[Speaker 0]alert duty over on the air force side,
[Speaker 0]you know, at Disneyland, they they had a,
[Speaker 0]chow, air force chow hall over there, so
[Speaker 0]the food was better. You know, again, military
[Speaker 0]food, not terrible, but, not, you know, not
[Speaker 0]top notch. And then, of course, you know,
[Speaker 0]eat at Wendy's, and there was also a
(16:58):
[Speaker 0]well, in the air force, we call it
[Speaker 0]AFE's. Army Air Force Exchange Service had a
[Speaker 0]snack bar, but I forget what the navy
[Speaker 0]called it in the navy exchange. But it
[Speaker 0]was, you know, a snack bar. You know,
[Speaker 0]you can get a slice of pizza, hamburger,
[Speaker 0]hot dog, or whatever. They didn't have the
[Speaker 0]Icelandic type hot dog, so I never ate
(17:19):
[Speaker 0]hot dogs there. But, again, are you sensing
[Speaker 0]a theme? I like the Icelandic hot dog.
[Speaker 0]But, yeah, it was, it was cool. Iceland
[Speaker 0]was one of the few places on the
[Speaker 0]planet I remember that had handrails on the
[Speaker 0]sidewalks. And the reason for that, we would
(17:40):
[Speaker 0]have crazy straight line winds across the North
[Speaker 0]Atlantic. We were kind of right in the
[Speaker 0]jet stream or the, what do they call
[Speaker 0]that? Not the jet stream, but, where the
[Speaker 0]ocean currents come north. And that kept the
[Speaker 0]island a little warmer than you might think.
(18:00):
[Speaker 0]The winters here in Traverse City, especially in
[Speaker 0]nineteen seventy eight, but, in the nineties, it
[Speaker 0]was often warmer in Keflavik, Iceland near the
[Speaker 0]Arctic Circle in the winter than it it
[Speaker 0]was here in Traverse City. You know, I
[Speaker 0]had my weekly call with my folks, and
(18:20):
[Speaker 0]and, you know, they were always saying, oh,
[Speaker 0]well, it's twenty degrees here, and, you know,
[Speaker 0]it'd be thirty five degrees and windy and
[Speaker 0]really windy, but those handrails on the sidewalk
[Speaker 0]keep you on the sidewalk. It was not
[Speaker 0]unusual in the middle of the night. You
[Speaker 0]know, I lived in a, you know, barracks
[Speaker 0]building, and there was another barracks well, a
[Speaker 0]three story barracks building, and then there was
(18:41):
[Speaker 0]dumpsters in between. It was not uncommon for
[Speaker 0]the wind to blow the dumpsters over at
[Speaker 0]night. You just hear this big crash. And
[Speaker 0]I remember one time we had a high
[Speaker 0]wind warning, and that's really odd for up
[Speaker 0]there because it's always high wind, but this
[Speaker 0]was really high wind. It was a hundred
[Speaker 0]and three miles an hour sustained for over
(19:03):
[Speaker 0]two hours. And it literally it had snowed,
[Speaker 0]and there was a little ice on the
[Speaker 0]parking lot at the barracks, and all the
[Speaker 0]cars blew to one end of the parking
[Speaker 0]lot. It blew the cars around in the
[Speaker 0]parking lot. It was, yeah, crazy wind. Jeez.
[Speaker 0]We talked about that yesterday with the blizzard
[Speaker 0]of seventy eight, but, yeah, similar wind conditions,
(19:25):
[Speaker 0]but a lot less snow. We didn't get
[Speaker 0]a lot of snow there, which, like I
[Speaker 0]said, being near the Arctic Circle, you would
[Speaker 0]think you would, but, we didn't. Being that
[Speaker 0]it was in the well, Gulf Stream, that's
[Speaker 0]what I'm thinking. Not not the not the,
[Speaker 0]oh, was that is that what I said
[Speaker 0]the first time? Oh, Jet Stream. Yeah. Jet
(19:45):
[Speaker 0]Stream's in the air. Gulf Stream's on the
[Speaker 0]ground or in the water. And we were
[Speaker 0]right in the we were in probably both,
[Speaker 0]but, yeah, it was it was crazy. But,
[Speaker 0]another thing that that I remember was really
[Speaker 0]popular was the USO club, and that happened
[Speaker 0]to be, you know, kind of in between
[Speaker 0]the two barracks buildings where I lived. And,
(20:07):
[Speaker 0]they used to have fish fry over there
[Speaker 0]on Friday nights. And that Icelandic cod was
[Speaker 0]swimming earlier that day. Yeah. So it was
[Speaker 0]probably the best fish fry I've been to.
[Speaker 0]I'm traveling on my food on my, I'm
[Speaker 0]traveling on my stomach here. I do remember
[Speaker 0]eating there. They also had a really good
(20:29):
[Speaker 0]half pound hamburger, so I did eat a
[Speaker 0]lot of meals there at the USO or
[Speaker 0]the USO. Of course, you know, military gotta
[Speaker 0]have names for stuff. And, another thing that,
[Speaker 0]you know, most people didn't bother with getting
[Speaker 0]a car up there, but I wanted to
[Speaker 0]do some exploring. And there was a gal
(20:50):
[Speaker 0]in my shop that, was rotating back to
[Speaker 0]the states, and she had a car called
[Speaker 0]a Skoda, Skoda one twenty. It's a really
[Speaker 0]weird looking little, square box car, like some
[Speaker 0]sort of Fiat, but the engine was in
[Speaker 0]the back, but it had a radiator up
[Speaker 0]in the front. It had, studded snow tires
(21:10):
[Speaker 0]on it, and she sold it to me
[Speaker 0]for six hundred dollars. I drove that thing
[Speaker 0]for probably eight or nine months. And then
[Speaker 0]when I got ready to rotate out, I
[Speaker 0]sold it for six hundred dollars. And it
[Speaker 0]was really interesting in Iceland with the cars.
[Speaker 0]You had to leave your headlights on all
[Speaker 0]the time. And if you were on an
(21:31):
[Speaker 0]international driver's license instead of an Icelandic driver's
[Speaker 0]license, your car had to be modified to
[Speaker 0]have the lights on all the time. And,
[Speaker 0]of course, that wasn't common back then. It
[Speaker 0]is now. But, back then, you had to
[Speaker 0]have it modified. And, of course, this one
[Speaker 0]was already. So anytime you started the car,
[Speaker 0]you know, the headlights were on. That car
[Speaker 0]was pretty good. And, you know, it got
(21:52):
[Speaker 0]me around, and it was a little better
[Speaker 0]than riding the bus. They did have a
[Speaker 0]bus service on base, and, plus, we could
[Speaker 0]go off base. The weird thing, when you
[Speaker 0]went off base, you had to go through
[Speaker 0]Icelandic customs. And then when you came back
[Speaker 0]on the bay base, you would, go through
[Speaker 0]navy security, and they were really weird about
[Speaker 0]certain things coming off the base. You couldn't
(22:14):
[Speaker 0]bring any gas cans. You could just have
[Speaker 0]the gas that was in your car. You
[Speaker 0]couldn't you could have one pack of open
[Speaker 0]cigarettes and one pack of not opened cigarettes,
[Speaker 0]but no more than that. And for some
[Speaker 0]weird weird reason, you couldn't bring cassette tapes.
[Speaker 0]So if your car had a tape deck,
(22:35):
[Speaker 0]you're SOL. You could not bring cassette tapes
[Speaker 0]off the base. I I have no idea.
[Speaker 0]Well, that was their three big bugaboos. And
[Speaker 0]the reason being is, you know, gas prices
[Speaker 0]off base was, I think, at the time
[Speaker 0]was two dollars a liter or the equivalent
[Speaker 0]of that, which would make it, like, eight
[Speaker 0]dollars a gallon. And, you know, in the
(22:56):
[Speaker 0]early nineties, that was ridiculous. I think, on
[Speaker 0]base was a buck forty five the whole
[Speaker 0]time I was there, and that was that
[Speaker 0]was a bit higher than than what was
[Speaker 0]average at that time in the states, but,
[Speaker 0]you know, it was a lot cheaper. So
[Speaker 0]that was that part. Same thing with the
[Speaker 0]cigarettes. You know, I could buy a carton
(23:17):
[Speaker 0]of Marlboros for six dollars at the exchange
[Speaker 0]and sell them for twenty dollars a pack
[Speaker 0]off off base, but, you know, nobody did
[Speaker 0]that or I didn't do that. You know?
[Speaker 0]And I didn't smoke that much. You know,
[Speaker 0]I did at that time, I believe I
[Speaker 0]was smoking, but I've been quit for many,
[Speaker 0]many years. But back then, everybody smoked. That
(23:38):
[Speaker 0]was kinda normal. So, again, you know, showing
[Speaker 0]my age here. But let's see. Some of
[Speaker 0]the other cool things about Iceland, we went
[Speaker 0]to the Hard Rock Cafe in, in Reykjavik.
[Speaker 0]It was in a in a mall down
[Speaker 0]there. It it's gone now. I'm I understand.
(23:58):
[Speaker 0]But, at the time, they they were collecting
[Speaker 0]US license plates to tack on the ceiling.
[Speaker 0]Well, I had customized, Idaho amateur radio license
[Speaker 0]plates with my call sign on it, and
[Speaker 0]I had my dad, take one off my
[Speaker 0]truck and send it to me and go
(24:20):
[Speaker 0]into Hard Rock Cafe in Reykjavik, and, they
[Speaker 0]give you a free meal for donating a
[Speaker 0]license plate. So for the longest time, my
[Speaker 0]call sign license plate was, nailed to the
[Speaker 0]ceiling in the Reykjavik, Hard Rock Cafe. But
[Speaker 0]like I said, I do believe that's gone
[Speaker 0]now. They had a really cool door or
(24:42):
[Speaker 0]a thing around the door. They had a
[Speaker 0]fifty nine Cadillac standing on its nose, and
[Speaker 0]the door going into the place was through
[Speaker 0]the Cadillac. I you know, they had just
[Speaker 0]had, you know, had it cut out, and,
[Speaker 0]you know, it was a normal door, but
[Speaker 0]that was, I do I do remember that.
(25:03):
[Speaker 0]You know, of course, it was inside a
[Speaker 0]mall. So you know? And the other thing
[Speaker 0]I remember the most about it was driving
[Speaker 0]in Reykjavik. It was the first time I'd
[Speaker 0]ever seen a traffic circle or a roundabout.
[Speaker 0]Now they're all over the place. I should
[Speaker 0]do a whole episode about roundabouts here in
[Speaker 0]northern Michigan, but I probably won't. But, that
(25:26):
[Speaker 0]was the first place I'd ever dealt with
[Speaker 0]roundabouts. And then in London, a Piccadilly circle
[Speaker 0]or Piccadilly Circus, of course, that roundabout there
[Speaker 0]is, way bigger. And, you drive the wrong
[Speaker 0]side of the road and the wrong side
[Speaker 0]of the roundabout, and I never did drive
[Speaker 0]through it, but, saw it. Pretty crazy. But,
(25:47):
[Speaker 0]anyway, and, you know, when I was telling
[Speaker 0]you about that airplane that flew back and
[Speaker 0]forth to London, you could, hop a flight
[Speaker 0]on that airplane. It was a p three
[Speaker 0]Orion, which is is a navy aircraft, but
[Speaker 0]it was set up like an airliner. And
[Speaker 0]you could hop a flight on there. I
[Speaker 0]think it was twenty bucks round trip, and
[Speaker 0]they'd, you know, leave Kevlovic at seven in
(26:09):
[Speaker 0]the morning and get to London about you
[Speaker 0]know, it was an hour and a half
[Speaker 0]maybe, something like that, and, stop in Shannon,
[Speaker 0]Ireland. And then, somewhere near London, I don't
[Speaker 0]remember what base it was, Milton Hall maybe.
[Speaker 0]But, we'd we'd land there, and then you
[Speaker 0]could, you know, grab a bus into London
(26:30):
[Speaker 0]or train or whatever it was and spend
[Speaker 0]the day there. And then if you were
[Speaker 0]back, to the airplane by ten o'clock at
[Speaker 0]night, they would head back. So it was
[Speaker 0]pretty cheap to, travel to to, London and
[Speaker 0]or shot Shannon. You know, sometimes jump off
[Speaker 0]at Shannon and spend the day there or
(26:52):
[Speaker 0]spend a night there usually and then come
[Speaker 0]back. But, yeah. So it was it was
[Speaker 0]definitely a a cool place, and, you know,
[Speaker 0]cool and as in cool, man, not cool
[Speaker 0]as in cold. Although it was cold, it
[Speaker 0]it never got above sixty five degrees and
(27:15):
[Speaker 0]never really got below twenty degrees the entire
[Speaker 0]time I was there, not counting wind chill.
[Speaker 0]And the sun, that was the other one,
[Speaker 0]is this time of year up there, the
[Speaker 0]sun may may come up just slightly above
[Speaker 0]the horizon and then go sideways for a
[Speaker 0]couple hours and then drop right back down.
[Speaker 0]So it was mostly dark, and we weren't
(27:37):
[Speaker 0]above the Arctic Circle. So the sun did
[Speaker 0]actually come up for a little bit. And
[Speaker 0]then in the summer, you know, like in
[Speaker 0]June and July, the the sun never really
[Speaker 0]set. It would go just slightly below the
[Speaker 0]horizon, and then you could see it kinda
[Speaker 0]go sideways across the horizon and then pop
[Speaker 0]right back up. It was very weird coming
(27:59):
[Speaker 0]out of the bar at two in the
[Speaker 0]morning and have to put your sunglasses on,
[Speaker 0]but, you did. And, you got used to
[Speaker 0]it. I did I don't remember much of
[Speaker 0]the language. I did learn enough of it
[Speaker 0]to get by, but, Icelanders at that time
[Speaker 0]even, and it's probably even better now, had
[Speaker 0]a higher literacy rate in English than the
(28:21):
[Speaker 0]US. So, you know, that was a required
[Speaker 0]language, although they they spoke more British English,
[Speaker 0]but close enough. You know? But, anyway, that's
[Speaker 0]just my remembrances of Iceland in the nineties.
[Speaker 0]I did, do an episode of all about
[Speaker 0]Iceland or oh, no. All things Iceland. I'll
(28:44):
[Speaker 0]have a link in the show notes over
[Speaker 0]at mike dell dot com. This post, there'll
[Speaker 0]be a link to my episode there, which
[Speaker 0]was in May of twenty twenty. I was
[Speaker 0]interviewed, about being on the NATO base in
[Speaker 0]Iceland back then, and, you know, who knows
[Speaker 0]if I contradicted myself? That was, you know,
[Speaker 0]almost six years ago. So or at least
(29:06):
[Speaker 0]five. That was six. Anyway, math again. But
[Speaker 0]go check that out. She's still doing that
[Speaker 0]show. I understand she's gonna become a mother
[Speaker 0]here soon. It's just I haven't listened to
[Speaker 0]it in a long time. But, anyway, check
[Speaker 0]that out. All things Iceland, May of twenty
(29:29):
[Speaker 0]twenty. And, I'll be back tomorrow. And what
[Speaker 0]forget what I'm gonna talk about tomorrow. Let
[Speaker 0]me see. Oh, yes. Thanksgiving. I'm gonna talk
[Speaker 0]a little bit about how Traverse City is
[Speaker 0]kind of a small town still. So, I
[Speaker 0]look forward to that, and hopefully, you'll listen.
[Speaker 0]Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Whatever the
[Speaker 0]case may be. This is Mike, and this
[Speaker 0]is Mike Dell's World number four thirty two
[Speaker 0]for November twenty six twenty twenty five. And,
[Speaker 0]of course, it's the twenty sixth day of
[Speaker 0]NAPOD promo, national podcast posting month, and I'm
(00:21):
[Speaker 0]on track to actually finish it this year.
[Speaker 0]So and I think I got some pretty
[Speaker 0]good content this year. And, you know, some
[Speaker 0]of it I've covered in the past, of
[Speaker 0]course, but, you know, a lot of my
[Speaker 0]listeners haven't been around that long. And even
[Speaker 0]though I've been doing this for twenty years,
[Speaker 0]a lot of people, maybe not even alive
[Speaker 0]twenty years or at least not listening to
(00:43):
[Speaker 0]podcasts that long. Maybe not this one anyway.
[Speaker 0]I don't know. Anyhoo, today, I'm gonna talk
[Speaker 0]about something not Northern Michigan related directly or
[Speaker 0]even indirectly. I lived in Keflavik, Iceland in
[Speaker 0]the early nineties for a entire year. And
(01:04):
[Speaker 0]I just wanna tell you some of my
[Speaker 0]memories of the place now. I'm sure it's
[Speaker 0]changed a lot. It's become more of a
[Speaker 0]tourist trap in, for Europe. But, back in
[Speaker 0]the nineties, it was pretty untouched. I mean,
[Speaker 0]you know, there was obviously people there. There's
[Speaker 0]a big city there. Well, big ish city,
(01:26):
[Speaker 0]Reykjavik, which is the capital. And then, of
[Speaker 0]course, I lived in Keflavik, Iceland, which is
[Speaker 0]the home of the big international airport and
[Speaker 0]the, at the time, NATO base. It was,
[Speaker 0]actually a US Navy, run, air station. You
(01:46):
[Speaker 0]know, Kovvik Naval Air Station, Iceland. And I
[Speaker 0]was, of course, air force, and we had
[Speaker 0]a little, little we had a contingent of
[Speaker 0]air force people there, plus there were people
[Speaker 0]from all the different countries. There were marines.
[Speaker 0]There were obviously a lot of navy. They
[Speaker 0]had a p three wing or squadron or
(02:09):
[Speaker 0]a couple squadrons up there. And, of course,
[Speaker 0]we had a a fighter interceptor squadron, the
[Speaker 0]fifty seventh, the the black knights of Iceland.
[Speaker 0]That's what our squadron patch was. They still
[Speaker 0]have the hat hanging on the wall over
[Speaker 0]here from, the knights. And, of course, I've
(02:29):
[Speaker 0]got my patch collection. One of these days,
[Speaker 0]I'm gonna make a shadow box with all
[Speaker 0]the patches in it and rank and whatnot.
[Speaker 0]But, anywho, I was stationed up there for
[Speaker 0]an entire year, and it was an interesting
[Speaker 0]place to live. Now this, mind you, is
[Speaker 0]before the Internet, and this was before, you
(02:52):
[Speaker 0]know, worldwide almost free calling and, you know,
[Speaker 0]video conferencing and, you know, all the stuff
[Speaker 0]that the Internet brought. This was before that.
[Speaker 0]And, you know, I guess I'll I'll tell
[Speaker 0]you tell you the story from from where
[Speaker 0]it all started. So here I am in
(03:13):
[Speaker 0]Mountain Home, Idaho working on f one elevens,
[Speaker 0]and I get orders to Galena Air Station,
[Speaker 0]Alaska. And Galena Air Station Alaska is right
[Speaker 0]on the Yukon River and, you know, it's
[Speaker 0]Outback Alaska. It is out there. You know,
(03:36):
[Speaker 0]the only way in and out of there
[Speaker 0]is either by the river or by airplane.
[Speaker 0]And it was not even a Galena Air
[Speaker 0]Station. It was Galena Airport, Alaska. It wasn't
[Speaker 0]even an air station, but they did have
[Speaker 0]a fighter interceptor, contingent there. They usually had
[Speaker 0]two or yeah. I think it was two
(03:56):
[Speaker 0]f fifteens, on interceptor duty on call all
[Speaker 0]the time, and that's where I was gonna
[Speaker 0]go. They had put in for a short
[Speaker 0]tour. I always wanted to get out of
[Speaker 0]Mountain Home. I'd been there for seven years,
[Speaker 0]and it was time. And, anyway, for whatever
[Speaker 0]reason, I got those orders canceled. I didn't.
(04:19):
[Speaker 0]The the air force canceled those orders on
[Speaker 0]Monday. And on Tuesday, I had orders to
[Speaker 0]naval air station Keflavik. So they they were
[Speaker 0]bound and determined to send me somewhere cold,
[Speaker 0]which was fine, you know, and come to
[Speaker 0]find out Iceland wasn't that cold. But, that's
(04:41):
[Speaker 0]a whole another story. I'll keep talking here.
[Speaker 0]So anyway, I had to go to school
[Speaker 0]in Florida to, learn the f fifteen electrical
[Speaker 0]and environmental systems, of which I worked on.
[Speaker 0]And so I got to go to school,
(05:01):
[Speaker 0]at Tyndall Air Force Base in the Panhandle,
[Speaker 0]Florida. The only problem was this was, I
[Speaker 0]think, July twentieth or something like that, and
[Speaker 0]I had to report down there no later
[Speaker 0]than August tenth. So I had to out
(05:22):
[Speaker 0]process Mountain Home, get myself down to well,
[Speaker 0]the other the option was to fly to
[Speaker 0]Florida, do the school, fly back to Idaho,
[Speaker 0]out process, move out, and and then, you
[Speaker 0]know, make all the arrangements to have my
[Speaker 0]stuff stored and shipped and blah de blah,
[Speaker 0]you know, all the normal stuff. Well, I,
(05:42):
[Speaker 0]I kinda flipped the script on them. I
[Speaker 0]said, well, let me out process here. I'll
[Speaker 0]drive to Florida with all my stuff, and
[Speaker 0]then I'll ship stuff. You know, I lived
[Speaker 0]in the barracks at the time and all
[Speaker 0]that much stuff. I had a pickup truck.
[Speaker 0]Had plenty of room to put all my
[Speaker 0]stuff, you know, the furniture. Now that I
[Speaker 0]was renting a place, and like I said,
[Speaker 0]it was just, you know, personal stuff. So
(06:05):
[Speaker 0]that's what I did. So I out processed
[Speaker 0]really quick, in Idaho, drove to Florida, did
[Speaker 0]the school, and then, drove home. I took
[Speaker 0]a little leave in between and drove home
[Speaker 0]and stored my truck. And and I had
[Speaker 0]all my stuff shipped from Florida to Iceland.
[Speaker 0]That worked out fine. And, you know, that's
(06:29):
[Speaker 0]how I ended up in Iceland. So I
[Speaker 0]I left Traverse City on a flight to
[Speaker 0]Philadelphia. And from Philadelphia, I flew to Keflavik,
[Speaker 0]Iceland on a d c eight. Even even
[Speaker 0]then, this was, you know, in the early
[Speaker 0]nineties. Even then, a d c eight was
[Speaker 0]an old airplane. In fact, they just retired
(06:51):
[Speaker 0]the final d c eight that was flying,
[Speaker 0]for Samaritan's Purse, which is a, a charity
[Speaker 0]that goes and, you know, helps out when
[Speaker 0]big storms happen or whatever, but they just
[Speaker 0]retired their d c eight. That was the
[Speaker 0]last d c eight flight. Anyway, so I
[Speaker 0]flew seven hours in an airplane that was
(07:13):
[Speaker 0]older than me, which I guess at that
[Speaker 0]point, everything was older than me, but, I
[Speaker 0]froze my toes off and roasted up top.
[Speaker 0]You know, the thing didn't have a very
[Speaker 0]efficient heating system, but, hey. We got there.
[Speaker 0]But the, the funny thing was that it
[Speaker 0]was on Hawaiian Airlines. So you never never
(07:35):
[Speaker 0]think that you're gonna be flying from Philadelphia
[Speaker 0]to Keflavik, Iceland on the, on on Hawaiian
[Speaker 0]Airlines. Oh my gosh. So that was that
[Speaker 0]was quite the adventure. And we took off
[Speaker 0]at seven PM, I think it was. I
(07:59):
[Speaker 0]I don't remember the exact time, but we,
[Speaker 0]we ended up landing in Keflavik at seven
[Speaker 0]AM. And, of course, you know, the big
[Speaker 0]time change. And they kept us up in
[Speaker 0]processing, you know, till, like, two or three
[Speaker 0]in the afternoon before I got to my
[Speaker 0]barracks room, got signed in there, and and
[Speaker 0]got to go to sleep. But I sleep
(08:20):
[Speaker 0]good on airplanes, so I I had plenty
[Speaker 0]of sleep. My day was definitely screwed up,
[Speaker 0]and clearing customs in Iceland was pretty easy.
[Speaker 0]No big deal there. And, yeah. So I
[Speaker 0]was, assigned to the fifty seventh CRS component
(08:40):
[Speaker 0]repair squadron, which, did all the in shop
[Speaker 0]maintenance on the, f fifteens at the time.
[Speaker 0]And, before that was f fours, I guess,
[Speaker 0]but, I was there when the f fifteens
[Speaker 0]were there. And we did, you know, phased
[Speaker 0]inspections and, you know, all all the stuff,
(09:00):
[Speaker 0]all the electrical, all the environmental, all the
[Speaker 0]all the stuff. And but we weren't, we
[Speaker 0]weren't part of the actual on call fighter
[Speaker 0]interceptor squadron except for once in a while.
[Speaker 0]We would have to take our turn at
[Speaker 0]what we called Fisneyland, you know, fighter interceptor
[Speaker 0]squadron, FIS, f I s. And, the area
(09:24):
[Speaker 0]of the base where the alert barn was
[Speaker 0]was called Fisneyland. Of course, you know, the
[Speaker 0]military, we make up names for for, different
[Speaker 0]things. But, you know, all the military stuff
[Speaker 0]was pretty standard except for, you know, Iceland
[Speaker 0]being Iceland. It was a little harder to
[Speaker 0]get parts and a little harder to, you
(09:47):
[Speaker 0]know, keep things flying, but, you know, we
[Speaker 0]did. We had, like, eighteen f fifteens, and
[Speaker 0]everything kept flying pretty good. And we always
[Speaker 0]had four on call, and they would go
[Speaker 0]out loaded, chase bear bombers through the, through
[Speaker 0]the straits there in the Northern Atlantic. But,
[Speaker 0]yeah, nothing too crazy there. And some of
(10:09):
[Speaker 0]the other things that were interesting, that was
[Speaker 0]about the time that computers were, starting to
[Speaker 0]be a thing. And I went to the
[Speaker 0]Navy Exchange there and bought a a two
[Speaker 0]eighty six PC computer with DOS five on
[Speaker 0]it. And, boy, I was styling. I had
(10:29):
[Speaker 0]one megabyte of RAM and a forty megabyte
[Speaker 0]hard drive. And, I mean, that was that
[Speaker 0]was the stuff, man. I would play flight
[Speaker 0]SIP and, SimCity and, you know, we had
[Speaker 0]this drag racing game that I would play
[Speaker 0]and, you know, had some friends, you know,
[Speaker 0]a navy guy that lived in the same
[Speaker 0]barracks, and another friend of mine lived in
(10:52):
[Speaker 0]another barracks nearby that I worked with. And,
[Speaker 0]you know, we would trade software, and we
[Speaker 0]got a bootleg copy of DOS six. And,
[Speaker 0]oh my gosh, we were we were style.
[Speaker 0]And we could use more than the six
[Speaker 0]hundred and forty k of memory, for primary
[Speaker 0]memory with DOS six, memory manager. Anyway, it's
(11:13):
[Speaker 0]not this isn't a geeky show, but, that
[Speaker 0]was we did a awful lot of, computer
[Speaker 0]stuff, but, you know, no Internet. Whenever I
[Speaker 0]had whenever I made phone calls off the
[Speaker 0]island was, on I would do collect calls
[Speaker 0]or or well, not collect calls. I don't
[Speaker 0]know how that worked exactly, but I would,
(11:37):
[Speaker 0]it was a dollar six a minute, back
[Speaker 0]to the states. And, of course, we didn't
[Speaker 0]make a lot of phone calls because of
[Speaker 0]that, because it was expensive. And, you know,
[Speaker 0]at that time, mail was really important. And,
[Speaker 0]you know, being that Iceland was a pretty
(11:58):
[Speaker 0]boring duty station when you were off duty,
[Speaker 0]we we had a nice club we had
[Speaker 0]nice clubs, and the food was great. Even
[Speaker 0]off base, I I would I would fly
[Speaker 0]to Iceland specifically to get one of their
[Speaker 0]hot dogs. Well, actually, I'd have to get
[Speaker 0]more than one, but, the the Icelandic hot
[Speaker 0]dog is legendary. It's, it's really good. Call
(12:20):
[Speaker 0]it a as I remember it. But, I
[Speaker 0]digress. And what was I talking about? Jeez.
[Speaker 0]Kinda lost my train of thought there. Oh,
[Speaker 0]yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mail being really, really, really
[Speaker 0]important. I volunteered to work at the, base
(12:42):
[Speaker 0]post office. And the funny thing about mail
[Speaker 0]there is it was contingent on what we
[Speaker 0]called the tater or the rotator, and that
[Speaker 0]was that, Hawaiian Airlines d c eight combi.
[Speaker 0]That was, it had cargo in the front
[Speaker 0]half of the airplane and passengers in the
[Speaker 0]back half of the airplane, and that's where
(13:02):
[Speaker 0]all the mail came in. So it would
[Speaker 0]come in from the States on Wednesdays. So
[Speaker 0]on Wednesday afternoon, I worked second shift. So
[Speaker 0]Wednesday afternoon, I'd go over to the post
[Speaker 0]office and sort mail for a while and
[Speaker 0]then go to work. And then the next
[Speaker 0]day, finish sorting the mail. I wasn't the
[Speaker 0]only one working there, but it took a
(13:23):
[Speaker 0]day or two to do that. And, of
[Speaker 0]course, that post office was the busiest place
[Speaker 0]on base on Wednesdays and Thursdays. And then,
[Speaker 0]the rest of the week, nothing was going
[Speaker 0]on there, really. People could ship stuff out,
[Speaker 0]but it wouldn't leave until the rotator left
[Speaker 0]on Wednesday afternoon. Or was it Thursday morning?
[Speaker 0]I forget. But, anyway, it was once a
(13:44):
[Speaker 0]week. We do had mail coming in and
[Speaker 0]out, at least from the states. We had
[Speaker 0]another airplane that went back and forth to
[Speaker 0]London that, you would get some stuff that
[Speaker 0]way too. But, for the most part, it
[Speaker 0]all came from Philadelphia. And and another thing
[Speaker 0]that was really, really, really, really valuable up
(14:05):
[Speaker 0]there was magazines. And and current magazines were
[Speaker 0]even more ridiculously important because it really wasn't
[Speaker 0]a lot of reading material. The library on
[Speaker 0]the base was was busy all the time
[Speaker 0]because, you know, not much else to do.
[Speaker 0]We did have cable TV in the barracks,
(14:26):
[Speaker 0]and we would get, we call it a
[Speaker 0]farts. Yeah. Okay. You know, military. They love
[Speaker 0]to have it, but it was armed serve
[Speaker 0]or armed what was it? Armed services radio
[Speaker 0]and television service or whatever. And and that
(14:48):
[Speaker 0]was you know, we had the a couple
[Speaker 0]of AFarts channels. One of them that would
[Speaker 0]play the Today Show, The Tonight Show, and,
[Speaker 0]you know, a few other things, and then
[Speaker 0]they would always have the live sports. Of
[Speaker 0]course, live sports when you're on GMT time,
[Speaker 0]was at oddball times of the day. But
[Speaker 0]I, you know, I work second shift, so
(15:09):
[Speaker 0]I'd get home in the morning, and The
[Speaker 0]Tonight Show would be on. And then about
[Speaker 0]noon, The Today Show would come on, something
[Speaker 0]like noon, one o'clock. So if I was
[Speaker 0]still up at that time, I would watch
[Speaker 0]The Today Show. But, yeah, it was, you
[Speaker 0]know, TV and radio. And then we had,
[Speaker 0]like, two or three other stations. We had,
(15:30):
[Speaker 0]BBC out of England, and we had RTL
[Speaker 0]four out of the Netherlands, and that was
[Speaker 0]in Dutch mostly. And then we had Sky
[Speaker 0]News and Sky Sports. So, you know, there
[Speaker 0]was, like, four, five channels, something like that.
[Speaker 0]So that was another pastime. Plus, you know,
(15:51):
[Speaker 0]we had day rooms in the barracks, and
[Speaker 0]we had, on the second floor was a
[Speaker 0]full kitchen. So if you wanted to cook
[Speaker 0]your own stuff, you'd go over the commissary,
[Speaker 0]get stuff, and cook it down there. But,
[Speaker 0]of course, that was always crowded, and I
[Speaker 0]didn't do that much. I just eat a
[Speaker 0]chow hall. Chow hall was good. We also
[Speaker 0]had a Wendy's on the base of all
(16:14):
[Speaker 0]things. Or I would go over to the
[Speaker 0]barbershop. There's a little barbershop there, and, there
[Speaker 0]was also a hot dog stand. Well, guess
[Speaker 0]what I eat a awful lot of was
[Speaker 0]Icelandic hot dogs. That, but, you know, for
[Speaker 0]breakfast, I'd go over to the chow hall.
[Speaker 0]And the navy food wasn't as good as
[Speaker 0]the air force food, but it was okay.
(16:35):
[Speaker 0]I didn't mind it. When I was pulling
[Speaker 0]alert duty over on the air force side,
[Speaker 0]you know, at Disneyland, they they had a,
[Speaker 0]chow, air force chow hall over there, so
[Speaker 0]the food was better. You know, again, military
[Speaker 0]food, not terrible, but, not, you know, not
[Speaker 0]top notch. And then, of course, you know,
[Speaker 0]eat at Wendy's, and there was also a
(16:58):
[Speaker 0]well, in the air force, we call it
[Speaker 0]AFE's. Army Air Force Exchange Service had a
[Speaker 0]snack bar, but I forget what the navy
[Speaker 0]called it in the navy exchange. But it
[Speaker 0]was, you know, a snack bar. You know,
[Speaker 0]you can get a slice of pizza, hamburger,
[Speaker 0]hot dog, or whatever. They didn't have the
[Speaker 0]Icelandic type hot dog, so I never ate
(17:19):
[Speaker 0]hot dogs there. But, again, are you sensing
[Speaker 0]a theme? I like the Icelandic hot dog.
[Speaker 0]But, yeah, it was, it was cool. Iceland
[Speaker 0]was one of the few places on the
[Speaker 0]planet I remember that had handrails on the
[Speaker 0]sidewalks. And the reason for that, we would
(17:40):
[Speaker 0]have crazy straight line winds across the North
[Speaker 0]Atlantic. We were kind of right in the
[Speaker 0]jet stream or the, what do they call
[Speaker 0]that? Not the jet stream, but, where the
[Speaker 0]ocean currents come north. And that kept the
[Speaker 0]island a little warmer than you might think.
(18:00):
[Speaker 0]The winters here in Traverse City, especially in
[Speaker 0]nineteen seventy eight, but, in the nineties, it
[Speaker 0]was often warmer in Keflavik, Iceland near the
[Speaker 0]Arctic Circle in the winter than it it
[Speaker 0]was here in Traverse City. You know, I
[Speaker 0]had my weekly call with my folks, and
(18:20):
[Speaker 0]and, you know, they were always saying, oh,
[Speaker 0]well, it's twenty degrees here, and, you know,
[Speaker 0]it'd be thirty five degrees and windy and
[Speaker 0]really windy, but those handrails on the sidewalk
[Speaker 0]keep you on the sidewalk. It was not
[Speaker 0]unusual in the middle of the night. You
[Speaker 0]know, I lived in a, you know, barracks
[Speaker 0]building, and there was another barracks well, a
[Speaker 0]three story barracks building, and then there was
(18:41):
[Speaker 0]dumpsters in between. It was not uncommon for
[Speaker 0]the wind to blow the dumpsters over at
[Speaker 0]night. You just hear this big crash. And
[Speaker 0]I remember one time we had a high
[Speaker 0]wind warning, and that's really odd for up
[Speaker 0]there because it's always high wind, but this
[Speaker 0]was really high wind. It was a hundred
[Speaker 0]and three miles an hour sustained for over
(19:03):
[Speaker 0]two hours. And it literally it had snowed,
[Speaker 0]and there was a little ice on the
[Speaker 0]parking lot at the barracks, and all the
[Speaker 0]cars blew to one end of the parking
[Speaker 0]lot. It blew the cars around in the
[Speaker 0]parking lot. It was, yeah, crazy wind. Jeez.
[Speaker 0]We talked about that yesterday with the blizzard
[Speaker 0]of seventy eight, but, yeah, similar wind conditions,
(19:25):
[Speaker 0]but a lot less snow. We didn't get
[Speaker 0]a lot of snow there, which, like I
[Speaker 0]said, being near the Arctic Circle, you would
[Speaker 0]think you would, but, we didn't. Being that
[Speaker 0]it was in the well, Gulf Stream, that's
[Speaker 0]what I'm thinking. Not not the not the,
[Speaker 0]oh, was that is that what I said
[Speaker 0]the first time? Oh, Jet Stream. Yeah. Jet
(19:45):
[Speaker 0]Stream's in the air. Gulf Stream's on the
[Speaker 0]ground or in the water. And we were
[Speaker 0]right in the we were in probably both,
[Speaker 0]but, yeah, it was it was crazy. But,
[Speaker 0]another thing that that I remember was really
[Speaker 0]popular was the USO club, and that happened
[Speaker 0]to be, you know, kind of in between
[Speaker 0]the two barracks buildings where I lived. And,
(20:07):
[Speaker 0]they used to have fish fry over there
[Speaker 0]on Friday nights. And that Icelandic cod was
[Speaker 0]swimming earlier that day. Yeah. So it was
[Speaker 0]probably the best fish fry I've been to.
[Speaker 0]I'm traveling on my food on my, I'm
[Speaker 0]traveling on my stomach here. I do remember
[Speaker 0]eating there. They also had a really good
(20:29):
[Speaker 0]half pound hamburger, so I did eat a
[Speaker 0]lot of meals there at the USO or
[Speaker 0]the USO. Of course, you know, military gotta
[Speaker 0]have names for stuff. And, another thing that,
[Speaker 0]you know, most people didn't bother with getting
[Speaker 0]a car up there, but I wanted to
[Speaker 0]do some exploring. And there was a gal
(20:50):
[Speaker 0]in my shop that, was rotating back to
[Speaker 0]the states, and she had a car called
[Speaker 0]a Skoda, Skoda one twenty. It's a really
[Speaker 0]weird looking little, square box car, like some
[Speaker 0]sort of Fiat, but the engine was in
[Speaker 0]the back, but it had a radiator up
[Speaker 0]in the front. It had, studded snow tires
(21:10):
[Speaker 0]on it, and she sold it to me
[Speaker 0]for six hundred dollars. I drove that thing
[Speaker 0]for probably eight or nine months. And then
[Speaker 0]when I got ready to rotate out, I
[Speaker 0]sold it for six hundred dollars. And it
[Speaker 0]was really interesting in Iceland with the cars.
[Speaker 0]You had to leave your headlights on all
[Speaker 0]the time. And if you were on an
(21:31):
[Speaker 0]international driver's license instead of an Icelandic driver's
[Speaker 0]license, your car had to be modified to
[Speaker 0]have the lights on all the time. And,
[Speaker 0]of course, that wasn't common back then. It
[Speaker 0]is now. But, back then, you had to
[Speaker 0]have it modified. And, of course, this one
[Speaker 0]was already. So anytime you started the car,
[Speaker 0]you know, the headlights were on. That car
[Speaker 0]was pretty good. And, you know, it got
(21:52):
[Speaker 0]me around, and it was a little better
[Speaker 0]than riding the bus. They did have a
[Speaker 0]bus service on base, and, plus, we could
[Speaker 0]go off base. The weird thing, when you
[Speaker 0]went off base, you had to go through
[Speaker 0]Icelandic customs. And then when you came back
[Speaker 0]on the bay base, you would, go through
[Speaker 0]navy security, and they were really weird about
[Speaker 0]certain things coming off the base. You couldn't
(22:14):
[Speaker 0]bring any gas cans. You could just have
[Speaker 0]the gas that was in your car. You
[Speaker 0]couldn't you could have one pack of open
[Speaker 0]cigarettes and one pack of not opened cigarettes,
[Speaker 0]but no more than that. And for some
[Speaker 0]weird weird reason, you couldn't bring cassette tapes.
[Speaker 0]So if your car had a tape deck,
(22:35):
[Speaker 0]you're SOL. You could not bring cassette tapes
[Speaker 0]off the base. I I have no idea.
[Speaker 0]Well, that was their three big bugaboos. And
[Speaker 0]the reason being is, you know, gas prices
[Speaker 0]off base was, I think, at the time
[Speaker 0]was two dollars a liter or the equivalent
[Speaker 0]of that, which would make it, like, eight
[Speaker 0]dollars a gallon. And, you know, in the
(22:56):
[Speaker 0]early nineties, that was ridiculous. I think, on
[Speaker 0]base was a buck forty five the whole
[Speaker 0]time I was there, and that was that
[Speaker 0]was a bit higher than than what was
[Speaker 0]average at that time in the states, but,
[Speaker 0]you know, it was a lot cheaper. So
[Speaker 0]that was that part. Same thing with the
[Speaker 0]cigarettes. You know, I could buy a carton
(23:17):
[Speaker 0]of Marlboros for six dollars at the exchange
[Speaker 0]and sell them for twenty dollars a pack
[Speaker 0]off off base, but, you know, nobody did
[Speaker 0]that or I didn't do that. You know?
[Speaker 0]And I didn't smoke that much. You know,
[Speaker 0]I did at that time, I believe I
[Speaker 0]was smoking, but I've been quit for many,
[Speaker 0]many years. But back then, everybody smoked. That
(23:38):
[Speaker 0]was kinda normal. So, again, you know, showing
[Speaker 0]my age here. But let's see. Some of
[Speaker 0]the other cool things about Iceland, we went
[Speaker 0]to the Hard Rock Cafe in, in Reykjavik.
[Speaker 0]It was in a in a mall down
[Speaker 0]there. It it's gone now. I'm I understand.
(23:58):
[Speaker 0]But, at the time, they they were collecting
[Speaker 0]US license plates to tack on the ceiling.
[Speaker 0]Well, I had customized, Idaho amateur radio license
[Speaker 0]plates with my call sign on it, and
[Speaker 0]I had my dad, take one off my
[Speaker 0]truck and send it to me and go
(24:20):
[Speaker 0]into Hard Rock Cafe in Reykjavik, and, they
[Speaker 0]give you a free meal for donating a
[Speaker 0]license plate. So for the longest time, my
[Speaker 0]call sign license plate was, nailed to the
[Speaker 0]ceiling in the Reykjavik, Hard Rock Cafe. But
[Speaker 0]like I said, I do believe that's gone
[Speaker 0]now. They had a really cool door or
(24:42):
[Speaker 0]a thing around the door. They had a
[Speaker 0]fifty nine Cadillac standing on its nose, and
[Speaker 0]the door going into the place was through
[Speaker 0]the Cadillac. I you know, they had just
[Speaker 0]had, you know, had it cut out, and,
[Speaker 0]you know, it was a normal door, but
[Speaker 0]that was, I do I do remember that.
(25:03):
[Speaker 0]You know, of course, it was inside a
[Speaker 0]mall. So you know? And the other thing
[Speaker 0]I remember the most about it was driving
[Speaker 0]in Reykjavik. It was the first time I'd
[Speaker 0]ever seen a traffic circle or a roundabout.
[Speaker 0]Now they're all over the place. I should
[Speaker 0]do a whole episode about roundabouts here in
[Speaker 0]northern Michigan, but I probably won't. But, that
(25:26):
[Speaker 0]was the first place I'd ever dealt with
[Speaker 0]roundabouts. And then in London, a Piccadilly circle
[Speaker 0]or Piccadilly Circus, of course, that roundabout there
[Speaker 0]is, way bigger. And, you drive the wrong
[Speaker 0]side of the road and the wrong side
[Speaker 0]of the roundabout, and I never did drive
[Speaker 0]through it, but, saw it. Pretty crazy. But,
(25:47):
[Speaker 0]anyway, and, you know, when I was telling
[Speaker 0]you about that airplane that flew back and
[Speaker 0]forth to London, you could, hop a flight
[Speaker 0]on that airplane. It was a p three
[Speaker 0]Orion, which is is a navy aircraft, but
[Speaker 0]it was set up like an airliner. And
[Speaker 0]you could hop a flight on there. I
[Speaker 0]think it was twenty bucks round trip, and
[Speaker 0]they'd, you know, leave Kevlovic at seven in
(26:09):
[Speaker 0]the morning and get to London about you
[Speaker 0]know, it was an hour and a half
[Speaker 0]maybe, something like that, and, stop in Shannon,
[Speaker 0]Ireland. And then, somewhere near London, I don't
[Speaker 0]remember what base it was, Milton Hall maybe.
[Speaker 0]But, we'd we'd land there, and then you
[Speaker 0]could, you know, grab a bus into London
(26:30):
[Speaker 0]or train or whatever it was and spend
[Speaker 0]the day there. And then if you were
[Speaker 0]back, to the airplane by ten o'clock at
[Speaker 0]night, they would head back. So it was
[Speaker 0]pretty cheap to, travel to to, London and
[Speaker 0]or shot Shannon. You know, sometimes jump off
[Speaker 0]at Shannon and spend the day there or
(26:52):
[Speaker 0]spend a night there usually and then come
[Speaker 0]back. But, yeah. So it was it was
[Speaker 0]definitely a a cool place, and, you know,
[Speaker 0]cool and as in cool, man, not cool
[Speaker 0]as in cold. Although it was cold, it
[Speaker 0]it never got above sixty five degrees and
(27:15):
[Speaker 0]never really got below twenty degrees the entire
[Speaker 0]time I was there, not counting wind chill.
[Speaker 0]And the sun, that was the other one,
[Speaker 0]is this time of year up there, the
[Speaker 0]sun may may come up just slightly above
[Speaker 0]the horizon and then go sideways for a
[Speaker 0]couple hours and then drop right back down.
[Speaker 0]So it was mostly dark, and we weren't
(27:37):
[Speaker 0]above the Arctic Circle. So the sun did
[Speaker 0]actually come up for a little bit. And
[Speaker 0]then in the summer, you know, like in
[Speaker 0]June and July, the the sun never really
[Speaker 0]set. It would go just slightly below the
[Speaker 0]horizon, and then you could see it kinda
[Speaker 0]go sideways across the horizon and then pop
[Speaker 0]right back up. It was very weird coming
(27:59):
[Speaker 0]out of the bar at two in the
[Speaker 0]morning and have to put your sunglasses on,
[Speaker 0]but, you did. And, you got used to
[Speaker 0]it. I did I don't remember much of
[Speaker 0]the language. I did learn enough of it
[Speaker 0]to get by, but, Icelanders at that time
[Speaker 0]even, and it's probably even better now, had
[Speaker 0]a higher literacy rate in English than the
(28:21):
[Speaker 0]US. So, you know, that was a required
[Speaker 0]language, although they they spoke more British English,
[Speaker 0]but close enough. You know? But, anyway, that's
[Speaker 0]just my remembrances of Iceland in the nineties.
[Speaker 0]I did, do an episode of all about
[Speaker 0]Iceland or oh, no. All things Iceland. I'll
(28:44):
[Speaker 0]have a link in the show notes over
[Speaker 0]at mike dell dot com. This post, there'll
[Speaker 0]be a link to my episode there, which
[Speaker 0]was in May of twenty twenty. I was
[Speaker 0]interviewed, about being on the NATO base in
[Speaker 0]Iceland back then, and, you know, who knows
[Speaker 0]if I contradicted myself? That was, you know,
[Speaker 0]almost six years ago. So or at least
(29:06):
[Speaker 0]five. That was six. Anyway, math again. But
[Speaker 0]go check that out. She's still doing that
[Speaker 0]show. I understand she's gonna become a mother
[Speaker 0]here soon. It's just I haven't listened to
[Speaker 0]it in a long time. But, anyway, check
[Speaker 0]that out. All things Iceland, May of twenty
(29:29):
[Speaker 0]twenty. And, I'll be back tomorrow. And what
[Speaker 0]forget what I'm gonna talk about tomorrow. Let
[Speaker 0]me see. Oh, yes. Thanksgiving. I'm gonna talk
[Speaker 0]a little bit about how Traverse City is
[Speaker 0]kind of a small town still. So, I
[Speaker 0]look forward to that, and hopefully, you'll listen.
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