Day 21 Dublin to Reykjavik

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Upon departing beautiful Ireland, the island that had given has so many joyful memories, we were unsure if we would return, however life has a habit of throwing up curve balls so one never knows. Knowing we had to negotiate unfamiliar roads in darkness so as to return the hire car by 5am we did not sleep at all and left our accommodation at 3.45am. We negotiated brilliantly arriving at 4.15am well before the gates opening at 5am. Beautiful feeling not being stressed.

I sat next to an extremely strong and fit young man, John (41), married and a father of 2 boys aged 8 and 5, on the flight from Dublin to Manchester. We conversed the whole journey about many ‘deep’ topics, all being up-my-alley. Being a man, fatherhood, spirituality, love, sport, mentoring, coaching, mental strength, passion, etc, etc, etc. John had been a professional Rugby Union player for 17 years, playing for the Waratahs and internationally. Upon retirement he landed what he thought was a go-ahead career job with the Waratahs and other ruby interests … until … he … lost his job. He plummeted to the pits as we say, not knowing what hit him or how he was going to respond. As I say on many occasions, the universe works in mysterious ways and it did for John as he met a man, now his mentor, that helped John out of the pits. He continues his journey of personal growth and now works in Dublin as “Performance Scientist Manager – Australia, NZ, Asia for Kitmanlabs but more importantly being the best Dad he can be. We exchanged details and already I’ve received a very touching email from him. The universe!

Righto, back to our day. The planes took off, flew and landed as we wanted them too, hence our arrival at Keflavik Int. Airport and onto Reykjavik. We didn’t have any preconceived ideas on what Iceland would look like except that we knew it was volcanic and cold. Well, the bit that we’ve seen from the airport to our hotel, looked barren and desolate, rocky and black. Traffic backups exist too. That surprised us. Our hotel, well, jagged it again; bloody brilliant. Enough said. We’re like little children, as we’re pretty excited about tomorrow and the days to come.

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