that girl he knows

I decided to take an evening stroll tonight to connect with The Town after the nice fat 5-day Easter weekend we all enjoyed up here. With my forgot-it-behind-the-flour-jar slices of stale bread, I headed down to Tjörnin for a bit of bread-flinging for the birds. On the way home I took the Laugavegur route to enjoy the full effect of sprintime mid-week evenings in Reykjavík. Ladies and gentlemen, it's rúntur time. This special Iceland-and-other-small-towns experience was once mis-defined in some guidebook as a pub-crawl, but really it's just driving around town so you can see who else is driving around town. I've watched the procession in Ísafjörður with all the kids that were suspended from school driving around on a Friday morning, the Akureyri Easter rúntur last year, and so very many trips here in my hometown.

This evening was a decent showing, offering up the following tasty sightings:

• 2 girls with emo hair in a minivan, the passenger trailing a cigarette out the open windows, cruising to Britney Spears "baby one more time". Don't you adore all the irony? So clever.
• Crappy 80s sedan with a flashing multicolor neon display on the front bumper. Don't run into anything, boys!
• 4x4 with a loudspeaker broadcasting sound effects of farting and barn animals. I bet the ladies go hottt for this one.
• Someone who missed their turn down towards Hverfisgata and ended up backing up an entire block. Main Street Reykjavík is that unpopulated on a Tuesday that you can just change your mind mid-cruise.
  
• And finally, someone in a car I didn't recognize who gave me the honk-n-wave. I didn't recognize the driver but counted on a possible second pass to give me another chance to figure out the deal. A few blocks of walking later, the car went by again and this time I waved them down (see previous entry... this is acceptable behavior during the rúntur on Laugavegur. Nobody is in a hurry). The guy was all "hey, weren't you at Dubliners last weekend?". I assured him I hadn't been and he said that I must have an Icelandic twin out there, so identical was this Dubliners attender. He then said, "well, you're pretty all the same. Want to join us?" I'm happy my Icelandic is at a level that I can have bizarre conversations like this but I had to refuse the offer, tempting though it was.
  

And so goes romance in Reykjavík on a Tuesday evening.