Author: rgetter

Shaken & Stirred: My First Quake

Earthquakes and Faults in the San Francisco Bay Area 1970-2003 (Map by USGS)

This, I would imagine, only happens to new immigrants to California. Though rare, natives will have grown up with them. (Please note that “though rare” can apply equally to California natives and earthquakes.) I had just turned 30 when I arrived in the Bay Area from the Boston suburbs. Within three weeks, I found a cheap, furnished apartment and a graveyard shift doing data entry for a small startup nearby.

I moved to California from a Boston suburb after my first visit, staying with my aunt and cousins in the Bay Area. I unexpectedly fell in love with the place. So much so that I pulled up stakes and moved back there a little over three months after I came home. And I’m not normally the kind of person who does radical things like that, giving up a newspaper job I had for over ten years and quite likely my media career. But after seeing California, I couldn’t face another New England winter.
(more…)

09/04/2025
Iceland in Words and Pictures

This year, 2025, I made my second trip to Iceland. Part of the reason was that my photos from my first trip last summer convinced my wife to visit. But I think the main reason was that I simply fell in love with he country, its people, its geography and even its history.

This is a section my website dedicated to Iceland. I plan to return, so expect it to grow in the coming years. But for now, I invite my viewers to share my fascination and my affection for one of the world’s most remarkable place.
(more…)

08/10/2025
Why I Love Iceland

Leirvogstunga horse farm

My second trip to Iceland led me to discover what truly makes a country “great”.

It’s not the size of the land, the population or the economy. It’s not even the influence it has or had in history and world events. Nor is it measured by its contributions to art, culture, or science. What makes a country great is the quality of life it maintains for the people who live there. For that, I can say that Iceland is a great country.
(more…)

08/08/2025
Reykjavik: This City’s Made for Walking

Apartment block

Walking in the center of Reykjavik is wonderful. Driving, for the record, is not. The map apps on my phone led us through all sorts of alleyways and paths where no cars could go. Nearly all the streets are one way, and some unexpectedly dead-end onto pedestrian plazas that may have once been streets but now are wide walkways.
(more…)

08/08/2025
Golden Circle – Iceland’s Most Popular Tour

Driving the winding Golden Circle

The “Golden Circle” is the very popular 140-mile loop around west central Iceland that offers a sampling of the island’s geology and history, along with some outstanding sights and a stop at one of the country’s more traditional hot springs. With stops for lunch and a couple of hours at the hot spring, usually Secret Lagoon, it’s a full nine hours. Some options include the huge, manmade Blue Lagoon between Keflavik and the airport. If time permits, both hot springs are worth trying out.
(more…)

08/07/2025
Driving Iceland’s South Coast

Riders near Skógafoss falls

Our plans for Monday called for a daylong drive along the spectacular south coast. I took this tour on my last trip and felt that there was more along the route that I wanted to see this time. Even though the weather forecast confirmed this, I could know without looking that it would be a rainy day. The south coast in summer is like that.

Sólheimajökull Glacier

What was amazing was that after driving through one heavy shower and putting up with some lighter ones at are first stop, the weather turned beautiful and sunny, albeit rather windy and cold. Our stops included two spectacular waterfalls, a glacier, a puffin-laden sea cliff, and a lot of walking. Oh yeah. A lot of driving, too. About six hours’ worth, with our turn-around point being Vik, 104 miles distant.
(more…)

08/04/2025
Iceland’s Snæfellsnes Peninsula

Kirkjufell Mountain

Though, in my ignorance of the downtown parking situation, I had rented a car for the entirety of my first visit to Iceland, my only long drive was to the northwest peninsula, Snæfellsnes.
(more…)

08/04/2025
The Mac’s Hidden Unit Converter

Difficulty: Easy

If you haven’t mastered the metric system or are contemplating a purchase on Amazon.uk, you may find the need to convert one unit of measure, currency, or whatever into another. You can hop onto a search engine if you’re online. But on a Mac, you’re only a couple of clicks away from an even better solution.
(more…)

07/18/2025
Iceland Photo Gallery

Puffin on south coast

Here’s my full collection of photos from our Iceland trips. Make sure you check out my Iceland blog, too!

(more…)

07/14/2025
Keep All Your Gadgets Charged on the Road

Difficulty: Easy

There are few things more annoying than arriving at your destination and discovering that some important device you brought won’t get charged because of one stupid thing you forgot to pack. Here’s an easy way to avoid that.
(more…)

07/09/2025