I’d been drifting. Drifting for weeks. Lazy as a cat in a sunbeam, and about as useful as sensible socks on a rooster.

My goals gathered dust while I wandered through coffee shops and bookstores. And anywhere I went, I’d corner some unsuspecting stranger, wrap them in an old, worn quilt of borrowed wisdom, and ask something like, “So tell me… how do you really feel about life?”

So there I was, in REI, staring down a pair of boots like they were holding the secrets of the universe, when a sales associate stepped into my orbit.

“Need any help?” he asked.

He was a skinny kid. Curly black hair bursting loose in every direction. Glasses sliding down his nose like they were trying to escape the building. And there was something in his pause, a careful one, as if he carried more than the role allowed. Like he had a reserve of thoughts just waiting for someone, anyone, to ask a question more interesting than, “Do you have these in my size?”

“I need work boots,” I told him, holding one heavy-duty boot like evidence in a trial.

He waited, weighing his words with the kind of precision normally reserved for brain surgeons or people explaining cryptocurrency.

“Well… we’re not really known for work boots.”

I tossed him the doomed question.
“What do you think about these boots for someone like me?”

And it hit the floor like Nietzsche at a high school prom.

I surrendered.
“Size twelve, please.”

He looked relieved, nodded, and disappeared into the back, leaving me there with a sudden realization.

Maybe this wasn’t about boots at all.
Maybe I’d wandered so far into conversations with strangers because I was looking for something sturdier than leather soles.

He came back with the box balanced on one arm, set it down gently like it weighed more than rubber and leather, and stayed standing. Watchful. As though the way I handled the tissue paper might reveal who I was.

“So,” I said, loosening the laces with a practiced hand, “it seems like the footwear section here is the most labor-intensive.”

Another pause. This guy paused like he got paid by the second. It was his way of taking a measurement.

Sorting me into those piles of customers he saw all day.
The casual impulse buyer who grabbed and went.
The well-dressed professional chasing an image, not usefulness.
The pragmatic hiker who only cared about tread and waterproofing.
Or the obsessive type who treated boots like a soulmate.

He was deciding whether I was worth anything more than the standard script.

Finally, he said, “Well… yeah, I guess. But I’m probably partial.”

So I asked, “Do you think a person’s shoe choice matches their personality?”

That one landed differently.

His eyes sparked, just barely, like a match struck in a windbreak. The kind of spark you only see if you’re looking for it.

He wasn’t just answering the question.
He was deciding whether I deserved the real answer.

It felt a little like a standoff. My questions flowed after a month of wandering thought. His responses came in slow, deliberate drips. Boots between us. Philosophy circling the bench like a cautious wolf.

“Yeah,” he said finally. “You can definitely see their personality in their footwear type.”

He didn’t add anything else.

That restraint, that almost casual toss of the comment, told me he already knew where I was going.

“I’m impressed,” I said, and paused to let it hang. “You choose your words carefully. Not many people do.”

He gave a tiny nod.
“I try to.”

There it was again, his signature pause, shaping the next sentence so it landed right.

“You have to listen just as carefully too,” he said. “Most customers don’t say exactly what they need. You’ve got to hear what they’re really saying if you want to get them the right shoe.”

“I understand,” I told him, threading almost two feet of loose lace through the boot’s hooks. “The public can be… fickle.”

He nodded. A man who’d seen things.

I tied the final knot and stared at the boot in mock disbelief, tempted to fall to my knees at how comfortable it was straight out of the box.

“Wow. These are surprisingly comfortable,” I said.

“That’s good,” he replied. “Especially when they’re brand new. That means once they break in, they’ll be perfect.”

So I stepped up onto that little fake rock, that miniature mountainside squeezed into six square feet of retail flooring. I stomped, kicked, and tested the boot with the force of someone jumping out of a helicopter.

The boots passed.

My intensity evaporated off my shoulders.

I looked at him, narrow and deliberate.
“So what’s your story?” I asked. “Why do you work here?”

This pause was different. Not guarded. More like I’d caught him off balance, that half-second where someone wonders if they should tell the truth.

“I used to work for the National Park Service,” he said. “At a nature center.”

His voice shifted, almost reverent.

“I loved that job. Every bit of it.”

The words flowed as he talked about nature, teaching, guiding people.

“Why’d you leave?” I asked.

“Well, I graduated college, and that was the end of the program. Had to find another job.”

“And…?” I asked.

He shrugged, small but heavy.
“So I got a job here. I thought, well… REI is all about the outdoors… kind of.”

His voice thinned like an admission of defeat.

“Life’s either a daring adventure or nothing at all,” I declared.

The quote tumbled out of me like a loose gear in a washing machine. Less wisdom, more Cracker Barrel pillow. A month of devouring books will do that, leave you spitting quotes like half-chewed sunflower seeds.

He said nothing.

His pause told me he didn’t need the lecture.

Then he surprised me.

“You said I choose my words carefully.”

This pause was different again. Not him measuring me, but him measuring his own honesty.

“I do,” he said at last. “Because you can never tell which category of customer you’re dealing with. I thought a job here would expose me to the outdoors…”

He let the thought hang for a breath, a small hesitation, like he’d stepped right up to the truth and was deciding whether to cross the line.

“…but most customers just shop here like it’s Walmart.”

The admission softened him, a little defeated, a little relieved to finally say it.

I leaned back on the bench.

“Funny, isn’t it?” I said. “People spend more time building adventure rigs than having adventures. Tens of thousands in lifts and rooftop tents, and they park them at breweries with rubber ducks lined up on the dash.”

I shook my head.
“They’re boat builders afraid to sail.”

He didn’t move. Didn’t react. Just waited.

“They’re boat builders,” I said quietly, “not sea captains.”

He nodded slowly, like he already knew.

“I thought when I came here I’d learn from my customers,” he said. “Hear about the Great Wall of China, Patagonia, Nepal. But most of them? They just shop. Like Walmart.”

He let the disappointment breathe.

“But every now and then,” he continued, “someone tells me where they’re going. Where they’ve been. What they’re planning. That’s the part I like. That’s what I’m passionate about.”

I let the silence do the talking.

Then I tapped the toe of the boot.

“These boots… I hope they’re going to touch the Arctic Ocean within a year,” I said. “Maybe with polar bears on the horizon. Or maybe just wading out at Moose Factory with Cree friends, where the Moose River spills into the bay. If you’re still here afterward, I’ll come tell you about it.”

He nodded slowly. His smile widened, just a bit.

Reality snapped back in.

He hadn’t exactly asked for an old guy to wander into his morning and unload half a memoir on him.

“I must seem like an old man stumbling into a very late midlife crisis,” I said. “Maybe I should just buy the boots and save us both.”

A small smile tugged at both our faces.

I apologized, but he waved it off.

“No need,” he said. “This is probably the best conversation I’ve had here.”

“Well… thanks,” I told him. “And good luck.”

I stuffed the boots back into the box, tissue paper flailing like it was trying to escape, and walked to the counter.

I wasn’t buying boots.

I was buying the next step.
The next promise.
The next reason to stop drifting.

That was a month ago, and I think I’ll go back next year. Not for the boots, but to tell the story.

Because drift doesn’t end with a revelation, or a sunrise, or someone handing you a map.

Drift ends the moment you take a step toward meaning again, even a small one.

And sometimes that step is just a promise you make to a stranger in an REI store.

with locals, learning poetic phrases, maybe discovering your true self somewhere between a yoga mat and a wine bar.

But real immersion? That happens when you run out of clean underwear in a foreign country.

That’s when things get spiritual.
The kind of enlightenment that smells faintly like recycled airplane air… and whatever’s been fermenting in your shoes since Reykjavik.

Poppins and I travel light, carry-on only.
Three, maybe four outfits total.
Efficient? Sure.
Until you hit the universal truth of travel:

Eventually, you have to do laundry somewhere you don’t speak the language.

I didn’t understand the chaos that creates… until I lived it.

This was years before Poppins and I returned to Iceland.
Back then it was just me and our son Noah, eight days into the trip, when laundry went from a background thought to a full-blown crisis.

The socks had turned on us.

I checked the local directory.
No laundromats.
Not a single one.
Just a handful of “services” offering pickup and next-day delivery.

Great, if we weren’t leaving town in the morning.

And honestly? I don’t trust those “next-day” promises.
All it takes is one tiny delay and suddenly your socks are being held hostage somewhere in Húsavík, and you’re halfway to Akureyri without them.

We didn’t have that kind of time.

Then… and I was proud of this moment, I had what felt like a stroke of genius:

Campgrounds.
Campgrounds usually have laundry facilities.

I found a cozy little urban campground on google maps, grabbed the rental keys, and headed out feeling like I had just solved international logistics.

The campground looked familiar enough: little store, shower house, a few tents flapping in the wind like deflated balloons.

Inside the store, the woman behind the counter was trapped in conversation with a camper who clearly believed he was her favorite person on earth.
She humored him.
I waited.

When it was finally my turn, I asked, hopefully, if she spoke English.
She did.

I asked about laundry.
She asked for ten kroner and handed me two shiny tokens.

Perfect.

I thanked her, hoisted my trash bag of dirty clothes, and went hunting for the machines.

Now, I always try to keep a low profile when I travel.
Which apparently means sneaking around like a bargain-bin detective.

I slipped along a narrow sidewalk behind the building.  It was slick, just begging me to slip, and then spotted a door with a window.

Inside: a washing machine.

Jackpot.

I stepped in.
The room was basically a broom closet with ambition.  it had soap, softener, dryer sheets.
I thought it was a little strange that it was fully stocked.  But, I chalked it up to some sort of cultural laundromat thing. 

I loaded the clothes, shut the machine, Then the washer exploded to life.  I froze mid-reach, a token still in my hand.

Curious I thought – I haven’t put the token in yet.  Absently, I started hunting for the coin slot.
Everything was labeled in Icelandic, or possibly Klingon, but I was feeling confident.

Then, some sort of instinct kicked in, and I tore around that tiny room like a raccoon raiding a campsite, checking every corner, every panel, every crevice for a place to shove that damn token.

After a few minutes of pointless poking and muttering, I thought,
“Well… maybe the dryer explains all this. Maybe that’s where the tokens go. Or maybe Icelanders put the instructions in the dryer.”

Feeling smugly efficient, I stepped back out to explore.

And that’s when I found it — another room.
Bigger.
Brighter.
Lined with washers and dryers.

The real ones.
The token ones.

And it hit me.

I had just hijacked the campground staff laundry machine.

Panic set in immediately.
I sprinted back to my little broom-closet crime scene and grabbed the washer handle.

Locked.
Tumbling inside were my clothes,  pounding around like hostages in a front-loading prison.  I tugged hard. It didn’t budge.  I pressed every button to try and stop the madness, but nothing worked.  They just kept spinning in sudsy water.

Through the half-window of the entry door, daylight poured in.

I ducked beneath it, careful not to be seen.
I crouched there like a fugitive hiding from the law, whispering apologies and rehearsing a confession for ten solid minutes.

I kept peeking through the window, trying not to be spotted.

And then… she stepped outside.

The woman from the store.  I could barely see her at an angle from the window as I hid in the shadows.

My heart started pounding like a bad drum solo.
There I was … a grown man, veteran of Arctic expeditions, reduced to peeking from a door window in a campground laundry closet.

Eventually, guilt won.

I walked, casually, or so I hoped, back into the store, token in hand, and confessed everything.

She gave me the look you reserve for toddlers holding broken lamps… half amusement, half pity, and a hint of disappointment.

I offered her a token like a peace treaty.
She took it with a smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“No one has ever done such a thing,” she said, firm, but kind.

I apologized at least half a dozen times, thanked her for not calling Icelandic authorities, and returned to my closet-sized penitentiary to wait.

When the washer finally clicked open, my clothes were free, damp, but free.

I moved them to the proper dryer, shoved in a token, and let it roar to life.

Afterward, I stuffed the still-damp laundry into a trash bag, slung it over my shoulder, and walked back to the car with all the dignity a man can muster after committing accidental appliance theft abroad.

Fast-forward four years.

Poppins and I were back in Iceland, and this time, I considered myself an Icelandic laundry veteran.

We were on day five of a two-week journey.
Mountains, glacial lagoons, lava fields, beaches.  I even gave her a ring at what felt like the edge of the earth.

Our clothing supply was… let’s say “compromised.”

We made it to a hotel in some town I couldn’t pronounce. At check-in, a cat was sitting on the front counter — always a good sign — and behind it, a small paper sign caught my eye:

“Laundromat.”

A rare treasure in Iceland.

They even had flyers — two different sets of hours, cheerful photos of washers and dryers. Looked simple enough. I grabbed one like I had uncovered a treasure map.

Later that afternoon, Poppins packed the laundry bag — neatly, responsibly — and we headed out.

The address led us to the docks.
Not the pretty docks—the working docks.
Salt in the air. Lumber stacked high.
The building that was listed on the flyer was long, industrial, lined with anonymous doors.  A few had tiny little signs – some where just “stickers” slapped on the door. 

We started trying them.

Pottery shop.
Art studio.
Garage bay.
Another garage bay.
All wrong.

One door led into a hallway labeled “Six Apartments.”
We stepped inside.
Down the corridor was a door marked “Laundry.”

Bingo.

I opened it — and froze.

Pitch dark.

I found a switch.
A single fluorescent light flickered awake, revealing one washer, one dryer, a mop bucket, and a giant sink.
The whole room was maybe the size of a walk-in closet.

My instincts twitched.

I didn’t like it.

Poppins, however, was done.
She was tired, windblown, and six days deep into what we now call full-on Viking mode.
Her eyes said, Who cares? It’s laundry.

“I don’t think this is it,” I said.

A flashback hit me — the first incident.
The hiding.
The shame.

“This isn’t the right place,” I insisted.

Before she could answer, I bolted outside and approached a man working inside one of the open garages.

“Laundromat?” I asked.

He looked up with the patience of someone who has dealt with tourists his entire life.

“Yes,” he said in a thick accent. “Downstairs.”

I raised an eyebrow and must have look puzzled – We were already on the ground floor.

He sighed.
“Go around. Small sign.”

I thanked him and sprinted back.

When I opened the apartment laundry door, Poppins was already loading the machine with the calm determination of a woman who has reached the end of her laundry-related patience.

“This isn’t it,” I said.

She didn’t even look up.

Her back was turned, but I felt the eye roll.
It radiated like heat from a wood stove.

Every married man develops a superpower sooner or later.
Mine is knowing exactly when Poppins rolls her eyes — even if I’m not in the same hemisphere.

“This says Laundry,” she said flatly. “It washes things. That’s the job description.”

“I know. But it’s not the laundromat. This is the apartment laundry.”

She paused—long enough to calculate exactly how much nonsense she was willing to tolerate today—then resumed loading, one shirt at a time.

“Seriously,” I tried again. “It’s like some stranger using our basement laundry room.”

(and honestly, I was probably a little disheveled? I think my previous embarrassment might’ve been fueling my enthusiasm.)

She exhaled — the long-suffering sigh of someone who has been dragged through multiple wrong doors, two locked garages, and a pottery shop.

“OOO-kaaay,” she finally said.

She started unloading the machine.
I tried to help… badly.
Then came the next eye roll — the one only I could detect — and I quietly demoted myself to door-holder.

We got back in the car, drove around the building, and parked near a line of old fishing sheds where men were working nets and eyeing us with a calm suspicion reserved for troublemakers.

And then we saw it — a tiny computer-generated sign taped to a door, the kind of thing that screams freshman graphic design project.

It said Laundromat.

Inside was an expansive space — an honest-to-God laundromat.
Folding tables.
The faint smell of powdery detergent.
A wall lined with stray socks and random shirts arranged like a lost-and-found boutique.

In the corner, a vending machine held four candy bars dangling from one tired corkscrew dispenser.
A Sharpie note taped over the glass promised: Coming Soon.

Along one wall were eight machines that looked new enough to still smell like a showroom, with two credit-card terminals glowing proudly between each set.

No problem, we thought.

Then we looked at the machines.

Buttons labeled A, B, C.
Temperatures that looked like bingo numbers.
A display flashing “2.00” like a ransom demand.
And different icons that look vaguely like laundry tubs with random numbers assigned to them.

I swiped the credit card — twice.
Nothing happen.  We pushed buttons, open doors, pushed other buttons.  Numbers were flashing, random digital letters.  But, nothing happened.

Poppins was performing heroic levels of patience at this point.

We muttered.
Speculated.
We had no idea what was happening, or what these industrial sized machines wanted from us.

Finally, I looked over at the dryers and noticed that two of them had timers counting down.
I tried one.
It responded.
That felt promising.

After some trial and error — and a fair bit of muttering — we realized we needed to use the other credit card terminal to activate a washer.

Eventually, one grudgingly came to life.

We picked a cycle the way you pick a number at a roulette wheel.
Though honestly, Poppins seemed to decode the cryptic symbols better than I did.

The drum spun.
The machine groaned.
We stood there like gamblers watching the ball bounce, hoping it landed on clean and dry instead of child-sized sweater.

That’s when Poppins had enough.

She walked over to a plastic laundromat chair, turned around, paused, then sat down with a heavy sigh.  He face dripped with fatigue, she opened her book, and disappeared from the world.

Knowing it would be good for me to disappear and give her a little space, I stepped outside.
A ship eased into the docks

.
Diesel and seawater filled the air.

And I found myself wondering — why is a laundromat tucked into a commercial fishing port?

Back inside, I posted our plight on Facebook — proof of survival.
Then another tourist wandered in and froze, staring at the machinery with the same wide-eyed confusion I had worn four years earlier.

I watched him for a minute.
Judging him.
Judging myself.

Maybe I wasn’t the only fool.

He looked over at us, completely bewildered.

And that’s when it happened:

I became the professor of Icelandic laundry.

I walked over and explained the whole process, step by step, emphasizing every part I had gotten wrong.

He thanked me politely… then proceeded to figure it out entirely on his own.

Laundry at home gets you clean socks.

Laundry abroad gets you humility.

And if you’re lucky — just maybe — a story worth retelling.

Looking back, it’s funny how life insists on repeating its lessons until you actually learn them.

Four years and a few gray hairs after that first Icelandic debacle, I found myself right back where I started — in a strange laundry room, holding the wrong tokens, trying to convince my wife that this time would be different.

It wasn’t.

But that’s travel.
It knocks you around, spins you a few times, and if you’re paying attention — you come out a little lighter, a little humbler, and just a bit cleaner than before.