Ómar Ragnarsson is an expert in electrifying his audience. Now, at 74, he has just completed and electrifying trip, catching everyone’s attention. The entertainer, poet, TV celebrity and environmentalist, has completed his trip from Akureyri to Reykjavík on an electrical bike, RÚV reports. He arrived at his home at 4:00 am this morning.
During his trip, dubbed Operation Energy Shift, his aim was to break five records, as detailed in Iceland Review, and it appears he did. This was the first trip ever made on an electrical bike between Akureyri and Reykjavík, using electricity alone. He has already traveled the longest distance ever traveled by an electrical bike in Iceland on a single charge. That distance was 209 km (130 miles ), which he covered in 23 hours and 58 minutes. Ómar officially ends the trip by the BSÍ bus terminal today at 5:00 p.m., at which point he will provide exact figures regarding energy cost. He told RÚV earlier that he expected the cost of energy to be shockingly low—between 180 and 200 ISK ( 1.22-1.36 EUR or 1.36-1.52 USD).
Ómar’s aim is not only to support environmental causes, but also to get people thinking about sources and cost of energy. He wants to prove how cheap such a trip can be. The trip began Tuesday and that night, he slept for five hours. “Both of us managed to recharge the batteries, Sörli and I,” Ómar told RÚV, referring to the electrical bike, which bears a name common for a horse.
Ómar’s contribution to environmental protection is probably more than any other’s in Iceland. Appropriately, his birthday, September 16, was in 2010 declared an official day dedicated to Icelandic nature and environment.
