The Dogs Always Find Me

I drove with some trepidation at first, in the rental car, as we pecked our way around the tight Fiumicino Airport parking garage and escaped into the airport streets. The nav apps aren’t always familiar with the most up-to-date traffic patterns, so I had to do my own thing for a time until our courses […]

In Which I Try to Control the Things I Can’t

I refreshed the page on my phone incessantly, monitoring where Lisa’s flight was. I mean, I knew it was late, but now every minute counted, and I wanted to know every change and how late it would be. In fact, her flight wasn’t just late – it was extremely late – about 3 hours behind […]

At Least the Hotel was Nice

The day in Edinburgh was crisp and clear when I stepped over the threshold of the hotel and into the waking solitude of a weekend morning. The city about me still dozed, with but a few shops open. I stopped into a small cafe and ordered a bacon butty (sandwich), eating it while sipping at […]

Why We Do Flights of Beer, Not Whisky

I couldn’t feel my toes. This is why we don’t do flights of whisky. Because by the time we finish the fourth dram (or in this case, fourth ounce) we can’t feel our toes. It’s just too much. I’d made some decisions that led to this moment, such as settling for ice cream (whisky flavor) […]

What Choice Does Any of Us Have, Really?

The Scottish morning was bleak, marked by shards of misty air that cut at our faces, and monotonous low-hung, grey skies that pelted us with sputtering rains. Huddled silently in our seats on the bus, we pulled into the Glen Moray distillery at exactly 10 in the morning, and even the most hearty whisky drinkers […]

In Which I Spend Hours With Strangers

I met Shona, the proprietress, at the door of the BnB in Grantown-on-Speyside, a very green, misty, and placid little burb that slumbers somewhere in the north of Scotland. She asked me how the day had been, and if our bus had been raucous. No, I said, we are not. Strangely our busload of ten […]