this week in the odyssey
3.27.00 -- 4.3.00
edinburgh, london, toronto, vancouver, seattle, home

Homeward Bound

Like that final chord in Sgt. Pepper's or the deeply satisfying Mexi-Belches that inevitably follow a Super Plumpo burrito, all good things must eventually come to an end. And so it goes with this European Odyssey, a flashing year-long explosion of cultural incandescence now gently dissolving into Super Plumpo evanescence (if only so I can finally use that whole "incandescence\evanescence" construction -- I've been waiting months to slip that one in). But how do you jump off that Great Big Odyssey Spinning Wheel and return to the solid ground of Everyday Living? How do you turn your eyes away from the unforgettable Extreme Telecommuting fire and focus instead on the twenty watt lamplight of a fixed address? To quote John Lee Hooker (sort of), "A-how, how, how?"

Well, if you're me, it really helps to send your wife home early. See, that way, you'll miss her so much that you'll be positively champing at the bit to get home (just a metaphor, folks -- contrary to popular belief, I do not wear a saddle, harness, and bridle whenever Kristanne is out of the house). Unfortunately, however, sending your wife home early also has some rather alarming side effects, the most noticeable of which is that you will immediately regress from Married Man to Bachelor Man to (dear God, no) College Dorm Man.

Though Darwin doesn't cover this topic in "Origin of Species," I'm here to tell you that it's fact -- devolution is for real and it can happen to you. Take my example (please) -- after seeing Kristanne off at the rail station for the start of her homeward journey, I repaired to our High Street flat for a spot of tea and some watercress sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Further plans for the evening involved reading the classics whilst sipping on cognac and absently pulling on my pipe. The smoking jacket was donned, the reading lamp lit, and as I settled into my leather armchair to contemplate the sweet music that is Donne's sonnets, I couldn't help but remark to myself, "Sophistication, my hallmark...oh, how I wear it well!"

It was then that I noticed that I wasn't wearing any pants. Bemused, I stood up to remedy this unfortunate situation and immediately knocked over a prodigious can of beer that had apparently been stationed on my belly unbeknownst to me. It cascaded to the floor in great golden arcs, the amber of the ale here and there interrupted by the orange sparks of cheese doodle dust falling from my t-shirt, itself quite soiled now that I chanced to examine it. Hmm. Something or someone seemed to be happening to me. For instance, who has been throwing those beer cans over there in the corner? And who, judging by the abundant wrappers scattered about, has been living on nothing but sausage pies and ketchup flavored potato chips? And why hasn't anybody told me that I haven't shaved for five days? Or that my underwear suffers from overventilation? And underlaundrification? Agitated, alarmed, and aghast, I began to consider the possible explanations for this sorry state of affairs. Was I unwittingly starring in a Beastie Boys music video? Had I mistaken the local flophouse for my sterling flat? Had my brother popped in for an unannounced visit? Nothing seemed to make sense.

Such is the canny way of devolution. Before you can grasp onto any totem of adulthood -- a power tie, a pair of oxford shoes, your mortgage statement -- you're whisked away and sent spiraling back into a strange land where all you really want is some nachos, a beer, and that really bitchin' Camaro down at the corner lot with the bored-out 442, four-barrel Holley carbs, and some sweet sidewinder pipes. Actually, I pretty much always want those things, so maybe they're not the best barometers of devolution. Be that as it may, I was still shaken by this sudden turn of events, somewhat stirred by the alarming decrepitude surrounding me, and inexplicably hungry for olives stuffed with pimientos. Clearly, I needed to get out of the house and get some air, try to beat back this rising tide of devolution.

Now, when you're battling the insidious forces of devolution, you'll find that you've got a staunch ally in architecture. Yup, buildings and all their sundry features -- cornices, balustrades, arches -- they're a surefire antidote to creeping adolescence every time.

Well, almost every time. After fifteen minutes spent in fervent examination of buildings very much like that one pictured at left, I came to the depressing realization that (a) almost all of the buildings in Edinburgh look exactly the same and (b) I'd already seen them. This, alas, was a somewhat sobering conclusion -- architecture was not going to be there for me this time. When faced with sobering conclusions like this one, I like to do the obvious thing and head out for a few non-sobering conclusions at the nearest friendly pub.

Edinburgh is fairly stuffed with friendly pubs. In fact, as near as I can tell, "Edinburgh" in Gaelic translates roughly to "the area in which many beers are served in many friendly pubs, some of them by a guy named 'Ed'." Actually, my Gaelic is not really all that good now that I think about it.

Of the many friendly pubs in Edinburgh we've chanced to visit, my favorite by far is The Waverley, right across the street from our flat on St. Mary's Street (that's it pictured at right). Now, I've already spent many a paragraph waxing lyrical about the Waverley, but trust me, that's not going to stop me from doing it for a few paragraphs more. The Waverley is just that good. Also, one of the Waverley's regular customers, Tom, threatened me with a severe beating if I did not include at least one picture of his, as he put it, "strikingly handsome face." That's why you see that action snap of Tom, below, explaining the finer points of the Lothian Transit Company's new bus schedule to a slightly bemused Arantza (otherwise known as "the greatest Spanish bartender currently residing in Scotland").

The Waverley turned out to be the perfect babysitter for me while Kristanne was gone. Not only was Arantza always willing to lend a sympathetic ear to my plaintive cries of, "I miss Kristanne," but her boyfriend, Jerome, turned out to be -- as far as I can tell -- the world's only James McMurtry fan from France. At the risk of boring the two or three people in the world who have actually already heard of James McMurtry, allow me to point out that in addition to being the son of famous novelist Larry McMurtry (remember "Lonesome Dove"?), Jimmy Mac is also a singer-songwriter whose stock in trade tends towards depressing tales of ordinary lives lived on the serrated knife-edge of despair. Also, he probably kills people who call him "Jimmy Mac," so you might want to avoid that should you ever meet the man.

In any case, James McMurtry is not a man about whom you might say, "Gee, I bet he's got a lot of French fans." He's really more the kinda guy about whom you might say, "Gee, I bet he's got a lot of divorced, middle-aged, alcoholic fans who sit around in their underwear on soiled couches with bottles of bourbon while listening to his tunes of middle American despair." So, naturally, it came as somewhat of an amazing surprise to find out that Jerome and I, though neither divorced, middle-aged, nor alcoholic, shared a mutual admiration for the music of James McMurtry. In fact, we were both so surprised by this that we immediately stripped down to our underwear, opened bottles of bourbon, and sat down on the nearest soiled couch to listen to a few choice tunes. Alas, this behavior is sort of frowned upon by the patrons of the Waverley, so we soon found ourselves gently encouraged to put our clothes back on, cap the bourbon, and get the heck off the couch, if we knew what was good for us. Arantza doesn't mince words when it comes to Waverleyan propriety.

After nearly a year of constant contact with Kristanne, ten days was shaping up to be an awfully long time to be apart. Soon, however, I found myself developing routines to offset the loneliness. Every day, I would wake up around 8:30 and walk up to a cafe on South Bridge to take a coffee or three with the morning papers. En route, I would stop to have a brief chat with the Scottish Grocer and the Scottish Grocer's Daughter before greeting the woman who runs the newsstand with exact change for my customary Daily Scotsman and International Herald Tribune (she really, really loves the exact change). Then, after a leisurely hour or so spent perusing the papers, I would hie my freshly caffeinated self back to the apartment for a couple of hours of work before breaking for lunch. Nourished anew, I would typically head off to the market to do the day's shopping, stopping off to pet the Scottish Grocer's Daughter's Dog on the way back before climbing the stairs to unpack the groceries and begin cooking my evening meal. After thoroughly burning my evening meal, I would then call out for pizza. Finally, after a bit of reading, it was time to head to the Waverley around 10:45 where Arantza (pictured at right) was only too happy to greet me with a pint of lager and a cheerful smile.

It was a thoroughly simple, thoroughly delightful routine, addictive in its familiarity and satisfying in its repetition. The same people would show up at the Waverley every night at their same times, each greeted with a hearty hale fellow well met and shared salutations. When I showed up shortly before eleven, Ean (the owner of the Waverley) would already be ensconced in his corner, doing his crosswords (he's a master, as you can see in the picture at left). Ten or fifteen minutes later, Tom would roll in with a glint in his eye and a pipe in the corner of his mouth, eager to claim the jokes he'd read in the Sunday paper as his own. At around 11:45, Jerome would shuttle in for a quick half pint before escorting Arantza home when she got off at midnight. Then, at midnight, just as Arantza and Jerome left, Stewart would arrive to find his customary Holsten Pils already waiting for him. If it was a lucky night, you'd even get a visit from the Mysterious Mark (dark denizen of the Bongo Club) and Brian and Carla from upstairs. Then, before you knew it, it was 1:00 and time to head back across the street for some sleep before getting up the next day and doing it all over again.

It was all very warm and all very reassuring somehow. Still, all the Waverleyan warmth in the world couldn't hide the fact that Kristanne was already safely (and strangely) installed back in the drizzly familiarity of Seattle while I bided my time in Edinburgh. Though we spoke on the phone every night (usually right after I burned my dinner and before I sent out for pizza), it just wasn't the same. Hearing her stories of inclement Seattle weather was no substitute for actually being right there in the rain with her. (Cue the everloving, everlubricious Barry White and his buttersoaked tenor -- "Where you been baby? Have you been walking in the rain?" "Oh yeah, baby -- I been walking in the rain alright...I'm soaked from head to toe." Actually, in the interest of our Family Values rating, let's just leave Barry White alone for now.)

Like the careers of Limp Bizkit and Mr. T, however, all things must pass. And so, after an interminable ten days, I finally found myself unplugging my laptop, shouldering my backpack, and picking up my guitar to head down to the train station for the four hour ride to London. With my final farewells to Ean, Arantza, and all the sundry descendants of the Scottish Grocer out of the way, there was nothing left to do but snap that poignant shot of my luggage that you see at right (really, nothing is more poignant than a pile of luggage in a train station) and clamber on board for the short haul to King's Cross station.

A short haul would have been great. Heck, I would have even settled for a fair to middling haul. What I really didn't want, however, was an epic eight hour slog through power outages, track failures, and broken down engines. No, I really didn't want that. Other things I really didn't want included backed up toilets in the carriages, no food left in the snack bar, and drunk lager louts with no teeth pelting each other with their empty beer cans as they chased each other from carriage to carriage. Compared to all that, the insistence of my nearest fellow passenger on sharing her infatuation with the music of Britney Spears with me (and everybody else) was actually kinda cute (although I must admit that it got a whole lot cuter after the batteries in the little monster's ghetto blaster finally failed sometime around hour six of our ordeal).

Exhausted and yet strangely unable to contain myself from dancing to the strains of Britney Spears still echoing in my head, I somehow managed the transfer from King's Cross to Paddington Station via a taxi, whereupon I caught the express train to Heathrow and finally grabbed a shuttle bus to the hotel where I would spend the night before finally flying out on the morrow. (Note to Self -- Make sure to start saying "tomorrow" instead of "on the morrow" before you get back to the States, lest you run the risk of a deserved beating. Also, practice "stiff upper lip" pose in mirror tonight in preparation for assorted indignities and minor humiliations that accompany most bouts of extended air travel.) Fortunately for me, Kristanne The Clearheaded And Able had already performed all these various travel machinations last week during her own trip home, so I had the benefit of her experience guiding me through all the convoluted transfers and ticket purchases I needed to make. Also, I think it helped that at this point I definitely had the look of someone not afraid to strangle any sod unfortunate enough to get between me and my destination. When confronted with murderous-faced travellers dancing stiffly to imagined Britney Spears tunes, most people make the wise choice of running screaming from the building.

Clearly, I had entered the Travel Zone. In the Travel Zone, time as we normally experience it ceases to apply. In the Travel Zone, there is only your Current Position and The Destination, each boldly lettered in blinking neon and seared into your consciousness. Until these two finally merge and your Current Position becomes The Destination, you continue to exist in the Travel Zone, the place where bad food, lack of sleep, and an ever-shifting internal compass combine to transform you into an occasionally coherent, semi-ambulatory ninny. Although the Travel Zone is only slightly different from my everyday existence (I'm usually more of a "fuddler" than a "ninny"), it can still be seriously discombobulating, blurring the edges between day and night, asleep and awake, and London and Toronto.

Alas, the Travel Zone was to be my home for the next thirty six hours or so, starting from the time I caught the hotel shuttle to Heathrow airport at 6:00 AM London time, right on through my flight to Toronto, my four hour layover in Toronto, my flight to Vancouver, my six hour layover in Vancouver, and my final forty-five minute flight to Seattle. The Travel Zone, however, is not without its perks. In addition to the yummy, inexpensive airport food, arriving in Toronto for a four hour layover meant one thing -- a real newsstand with real North American magazines. Kneeling in obeisance to the media gods, I fought through the Travel Zone's considerable mental haze to purchase no fewer than five magazines I had been craving for over a year. Rolling Stone, Spin, ESPN the Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Tattooed White Trash Digest -- I bought them all with a glad heart and an unjaundiced eye, repairing immediately with a maniacal giggle to the nearest bench to gaze upon the fruits of my good fortune. What luck! What fun! What a nice double-wide mobile home this tattooed man in New Jersey has!

Okay, so the Tattooed White Trash Digest went into the garbage -- they can't all be winners. Still, I was feeling fortified enough to continue on my way home, despite the fact that by the time I arrived in Vancouver for my six hour layover I had already been awake for over 20 hours. The six hour layover, however, was a snap, owing in no small part to my newfound ability to entertain myself by drooling in public. Boy, was that ever fun!

Still, not even the tempting prospect of indefinitely drooling on myself in Canada could keep me from finally passing through U.S. customs (which, oddly enough, you do in Canada before you leave for the U.S. -- see the picture at left) and onto my final plane home. My time in the Travel Zone was rapidly coming to an end and with it, so was my time apart from Kristanne. The flight from Vancouver to Seattle was a happy blur of racing thoughts, rosy reflections, and excitement at finally being home after a year on the road. Thankfully, my current travel-addled state of mind offered no room for any serious kind of reflection, so I was left only with a pleasant series of mental impressions blissfully free for the moment from any need to take stock, analyze, or assess. And so, as the twin propeller plane noisily rumbled its way home to Seattle, my mind was free to roam from carefree summer days in the Sicilian sun to romantic walks in the winter quiet of Venice to snuggly snowbound warmth in an Alpen hideaway to friends well met in a Scottish pub to soft days of Spanish warmth that I never wanted to end.

Ah, but ending they were, and as I fairly raced up the ramp from my just-landed airplane, I didn't really care -- I just wanted to reunite with Kristanne and spend some time with her. And, well, the ten or fifteen friends and family she'd mustered for the occasion! Unbeknownst to me and sandwiched into her already overstuffed academic schedule, Kristanne had managed to rustle up a big welcoming party, all waving signs, shouting and yelling, singing and dancing, stuffing money down my shorts (small bills), and waving dogeared copies of Tattooed White Trash Digest. Well, everything except those last two, anyway.

Any exhaustion I might have been feeling was forcibly shoved aside by a burgeoning maniacal glee at seeing everyone all at once. Amazingly, I was able to stop myself from drooling while I made the round of hugs and pats on the back to all of the assembled greeters. Then, it was time to break on through to the other side. Kristanne, in her infinite vision for celebrations, had seen fit to construct a big One Year Finish Line (pictured at right). As the flashbulbs popped and the reporters scribbled, Kristanne and I linked arms and crashed through the tape together, our year of Extreme Telecommuting officially over. Once through the tape, however, the scene took on some slightly surreal overtones as Kristanne proceeded to stomp around our little gathering, chest-bumping the onlookers, waving her index finger in the air, and shouting, "I'm da woman! That's right, baby -- I'm da woman!" It was slightly unseemly, but somehow appropriate, all the same.

After twenty minutes spent in giddy greetings, we all finally realized that we could actually leave the gate and head off to baggage claim to pick up my stuff. So, after congratulating my mom on her new balloon-weave hairstyle (pictured at left), we all straggled off to the carousels where we spent another twenty minutes waiting for my backpack to come down the chute before realizing that it had long since been removed from the belt and moved off to the side. The ole Extreme Telecommuting engine was not exactly firing on all cylinders at this point, if you take my meaning.

Bags finally reclaimed, we all piled into various vehicles and headed off to the nearest restaurant for more celebration. Unfortunately showing the effects of thirty-six hours of travel, I struggled mightily to form complete sentences, eventually settling on monosyllabic utterances like, "Food," and "Beer," and, importantly, "Bathroom," as the best way to make myself understood. This fazed exactly noone as they went about their usual conversations while I looked on with bleary eyes, only too happy to sit and watch the others while squeezing Kristanne's hand.

Eventually, however, the night came to an end, speeded no doubt by an unfortunate incident wherein I collapsed facefirst into my Caesar salad and proceeded to start snoring amongst the lettuce leaves. There's nothing like the sight of a passed out man with croutons stuck in his nostrils to bring an evening to an abrupt end, I'll tell you that much. After a hazily remembered trip up I-5 to Seattle in our friends' VW van, Kristanne and I finally piled up the stairs and into our latest furnished apartment. Home at last!

And so the European Odyssey rolls to an end, a blissful year of memories lovingly shared now arrived at its bittersweet close. From Italy to Switzerland to Scotland to the Czech Republic to Spain (and all points in between), we had an incredible time seeking out new experiences and seeing new sights. Our heartfelt thanks to all of you who came along with us, both in person and through this web page -- your laughter, love, and smiles made a wonderful experience even better. Thank you!

Though this is the final installment of the European Odyssey, keep checking this space for an upcoming European Epilogue, wherein we'll endeavor to lend some sort of perspective to our year-long experiment in Extreme Telecommuting. En route, we'll also answer important questions like, "Why Are The Swiss So Damn Friendly?," "Does The Rain In Spain Really Fall Mainly On The Plain?," and, "What Curse Words Must All Eight Year Old Scottish Children Know?" In addition to all that, we'll also be reprising The Bobs from our North American Odyssey, giving you an insider's look at the best, the worst, and the absolutely unmentionable of the past year. If you have any questions you'd like to see answered in this mammoth undertaking (such as, "Why does Sid seem to own only a single pair of pants?"), send 'em on in and we'll do our best to answer them. Thanks again and we'll see you in a couple of weeks with the European Epilogue!

This Week's Front Page Picture

As for that picture at left, that is indeed the aforementioned Office Odyssey finish line in Sea-Tac airport. True to her amazing form, Kristanne whipped up a little celebration ceremony to greet me in the terminal, complete with balloons, hand-painted signs, and a bunch of people I have never seen before in my life. As it turned out, all our real "friends" were busy the night of my arrival, so Kristanne had to improvise by rounding up some handy street people for the celebration with promises of "malt liquor and fortified wine for everybody!" That's my honey -- always ready with the malt liquor in a pinch.