Dalkeith, Scotland: Day 1

I won’t bore you with the details, but our travel was not the smoothest. It wasn’t the worst either, and all-told we are talking about first-world problems here: “Our international travel was not as comfortable or as convenient as we would have liked it…” BooHoo.

Our large, checked bag is currently in luggage purgatory. We hope to have it returned to us in the next couple of days. In the meantime, Brenda’s astute packing insures we have what we need.

Random things that have occupied my bandwidth since departing:

• Air travel is increasingly exhausting for me. Maybe for everyone else too, but I definitley feel it.
• From an American perspective, everything is old in the U.K. Not in a “bad” way, just different. Everything has been touched already…multiple times. It’s been used, developed, dismantled and re-purposed. Here in Dalkeith (one could say it’s a suburb of Edinburgh…really not unlike Marysville is to Seattle) I get the impression of constant use. As I walked along the bank of the South Esk river at sunrise this morning, I found myself looking ahead at where the trail made a turn and I lost sight of it. I found myself engaging in an internal dialogue which is common when I’m walking a trail that’s new to me: “I wonder where THIS goes?” In the Cascade or Olympic mountains, some trails go nowhere. They just spill out into the wilderness where no “colonial person” has likely ever set foot…maybe no native person either. But here…every trail goes “somewhere”. There’s always a destination, every place has name, every location a story.
• British plumbing is still a wonder to me. Every bathroom is different. Every shower valve unique and requiring extensive experimentation to figure how to use. Toilets are a little less perplexing but mostly because the purpose is limited.
• I have had two very strange dreams. It’s unusual for me to remember any of my dreams, but the one I had last night and the one I had the night before we left are sticking with me. In the first, an old friend who I have seen very little of in the past 5 years or so was attending some kind of conference with me. As we were preparing to go into the main assembly, she playfully jumped on my back (piggy-back style) and I carried her in. She would not get off, so as I sat down at my drumset (apparently I was part of the band at the event) her weight through me off balance and I fell, knocking over the drum set and breaking it irreparably. It was the kit my brother Brian had put together for me. I was deeply upset. The other dream involved my family (including my father!) in a big bed together, ala Charlie Bucket’s grandparents in “Charlie and The Chocolate Factory”. My father (who was right beside me in the bed) became very upset about something and was being so angry and sort of passive / aggressive that the rest of the family were stunned into silence and withdrawal. I knew it was up to me to address this….but I didn’t. Paging Dr. Freud.
• On the lighter side: Andrew at the car rental desk must have seen me coming because he managed to “up-grade me at a discount” (I know, I know). But I’m not gonna lie…I’m not sorry. I feel like James Bond driving this thing.