Why I Do the Things I Do...
eople say I'm crazy.
They say this for a lot of reasons, but this time it
was because I decided that I had nothing better to do than to spend what little free time
and money I had on a trip to the north of Scotland. This in itself would not seem terribly
crazy, except that there were two more little bits of information.
One was that I wanted to go eat some haggis.
The other was that I wanted to do this in the middle of winter.
Personally, I can't think of a better time to go to Scotland than the middle of winter. After all, the entire country, and most things that happen within it are an assault on the senses, so why not go for the full burn? Or freeze, such as it was.
The idea to do this came to me as something of an inspiration, and one that didn't actually involve Scotland at all. You see, I had a bit of a nightmare one night in October. I dreamt that I had been sold into slavery, and that all of my worldly possessions had been taken from me. Normally, my dreams don't so closely match my real life (the only difference between the dream and real life is that in real life, I've done this all to myself), and it was this stark realism that shook me to my core. I realized that I'd been sort of hard on myself lately, and that things weren't going to chill out until I made some concerted effort to chill.
What better way to chill
than to go to Scotland in the middle of winter? Well, actually, I had originally planned
to go to one of my favorite little
towns in Wales. It, in turn, is just a hoot and a holler from one of my favorite tourist resort towns, which has some
passing relationship with one of my favorite television
obsessions.
But, sometime between October and my actual departure, another television show convinced me that the north end of Scotland would be a lot more interesting. Obviously, television plays a very large role in my life, and I'm damned proud of it.
Anyway, by some amazing bit of synchronicity, I discovered that Virgin Atlantic Airlines was offering a dirty cheap round trip fare from Boston to Gatwick. Actually, just about every other airline on earth was also offering a dirty cheap round trip fare, but I picked Virgin Atlantic simply because I figured it'd be closest I'd get to anything that says "Virgin" on it for quite a long time. So, with more minor damage to a credit card, I secured an airline ticket and an eight day first class BritRail pass. All that was left was a few months of waiting, and far too much planning. Or, not enough planning, if you agree with the thesis stated in the first paragraph.
Hey. This was going to be my first real vacation in about four years, and the last vacation I had wasn't really any sort of vacation at all. And, if this whole idea sounds stupid, I might remind you that my life is one joyous pursuit of stupidity. Actually, an awful lot of what's been going on lately has been more of a joyless pursuit of stupidity, but who's counting? This vacation was simply intended to recapture some of that long forgotten joy.
Come follow me on a stupid journey, starting with:
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
(I know: not very original)
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