Random Thoughts After Week1

I took our rental car back on Tuesday. We are officially stranded in the Highlands except for public transportation. Imagine that, two Californians without a car, whatever shall we do? The other side of that coin is we are liberated from $9 a gallon oil prices, insurance and vehicle upkeep. I just did some shopping and got chicken from the butcher, a sweet from the baker and milk and veggies from the grocery and walked a couple of hundred yards.

On the bus back from Inverness an older Scottish gent sat with me. We got to chatting, he had been shopping for his garden. He was a retired welder, just like my father. He had worked for a company out of Tulsa, Oklahoma, my father's hometown. Small world... His stop came and he shook my hand and this little guy had a grip. He squeezed my hand like he was trying to make me say uncle. Funny thing, my Dad has a vise-like grip as well and he likes to squeeze your hand and grind your knuckles. Just like my Dad this Scot had a shit-eating grin on his face as he almost broke my hand. Must be a welder thing!

Went for a long walk on the beach with my sweetie. Walked for 2 miles along a sandy beach and did not see another soul. I got a bicycle route from the bartender at the golf club. It runs from town along Loch Fleet and then up a strath (valley) to another loch (lake). It then winds around through some farmland and back to Dornoch. It was 33 miles total, all on paved roads. Except for the 1 mile on the A-9 (the main north south road in Scotland), I saw 4 cars total. It seems to me that the less we see people, the more civil and polite we are when we do encounter folks.

Random thoughts

It's hard to grasp just what we have done. Six months!! We are here for six months!! After sleeping in until 10 this morning, we returned to the scene of the crime, Golspie, where we spent our first few nights in 1998 with the kids. And I heard, for the first time since then, a skylark. Such a song it sings as it spirals up into the sky, you just have to stop and listen. Some impressions so far . . .

I get the Let's Do the Time Warp Again song rolling through my head when driving past homes built in the 1700s to 1800s and see big screen TVs through the windows.

It's lambing season, and the wee bitty white dots all over the fields are lambs. Cute as can be.

Pheasants in the throes of lust do not look both ways before crossing the street. :-(

Sixty-two degrees in April means short sleeves to Scottish folks. Shirtless, in some cases. It's a heat wave!

Soup and a crusty roll for 2 pounds 50. Life is good.

Gee Mr. Wizard

"I really want to go live in a little village in the Highlands of Scotland and golf and ride my bike. Gee, can I Mr. Wizard?"
Well, Mr. Wizard is granting our wish and the time is near to start the next step. My bags are mostly packed and I am packing more clothes than Julie. I will never hear the end of that. My assorted golfing stuff is taking up two checked-on golf bags. You would think I was good with all the stuff I am carting. Dreams can come true. I hope Mr. Wizard is there when it's "time for this one to come home."

Who knew?

A week until we leave. Bags are packed, address is changed, the pound is in yeeehaaaaa condition (at least compared to our past visits), whittled our belongings further to a 5 x 10 storage unit, and we are as ready as we are going to be. Frenzy is over. Time to say our goodbyes and get this show on the road.

Our long, strange trip is about to get even stranger. :-)

Dreaming of markets where Orkney cheese and oatcakes are normal items on the shelf . . . .

Two Voices

Now there are two. I can't figure out how to make the name change from one to the other, so you'll have to play a guessing game about whose point of view you are hearing. Likely the subject matter will be a pretty good clue. We are two pieces of a puzzle and hopefully the combination will give a fuller version of whatever the future holds.

It's seven weeks from today that we officially land, and I am getting giddy with excitement. We've another week or two of relative inertia, then things will get rolling and life will really get interesting, followed by the peace and quiet of the Highlands. Yesssss.

A Mystical Experience

Prior to Going Wandering, we moved back to our old home town of San Clemente, California. The town where I grew up and at one time the home of the Western White House, yeah Richard Nixon's lair while president. San Clemente is like so many SoCal beach towns, more surfboard shops than grocery stores. It was actually a wonderful place to grow up, surfing before school, the full Beach Boys life style of the late 60's. My Dad would drop me at the beach on his way to work and pick me up on the way home, carefree days of surfing, swimming and lying on the beach. Those were the days!! But like any idyllic time and place you can't go back. The town of 10,000 is now 65,000. The streets are crowded, the beaches are packed in the summer and the small town of many good memories is now just another over developed blot on the landscape of the OC. Yuck. It goes to prove that you can't go back. Oh well. Moving on.

I was saddened two years ago at the passing of one of my high school classmates. Not a close friend, but a man my age. John had a heart attack while riding his bike. John ran a local bike shop and had done some repairs on a bike of mine. I had just been into his old shop, still run by his wife, to have my bike tuned up. There is a makeshift memorial to John along the bike trail where cyclists have left water bottles, jerseys, bike frames, etc. I was out on a ride and about 10 miles from home when my bike developed this annoying knocking sound in the crank. Every pedal came with a clunk that was driving me batty, but I knew I could make it home and then I could take my bike back in and get in fixed again. As I was pedalling home I decided to stop at John's memorial and leave my water bottle. I stopped for a minute, took a drink and tied my water bottle to the fence. I got back on and began to peddle and the annoying clank was gone. I thought a temporary fix that will come back when I have to crank up some of the hills on the way home. The hills come and go and no sign of the noise. Coincidence, I thought. There really was something wrong with my bike, the noise will return. Well, the next day a long ride and no sign of the clank. An unexplained miracle. I stopped by the shop and told John's wife of my miracle. She smiled knowingly and said her son would be happy to hear the story. Thanks John, still working at the bike shop and never to busy to do a favor for an old classmate.

He Said

Living the dream on a shoestring. Retirement was supposed to be owning our home as well as a humble vacation home. We always dreamed of a small flat in Scotland where I could indulge my links golf addiction and we could spend our summers in splendid isolation in the Highlands where there are more sheep than people. But then President Shrub decided to spend billions a day on destruction, which in my mind turned the economy into the dumper and made our life savings disappear into the black hole of Enron and Goldman Sachs. I will always believe that had our country chosen to invest in building our own country rather than destroying another, things would have been vastly different. So I blame President Shrub for our fall, but also credit him with giving us the strength to take a leap of faith. So, armed with a teacher's retirement pension and a flexible wife we chose to pursue our dream, though not as grandly as once hoped. We are off in April to the Scottish Highlands, flat rented, golf club joined and plans being made.

The Royal Burg of Dornoch is a small village of about 3,000 folks and a world class golf course. The other claim to fame was that Madonna had her child baptised in the Cathedral. From the first visit Dornoch has always tugged at me. The village is one of picture postcards, solid stone houses and neatly tended gardens. The sea near by and surrounded by the beautiful hills of heather and whins has made Dornoch one of my favorite spots in the world. You can almost feel your blood pressure drop as you ease into the rhythm of a different time and place.