these weeks in the odyssey
10.4.99 -- 10.11.99
edinburgh, isle of skye, loch ness, river spey,
scotland

Going Up The Country

Time is running tight here on the Edinburgh leg of the Office Odyssey. With a mere three weeks remaining in our stay here, Kristanne and I are beginning to get antsy. Anxious. Nervous. Consumed with a psychotic delirium so intense as to endanger the future of mankind itself. Well, actually that's probably overstating the situation just a smidgen. Still, the point remains -- with only three weeks to go, events begin to acquire a certain dimension of pre-millennial angst. I mean, sheesh, how can we possibly see and do everything left to see and do in Scotland when we only have three weeks in which to see and do them? Do you see? See? Do?

There's really only one answer to these questions -- you have to get Extreme. Of course, it also helps to get a slightly larger vocabulary so you can say things other than "see" or "do," but let's start with getting Extreme. Getting a larger vocabulary sounds like a lot of work, even if it does mean getting to do those fun "It Pays To Enrich Your Word Power" quizzes in Reader's Digest.

Getting Extreme means riding life bareback for just as long as you can hold on. It means not being afraid to ask what's really in blood pudding (and not becoming nauseous when you find out that it really is mostly blood). It means learning how to drive on the left side of the road from the right side of the car. It means scaling the heights of Tantallon Castle and looking out across the Firth of Forth to Bass Rock (like we're doing in that picture at right). It means sounding your lust for life with a bawdy "yawp" from every craggy mountaintop, from every peat bog, and from every mist enshrouded loch you can find.

Of course, it also means going for a pleasant stroll in the Royal Botanical Gardens and marveling at the really quite amazing hedges they've grown there (much like I'm doing in that picture at left). Now, I like my flora and fauna as much as the next guy, but I must admit that I find British gardens more than a little disquieting. The regimented rows of plants standing crisply at attention in their precisely plotted planters, the maniacally manicured hedgerows mustering maximum mastery over the masses, the smugly superior squirrels slinging rumors and innuendo about your sex life...there's really something very fascist about the whole experience. You feel like the garden is not there to be enjoyed so much as it is to proclaim its authoritarian dictatorship over your pitiful proletarian ass. Or am I perhaps bringing a bit too much of my own personal psychological baggage to bear here?

Maybe. Still, you have to admit that any garden that features roving bands of renegade pigeons bent on reeducating the masses by any means necessary is a garden that bears watching by NATO, the U.N., and possibly even the Audobon Society. Everywhere we went in the Royal Botanical Gardens, those pigeons pictured at right would be shadowing us, recording our every move for later review at the Party Committee Meeting. Don't let the repetitively bobbing heads, the soft cooing sounds, and the stupid looks fool you -- these pigeons are much more than the usual airborne rats we've come to know from all over Europe. They're also full-fledged tools of communist oppression.

The struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie was getting to be little bit too much for us at the Royal Botanical Gardens (much like it's probably getting to be a bit too much for you right here in this very web page). We had to get out, go someplace where a body could be free to revel in its essential personhood. Free to skip gaily through heathered meadows still glistening with the morning's dew. Free to romp through highland pastures with woolly Highland cattle like that guy pictured at left. Not that we did any of those things. Shoot -- you kidding me? That cow's got horns bigger and sharper than Jay Leno's chin. You think I'm romping through any highland pastures with him, you're crazier than Kristanne is for just getting out of the car to snap that picture. Fuhgeddaboutit.

Of course, before you can really be free to do any of those things (regardless of whether you do them), you need to be free to drive around the dang country. Public transportation is great, but sometimes it just doesn't get you where you want to be. Plus, you get a lot of strange looks when you sing old Styx songs on the bus. So, we decided to rent a car. We've done this a few times on this trip, usually without any hitches at all. Call 'em up, give 'em a credit car number, show up at the appointed time and, boom, you're rolling. Mobile. Living that petrol-sucking dream.

Alas, it was not to be. Oh, sure, we did our part -- the whole calling, credit card giving, showing up thing. It was just that they didn't really do theirs. Instead of having a car ready for us to drive off in, the only thing even remotely automotive in appearance in the car rental office was a big long drive shaft. This shaft they proceeded to give us, informing us that our car, though reserved, was in fact at the Edinburgh Airport. This they told us even though we showed them our clever voucher indicating that it was supposed to be right here at this very Edinburgh Downtown office. This they told us even though we're notoriously difficult customers to please. Did they know they were risking a Total Extreme Hissy Fit right here in their very office? Did they even have an inkling of the danger?

Apparently not. And, really, we're not very good at throwing hissy fits either. I mean, we tried to get mad, we really did. I'm here to tell you I looked that car rental dude right in the eye and softly exclaimed, "Gee, that's really too bad." I mean, I said that right to his face! Then, Kristanne let him have it too, clearing her throat with a purposeful "ahem," drawing herself up to her full height and saying, "Yeah, well I guess we could come back tomorrow, if that's not too much trouble."

Yes, it's never pretty when Kristanne and I have to get up in somebody's mug like that. We immediately felt pretty bad about the whole thing, apologized profusely to the agent, explaining that we were pretty tired from getting up so early and that we were going to go get a cappuccino now. Would you like to come along? I mean, it's on us since we had to be so rough with you and everything.

Really, it was rather difficult to get too upset about anything since, in standard Office Odyssey fashion, there were no set plans other than to drive north until we stopped, whereafter we would sleep wherever we found a bed, and then do the same thing over again the next day. So, really, starting tomorrow was as good as starting today. Actually, in some ways it was even better since Kristanne then confessed that the night before she'd had a dream foretelling our untimely demise in a fiery mash of twisted metal were we to leave Edinburgh today. Reasoning that this more or less constituted a near death experience, we decided to celebrate our continued vitality by going shopping. Nothing like a good trip to the mall to let you know you're alive, I tell you!

On a completely unrelated note, this seems like a good time to point out that that's a sheep pictured there at right. There are many sheep on the Isle of Skye. This was one of them.

But, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Before you ever get to the Isle of Skye (at least on this Odyssey), you need to do some serious driving. Because of my total and complete inability to drive on the left side of the road from the right side of the car, Kristanne was handling the driving duties, pushing us on out of Edinburgh, over to Glasgow, and then up past Loch Lomond and Ben Nevis to the western highlands of Scotland. Rain and wind were out in full force, but from what we're told, that's about par for the course in western Scotland, especially the farther north you go. After a small eternity, we unfolded ourselves out of the car in the parking lot of the castle you see pictured there at left. This was great, since we figured that most ancient castles wouldn't have parking lots, having been constructed at a time when most people did not even know how to drive.

This particular castle had the evocative moniker of "Eilean Donan." It's a bit difficult to tell from that picture, but the castle sits on a little island in the loch, connected to the mainland by an old stone bridge. If it looks familiar, it's probably because either (a) you've been there before, or (b) you're a huge fan of campy sci-fi flicks like "Highlander." Yep -- large parts of "Highlander" were filmed right there in that very castle. We practically shuddered from the vestigial Hollywood star power that still illuminates the passageways of Eilean Donan to this very day.

In addition to the usual ancient history and all that crap, Eilean Donan also contains some lovingly reconstructed wax dummies doing various typical castle things. If you lived in a castle, these are probably the exact things that you'd do, too. For example, you'd have a whole dungeon full of pitiable prisoners, bedrooms full of exotic guests, and a kitchen full of loyal galley servants at your beck and call twenty-four hours a day. Now, if you were me, you'd also have a big-screen TV with a full satellite hookup so you could watch the baseball playoffs regardless of the fact that you were currently stuck in some clammy old castle in the middle of Jerkwater, Scotland instead of parked on the nearest couch with a cold one in your right hand and the remote control in your left, doing a couple nice sets of twelve ounce curls. Now, that castle I want to see.

But you're not me. And, really, I'm not even me since I found myself marveling at the kitchen display you see pictured at right. So lifelike! So dedicated! So strangely beautiful! Well, at least that elegant one second from the left with the really cool hat, towering over the others. She must be the one in charge. I found myself staring at her open-mouthed, trying to decide if she was for real or not. If it was a statue, what artist could possibly create such beauty? If she was real, was she interested in maybe grabbing a cup of coffee out by the portcullis, or something?

Imagine my surprise to find out that not only was she real, she was also my wife! Now, I'm not guaranteeing you that if you go to Eilean Donan that you'll find your own wife, but it might be worth a try. It worked for me!

Eilean Donan was beautiful, but one castle can hold two Extreme Telecommuters for only so long. We busted out, running over the bridge like peasants banished from the castle by the lord of the manor, fleeing the stones and arrows from the local villagers whose larders we've just raided. Or, if you prefer, like two cold people in the rain without an umbrella. Kinda like both of those, really.

On to the Isle of Skye! You reach the Isle of Skye from the mainland by a tollbridge, so you really don't get the romance of a ferry crossing to the island. Still, crossing the tollbridge felt like an accomplishment in of itself. I mean, the car didn't exactly drive itself, if you know what I'm saying. The Isle of Skye was like no other place either of us had ever seen. Miles of desolate peat-covered hills undulated out to the horizon in a rolling glory, broken here and there by clear-running streams cascading down to the sea. Craggy, volcanic rock formations jutted up out of the earth abruptly, disappeared into the fog and then reappeared a moment later. And sheep everywhere! It was positively otherworldly, surreal, fantastic -- we drove on open-jawed, drinking in the natural beauty.

Originally, we had planned to take the ferry from Skye's western shore on out to the Outer Hebrides, a chain of islands even further out into the nothingness of the Atlantic. However, when we discovered that tickets on this ferry would set us back roughly the gross national product of, well, the Outer Hebrides, we decided to forego the islands in favor of exploring Skye a little bit more and then heading back inland to Loch Ness and beyond. After a great fish dinner, we retired to a nice bed and breakfast in the impossibly scenic hamlet of Portree. At 1,500 inhabitants, Portree is by far the largest town on the entire island. Did we mention that there's not a whole lot of people out here on the western coast of Scotland?

After finishing both the bed and breakfast halves of our bed and breakfast, we hopped back into the car for a quick drive around the Isle of Skye before heading on over to Loch Ness. Unless you've been living in either a cave or an alcoholic stupor for your entire life, you pretty much know that Loch Ness is home to the notorious Loch Ness Monster, a rumored sea serpent of gargantuan proportions. We've all seen the shadowy photographs that purport to prove irrefutably the existence of ole Nessie -- grainy, overexposed, underfocused efforts for the most part. You can never tell whether you're looking at Nessie or if someone wiped some phlegm on the lens (a surprisingly common problem for beginning photographers).

There's big bucks involved here. If you were to snap a confirmed photograph of Nessie, you're looking at exclusive rights worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Kristanne and I began to hatch a plan. Since our current investment strategy of "lottery tickets, lottery tickets, and more lottery tickets" hasn't been paying off as well as we might have hoped (even after we diversified, just like all the money men say to do, and started buying scratcher tickets, we still don't seem to be reaping the benefits of this "bull market" everyone keeps flapping their gums about), we decided that maybe a fake Nessie photo could be the key to our future financial stability.

The plan once begun, twas almost done. We decided that most photo fakers make their big mistake by not putting enough details in. I mean, sure, it's a fake, so you think you should leave things kinda blurry, kinda open to interpretation. No way. You've gotta grab your viewers by the neck and shake 'em. You've gotta scream in their face, "Hey, wake up dingblossom -- we got ourselves a gen-yoo-in sea monster here!" That's where the details come in. Check out those eyes, those antennae -- can there be any doubt that this is the real Nessie? I humbly submit that no reasonable person could possibly have a doubt. Bidding for the rights to this photograph will open at 500,000 dollars or two Quick Pick Lotto tickets, whichever gets here first.

Loch Ness also provided us with the second castle in what is rapidly becoming the "All Castles, All The Time," portion of the Odyssey. That picture at left shows me looking downright defiant high atop the ramparts of Urquhart Castle. In case you're wondering, I was thinking about how I showed that car rental agent a thing or two back in Edinburgh. You can be he won't be forgetting my face anytime soon.

After Urquhart, we drove on through Inverness (near the Black Isle, where some of my ancestors are from) and down towards Aberdeen. I dearly wanted to see the River Spey, a river rich in the lore of Scottish flyfishing. The Spey gives its name to a specific style of both flycasting and flytying, each of which have become popular among the steelhead flyfishermen of the Pacific Northwest in recent years. Umm, actually, is anybody else interested in that stuff but me? Yeah, that's kinda what I thought...never mind!.

We followed the Spey inland, following the Whisky Trail, which might actually be more appropriately named the "Whisky Highway," since there's really nothing trail-like about it. Still, I guess if you call it the "Whisky Highway," then you start to wonder about the dubious wisdom of the Scots in recommending that people drive from whisky distillery to whisky distillery, getting progressively more loaded the further they get down the highway. Probably wouldn't do much for the safety image of Scottish highways, now, would it? But a trail! Ah, there's the rub -- a perfect blend of rustic homespun goodness, combined with a patina of adventure! I mean, if you go to more than one distillery, you're more than just drunk -- you're a veritable explorer, practically in the same league as Lewis & Clark, blazing new trails in pursuit of that elusive next dram! Saddle 'em up, boys -- let's ride the whisky trail!

Umm, where was I? I seem to have become mildly disoriented on the Whisky Trail. Even though we got there too late to visit any of the distilleries, we did drive by a few, pressing on into the rapidly approaching darkness. After an interminable drive on amazingly bad roads, we eventually pulled into Edinburgh, exhausted. Not so exhausted, however, that we couldn't wake up the next day and do it all again, taking in the impressive sights of Tantallon Castle (pictured at the top of this page), North Berwick Law (which is actually a mountain), and Dirleton Castle before eventually settling back in at home on Sunday night. What a week! We'll try to make the next one fun, too, as we head into the home stretch in Scotland before heading on to either Prague or Germany for a couple months. Adding to the excitement is the impending arrival of Extreme Fellow Travellers (and general all around Fun Couple) Keith and Tanya from back home in the States. See you next time on the Odyssey!

Last Week's Front Page Picture

No, that's not Fabio over there. Nope, that's Sid, striking a heroic pose in front of the imposing walls of Tantallon Castle. If it lessens the pain of Fabio's absence at all, you are welcome to pretend that I have shaved all the hair off my chest (a la Fabio) and pasted it on to my balding dome (decidedly not a la Fabio). However, please do not picture the voluptuous Harlequin-style maiden in the low-slung gown whom I have just saved from a certain doom and who even now is nearly fainting in my arms. If my own personal experience is any guide, picturing that will just earn you a swift whack on the noggin with the Michelin guide from Kristanne. Well, that and a certain amount of disgust.