#last time i was on an american airlines flight our checked luggage ended up across the continent and took two days to get to us

[4thbrighteststar]

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[aliciameade]

Baby - Ch. 8

Title: Baby Author: aliciameade Rating: *** M *** Pairing: Stephanie Smothers/Emily Nelson Summary:  That tearful kiss shared between Stephanie and Emily wasn't their first—and it certainly wasn't their last.

(Chapter 1)

Also on AO3

“Hi, Moms! Stephanie here.” Stephanie smiles into one of the cameras set up in her kitchen. “My best friend, Emily, and I are taking a girls’ trip to sunny southern California this week. I grew up on the east coast and have never been west of the big Mississippi, so let me know in the comments what I absolutely must do, see, or take on my trip!”

She switches to Camera 2. “It’s with that in mind that today we’re going to make our own travel toiletry bags! All you need is a yard of fun fabric and a few buttons. You can also use Velcro strips or ribbon, or if you’re feeling really fancy, a zipper. Ready? Okay!”

~ ~

~ ~

Her subscribers—she thinks of them as a family, really—were helpful in their suggestions. She folds and packs an extra cardigan to protect her from the chill that might roll in late in the evening off the water. Briefly, she considers “forgetting” any outer layers at all; the prospect of doing something obscenely romantic with Emily like strolling on the beach and getting chilly and being offered whatever expensive jacket Emily will surely be wearing is more than tempting.

But she sets the sweater on top of the négligée she’s found the perfect occasion for, and what she thinks might be too many pairs of panties but she also is pretty sure she’s going to need them.

Two-and-a-half days alone with Emily in another city with no looming husband and no dear, darling children to be cognizant of?

Yeah, she’s going to need them.

She didn’t ask Emily what she meant by “it” when she’d texted her last night saying, “Pack it.”

She has to bite her lip when she sees a loop of black leather of the harness peeking out from where it’s buried at the bottom of her suitcase.

Her toiletry kit, the one she perfected to use as her example on this week’s vlog, is the last thing to be tossed into her bag. Her heart races as she zips it. She’s minutes from loading Miles and her luggage into her Subaru to drop him—and her car—at Emily’s house.

With one final check that she has everything she thinks she might need in her purse and anything Miles might want while he has his two-night sleepover with Nicky, she shepherds him out of the house, locks up, and leaves.

~ ~

~ ~

She realizes, as she steps into the hired car waiting outside Emily’s home, she has no real idea how they’re getting anywhere. Emily had said they’re taking Dennis Nylon’s private jet, but beyond that, she’s uninformed. She doesn’t know where they’re staying, if they’ll have a rental or a driver in Los Angeles, or even what Emily’s work commitments are while they’re there.

She’s never traveled without an itinerary and there’s something oddly exciting about it.

She slides over to the far side of the back seat and watches Emily take a seat next to her, graceful and dapper as always in what Stephanie surmises is a version of professional travel-casual. Her navy blue suit is tailored but it’s only a two-piece. Simple blue slacks and blazer and a white blouse that’s not even buttoned up all the way, with brown loafers. Even her casual style makes Stephanie feel underdressed when she’d put extra effort into her outfit today. She knew private travel was a luxury and she wanted to fit the part. Her dress is designer, though a full four seasons ago, something from Kate Spade’s 2017 spring collection. She knows Emily probably knows it’s outdated, but she doesn’t comment on it.

“You look nice,” is actually what she says once the driver closes the door and they’re alone in the car for a few seconds before he’s behind the wheel.

“Thank you,” Stephanie replies, feeling a bit like a blushing schoolgirl. Emily can be so hot and cold with her communication and affection, and it manages to catch Stephanie off-guard every time.

Emily’s quiet after that, focused on her phone—texting or emailing, Stephanie supposes—leaving Stephanie to her thoughts. She wants to make conversation, but she’s not sure what’s okay to do or say with someone else in the car. The driver might be someone Emily uses frequently. It might not be okay if he overhears their conversation, even if it remains mundane and platonic about work or kids. She wants to ask what the plan is or even where they’re going.

She knows they’re heading east out of town. It’s growing increasingly industrial and she’s almost uneasy until they’re parking behind a massive warehouse.

She realizes, as she steps out the car, that it’s not a warehouse but a hangar because there’s helicopter parked and waiting in the middle of the wide open pad of asphalt.

“What is happening?” she says with a laugh as she watches Emily round the back of the car until she’s by her side. It’s only a touch of a hand to her back, but it makes Stephanie shiver.

“The plane is in Teterboro.”

Stephanie starts walking, half a step behind Emily because she was too surprised to move quickly. “So we’re taking a private helicopter to a private plane?”

Emily glances at her. The small smile she’s wearing is almost a smirk and it makes Stephanie feel a little childish in her excitement.

“I’ve never been in a helicopter, either,” she says as she follows Emily into the open bay door of the sleek black and white aircraft.

“The jet is nicer.”

Stephanie leaves an empty seat between them, unsure if it would be suspicious if they sat side by side when there was plenty of room in the six-seat cabin for the two of them.

Her decision is affirmed when they’re joined by a stranger, a man in a suit with a briefcase yelling into the Bluetooth earpiece he’s wearing about the manufacturing industry in China. He sits across from Stephanie and though his words aren’t directed at her, they feel like it as he stares through her in his heated conversation.

She turns to look at Emily in horror that they’re going to have to listen to this the entire trip to the airport to find that she’s already being watched. The tiny smirk is a full-on smile now and it makes Stephanie forget about the man as she returns it.

Whatever complaint Stephanie was about to lodge dies on her lips because Emily’s smiling at her in the back of a helicopter. It’s clear the man doesn’t know Emily; he’s talking factories and steel and he’d barely acknowledged their presence when he arrived. So, she decides to see what happens if she slides over to sit in the middle seat right next to Emily instead of leaving it empty.

The only thing that happens is a slight raising of eyebrows as Emily uncrosses her legs so her foot isn’t encroaching on Stephanie’s leg room.

Stephanie buckles her seat belt and when she sits back, she angles herself enough for her elbow to rest against Emily’s. She feels it lift in acknowledgment but the motion isn’t meant to push her away. A playful bump and a shared glance.

“How long is this flight?”

“Ten minutes.”

“That’s it?!”

Emily nods and turns to look out the window as Stephanie feels a roller coaster-like effect on her stomach and she realizes they’re airborne.

It’s too loud to carry on a conversation, not without putting on the comms headsets anyway, so Stephanie remains quiet in her excitement.

~ ~

~ ~

“I feel like Ilsa in Casablanca,” Stephanie finally lets herself say as she and Emily walk across the tarmac from a helicopter to a private plane, its door open and waiting.

Emily glances down at her. “Rick is putting Ilsa on a plane to send her away at the end of Casablanca.”

“I know, but it’s still so romantic and glamorous, walking across the runway ready to get on a waiting plane with someone you—” She catches herself. “With someone.”

Emily doesn’t respond; she steps aside when they get to the steps of the jet, engines already humming. “After you.”

Stephanie’s seen interiors of private planes before—on celebrities’ Instagrams, in movies and the like—but nothing could have prepared her for the reality of stepping into an airplane cabin covered in nothing but white leather and polished wood with gleaming gold (well, probably brass or similar) accents. It was a very, very far cry from the Economy Class on American Airlines that she was accustomed to.

“This is…” She senses Emily waiting behind her and turns around to find her right where she knew she’d be. “Emily, I don’t even know what to say.”

Emily smiles and gestures toward the back of the plane. “Lady’s choice.”

Stephanie yearns to pop up onto her toes and kiss her but the cabin door is still open, crew are milling about doing their final checks and loading their bags, and the cockpit door is also open with the pilots readily visible. They’re not alone, and this is Dennis’s plane and crew. Instead, she claps through a barely contained squeal and spins back around, nearly skipping through the aisle until she decides on the only row that has a pair of seats instead of singles.

She knows Emily might choose to sit alone, but she’s certainly not going to be the reason for it. She sees Emily watching her over the top of the seats and sees her making her way closer until she’s stopped at Stephanie’s row. She glances toward the front of the plane, then nods at the empty chair next to Stephanie.

“Is this seat taken?”

The whole situation already has Stephanie overdosing on endorphins, but Emily teasing? Being humorous? The compliment in the car. The elbow nudge on the helicopter. Stepping aside to allow Stephanie to board first. That pick-up line a second ago. She fights to get her joy under control lest it is off-putting and motions for Emily to sit.

“By all means.”

Emily joins her as she tosses her coat onto the seat across the aisle and though she’s still busy at work on her phone, she seems much less closed off than she had in the car.

“I really don’t know how to thank you for this,” she says as she watches Emily’s slender, strong fingers manipulate her iPhone in a way that shouldn’t make Stephanie jealous.

Emily looks up from her phone, turns toward Stephanie, and leans in and kisses her. It’s soft and brief, but it makes Stephanie tingle all the same. “I think you’ll find a way.” She punctuates the suggestive sentence with one more kiss and then she’s back at her phone and Stephanie realizes they’re already taxiing toward the runway.

She hadn’t even heard the cabin door close or felt the plane start to roll, caught up in her thoughts as she’d been.

And if they’re moving, that means there’s no one on the ground to see them through the windows, and the cockpit door is sealed, which means…

She sets her purse on the floor, not even realizing she was still holding it, turns in her seat and reaches for Emily. She catches her with a hand to the back of her neck to pull her back in. She wants a better kiss, a bigger kiss, one that will leave them both breathless and she smiles into it when Emily doesn’t pull away from her.

She feels Emily’s fingers slide into her hair followed by the heavy clunk of what she knows is Emily’s phone hitting the floor. It makes her stomach flip, but that might be from the plane taking flight, though Stephanie’s pretty sure it’s Emily and not the plane.

Stephanie has half a mind to unbuckle her seat belt and crawl into Emily’s lap but they’re barely off the ground. She doesn’t want to seem too eager or desperate despite not having been together since the morning after Emily spent an unexpected night at her house. She keeps herself in check, hands not straying into PG-13 territory. It’s enough—more than enough, really—to make her happy. Heck, even Emily looking at her with any level of affection, platonic or otherwise, makes her happy.

When she feels Emily’s hand on her waist pulling her closer, but not escalating things more either, she sighs and settles into her seat and against Emily.

There’s something just as arousing (maybe even more so) about hot and heavy making out than jumping right to sex. Perhaps it’s about a mutual agreement that it’s enough, at least for now, to simply be close and kiss. She knows more will come later. She doesn’t know when, but she knows it will only be a matter of hours. They’ll be in Los Angeles by the evening and she knows exactly what she wants for dinner.

~ ~

~ ~

Emily’s phone interrupts their kissing and Stephanie can’t help but smile when Emily groans in annoyance as she pulls away to reach down to retrieve it from the floor and answer it with a very gruff, “What the hell is it now, Dennis?”

She smiles again when Emily lets her continue however she likes while she bosses around her boss, and how Stephanie likes to continue is to make sure she’s familiar with the way every inch of Emily’s neck tastes today.

As happy as she repeatedly tells herself she is to not need more right now, the need is beginning to grow. She lets her hand rest on Emily’s knee and enjoys the way she tilts her head at different angles to encourage Stephanie to continue or move to a new spot.

When it sounds like the phone call is wrapping up and Stephanie is making plans to drag Emily over to the couch to finally get some relief, she hears through the phone what sound like multiple voices speaking at once and she feels Emily sigh.

“This doesn’t warrant a call with the board—”

She seems to get cut off which Stephanie knows is a rarity. She sits back in surprise and watches Emily pinch the bridge of her nose in annoyance.

The subsequent exchange clues Stephanie in to the fact that Emily’s ended up on a conference call with the Nylon Board of Directors. It’s fascinating to watch Emily...not falter per se, but for her place to be checked. Apparently, an entire board couldn’t be fucked in the face. Even Emily wasn’t that powerful.

But speaking of fucking…

Stephanie maintains her air of innocence best she can while her lips continue caressing Emily’s neck. She lets herself run out of skin, kissing to her collar before she nudges it aside to move lower until she’s undoing the next button on Emily’s shirt to expose her collar bones to Stephanie’s lips.

Emily’s reaction isn’t strong, but Stephanie does see her fingers flex where they rest on her lap.

She doesn’t think Emily will actually let her do it. She’s sure she’ll be stopped when she keeps unbuttoning until her shirt is open. She’s sure Emily will politely nudge her away when she leans over to trail her lips over the swells of her breasts. She’s sure Emily will sit back to prevent Stephanie’s wandering hand from undoing her bra under her shirt to push it up and away so she can tease the hardened tips to further attention and not lean forward to make it easier for Stephanie.

That’s the first time she hears Emily react, a kind of a swallowed gasp that she covers with a cough. Stephanie glances up at her and she sees her put her phone on mute before she asks, “Are you going to stop and let me focus on this call?”

“No,” Stephanie says with a smile before returning to her task, one hand on Emily’s breast to guide it back to her mouth while the other moves to Emily’s pants to start working on the pair of buttons there. She struggles for a moment, one-handed, but when they give way she’s filled with a rush of arousal and adrenaline. She glances down to watch herself pull at one side of Emily’s pants to try to split the zipper but it doesn’t part as easily as she expects it to, the expensive material too pliant. She’s about to sit up so she can use both hands when she sees Emily’s hand move from where it sits in her lap to hold the other side.

When Stephanie pulls again, the zipper parts easily and she can see the scalloped edge of light pink satin.

She nicks the firm flesh in her mouth with her teeth and hears a shaky sigh above her. It serves only to encourage her further and she doesn’t hesitate to slip her hand into Emily’s pants. She does sit up for that; she wants to see Emily’s face. She’s as light as she can be, barely grazing over the soft satin beneath her fingertips and she sees the way her eyelashes flutter at Stephanie’s touch.

She’s about to ask if Emily still has the phone on mute when she speaks sharply into the receiver, something about getting a photographer from the New York Post to be conveniently placed at an event to ensure tabloid-esque coverage of another designer’s misstep. Stephanie’s still not sure what the emergency requiring this mid-flight phone call with so many people could be, but she’s sort of grateful for it. It’s giving her a new playground, something different than kids upstairs or a husband on his way home. She waits until Emily’s finished speaking before she leans in to kiss her. It’s a quiet kiss, slow and soft and Stephanie’s able to tease Emily’s tongue without any resistance.

She slides the back of her fingernail down the satin as far as she can reach, then twists her wrist to drag it back up. She feels the soft rise of flesh through the satin and smiles to herself at the sound of Emily’s quick inhale and tilt of her hips.

Her touch is moving down again when Emily turns her head away so she can speak once more; she still sounds confident and in business mode and Stephanie finds it incredibly sexy. She waits until Emily seems to be finished speaking, then guides her with her free hand right back into another kiss as she presses the tiniest bit more firmly. Emily’s hips tilt again and Stephanie knows she’s asking for more.

There’s a lot about this relationship—for lack of a better moniker—Stephanie enjoys, but none more so than the confirmation (or, at this point, the reminder) that Emily enjoys it, too, is aroused by her, is more than happy to sit back on an airplane during a business call and allow Stephanie to touch her.

She’s as light with her tongue as she is her touch and pride rushes through her when she feels Emily shiver. She can’t help herself and slips her fingertips under the satin, eager to feel the effect she’s had so far. She finds slickness and has to stop herself from making some type of cheeky comment. Instead, she catches Emily’s tongue between her lips and sucks on it.

She feels fingers twist into her hair for Emily’s response and Stephanie hums at the tightness of her grip.

Emily pulls away to speak again and this time, Stephanie doesn’t wait idly for her to finish. She leans down to take Emily’s nipple into her mouth again, having to pull against the hold Emily has on her hair but she’s allowed to move without much of a fight. She finds a pattern with her fingers, a slow, gentle circle and above her, she hears Emily hiss a quiet, “Yes,” as her back arches and hips lift.

It’s an unknown how long the phone call may last; it could be over in a minute or an hour. She could touch Emily like this, slowly and lazily to drive her mad with need. Or, she considers when she feels Emily’s legs part further and her hips start moving to match her speed, perhaps the tiniest bit more quickly than Stephanie’s pace, she could see just how professional and in-control Emily is when she really needs to be.

She presses a bit more firmly, pads of her fingers rolling back and forth. She must be hitting a nerve just-so because Emily’s knee keeps bouncing as though in reflex. She smiles against Emily’s breast, amused by it, but she adjusts to make it stop. Instead, she speeds up, pausing now and then to dip her fingers lower and into Emily to feel her and draw more wetness up with her fingers.

It reminds her of their first night together, watching a sexy movie while Emily tried to be defiant as Stephanie teased and massaged her clit until she finally begged for it.

The memory makes her teeth nick Emily’s nipple again and her hips jerk in response. She glances up and though it’s difficult at the angle, she can tell Emily’s eyes are closed and her cheeks are tinted pink.

Her own impatience gets the best of her. She can feel how much Emily wants her and Emily is the only thing in the world Stephanie wants right now. She slides off her seat to the floor and temporarily abandons Emily’s clit, licking her fingers quickly before reaching for the waistband of Emily’s pants to pull them down.

They slide easily, Emily lifting to help, and she doesn’t bother trying to get them over both of Emily’s shoes. One’s enough so she can move between her knees, hands on Emily’s thighs to part them. She can feel Emily’s hand in her hair, combing and pulling, and she doesn’t even look up at her before she does it.

There’s something empowering about that, not looking up for permission she knows she has. It’s erotic in a way she’s still getting used to, to lean in, pull the strip of satin to the side, and taste Emily.

She hears Emily stutter and lose her place in whatever it is she’s saying to the Board and it fills Stephanie with pride. She takes Emily’s swollen clit between her lips before she’s found her place in her sentence and she feels a sharp tug on her hair. It almost feels like a warning or a request to stop but the very next second she’s being pulled in closer.

She hears Emily grind out a frustrated, “Never mind,” instead of ever finishing her thought and Stephanie wonders if she’s ever had to do that before.

Feeling victorious, she glances up to find Emily’s eyes no longer closed; now they’re locked on her so she tightens her lips and pulls back, taking Emily’s flesh with her until it slips from her mouth. “That sounds really important,” she says quietly. “Don’t let me distract you.”

She can tell Emily’s about to respond until she remembers her phone isn’t muted. Instead, Emily pulls her back in and Stephanie’s more than happy to oblige.

They’ve made love many ways during their short affair. Stephanie has loved them all but Emily parting her legs and asking for Stephanie’s mouth—sometimes verbally, sometimes in other ways—is arguably her favorite.

(Okay, it might be tied with being invited to sit on Emily’s face.)

She’s generous with her tongue this time, first taking care of the arousal that’s starting to drip before lapping slowly at Emily’s clit.

She feels Emily’s leg, the one free of pants, lift to rest over her shoulder so Stephanie adjusts, wrapping an arm around her leg and pressing closer. A second later, she hears a quiet hum and feels a vibration and for a moment she’s shocked and excited that Emily has somehow produced a sex toy but when she looks up in curiosity she sees that it’s the seat and not a toy that’s humming as Emily presses a button to make it recline.

“Fuck,” she whispers between strokes of her tongue; it’s even hotter than an unexpected vibrator because Emily’s making herself as comfortable as she can to let Stephanie do as she pleases while Emily suffers through her business call.

She takes a particularly strong swipe and hears Emily’s breath catch. There’s a delay where Stephanie knows there wouldn’t otherwise be between that sound and the moan that finally comes. “Jesus fuck, baby,” follows and Stephanie assumes the phone’s back on mute. Or, at least, she hopes it is for the sake of Emily’s reputation...though the concept that it might not be is titillating, Emily getting too caught up in how Stephanie makes her feel to forget her professionalism and letting a conference room full of executives hear her moaning.

She lets herself believe that to be the case and doubles her efforts as though she’s daring Emily to keep quiet. She’s had to be the one to bite her lip and cover her mouth more than enough times and it’s fun to be on the other end of things for a change.

When she hears Emily’s breath catch, she presses inside, first with her tongue, just because, then with her fingers, firm and sure as they slide easily. She curves them and watches Emily’s hips lift off the seat for a second before they’re pushing closer.

“Then find another venue, Dennis, what the fuck do you want me to do about it?” Emily’s voice is clipped and Stephanie can tell she’s more than impatient to end the call.

It’s the least Stephanie can do to be entertaining Emily, she thinks with a shrug to herself as she fucks Emily slowly, fingers moving in long strokes. She’s rougher and quicker with her tongue; she’s always loved the way Emily reacts when she gets the angle right, that spot that’s always ‘a little to the left’ that makes her toes curl.

She knows she finds it without guidance this time when the heel of Emily’s shoe scratches at her back. It’s digging into her and trying to reel her in closer and she really can’t get any closer so instead, she presses more firmly into that spot with her tongue.

“Fuck, that’s—that’s not my fucking job. That’s why we have Elena. Why isn’t Elena on this call if this is about an event? She’s your events person. Not me. Fuck!”

Stephanie doesn’t know which, if any, of the curses are directed toward her but it doesn’t matter. Emily’s not pulling on her hair anymore. She’s just holding Stephanie there, hips starting to buck out of rhythm.

Stephanie wonders what she should do. Emily’s close; so close Stephanie can taste it. Literally, she thinks with a smile. Should she stop, or back off to let Emily unwind before it’s too late? Or should she keep going and see if Emily will allow her to take her all the way to orgasm and back during her phone call?

“Fuck, don’t stop, baby,” Emily says with a groan to answer Stephanie’s debate.

She hums in response and glances up to see Emily’s eyes locked on her, dark and intense. She looks like she’s being fucked on a private jet, disheveled and half-naked in a white leather seat and Stephanie can’t help herself. She takes her free hand back from where it’s been holding on to Emily to keep her close. She doesn’t need to do that now; Emily will do that on her own. And she reaches under her dress, between her thighs, under her panties to touch herself.

She moans at the much-needed relief and she can see it on Emily’s face that she knows what Stephanie’s doing.

But she doesn’t do anything to stop her.

Instead, she says, “God, I can hear how wet you are.”

The words make Stephanie shiver and all she can do is hum and close her eyes because every ounce of her energy is devoted to other things.

“Hey, hey guys,” Emily barks and it makes Stephanie flinch at the unexpected change in tone. “You need to figure this shit out on your own. I’m going to stay on the call so I know what stupid decisions I’ll have to fix for you tomorrow, but consider me gone.”

She hears the sound of a dozen voices yelling at once as Emily turns on her speakerphone for the call and Stephanie’s genuinely impressed that Emily’s doing exactly what she said she would. She looks up again in time to see her toss her phone into Stephanie’s empty seat, look down at her, and say, “Fuck, you look so good, baby.”

Stephanie winks and feels even sexier in doing so than she had seconds earlier despite everything.

Emily’s louder now, like the nights she spent at Stephanie’s house with Miles at his grandparents’ house. Uninhibited. Uncaring that they could be caught because there’s no one to catch them, no one to interrupt them. They’re thirty-five thousand feet in the air and alone, save for two pilots behind a locked door with much more important things to pay attention to. It makes Stephanie moan, too, no longer concerned with whether or not Emily’s call is muted. Emily’s hand, the one not resting on Stephanie’s head, is on her breast and Stephanie watches the way she plays with her own nipple, memorizing the patterns of touching, twisting, and tugging so she can repeat them later.

It’s with a gasp and a whimper that Emily comes, tense and unmoving for an eternal second until she snaps and her hips buck in a way that makes it almost impossible for Stephanie to keep her tongue on her with any sort of precision, but it doesn’t really matter now.

She groans her appreciation for it; she loves when Emily comes for her like it’s some kind of twisted gift, one that Emily chooses to give her. It’s everything she can do to stop her own orgasm. She yanks her hand away from herself to hold Emily’s thigh to keep from suffocating between them (not that she’d mind…) and feels the tiniest quiver of ecstasy make her clench and her own hips rock forward for friction that isn’t there.

Her reason to wait will be worth it, she reminds herself, as she waits until the body above her is finished twisting in release. Once Emily’s calm again, her fingers starting to comb through Stephanie’s hair, she gets off the floor, makes quick work of slipping her panties off, and moves to straddle Emily’s lap. She takes her hand, the one that’s been in her hair for however long she was on her knees, and guides it between her legs.

Emily’s slow to react and she takes immense pride in that, that she’s still trying to recover. It’s not as though Stephanie needs a massive effort on her part for this anyway. She guides Emily’s fingers into her, sees the way she looks up at her, still dazed but there’s a hint of familiar smirk returning that disappears as soon as Stephanie leans down to kiss her.

She’s moving as soon as their lips touch, rocking and holding Emily’s hand in place firmly against her so she can grind against it as she claims Emily’s mouth with her tongue. She loves when they’re like this, raw and sensual and a bit dirty and she loves when Emily lets her take what she wants when she lets her be in control. She’s pretty sure by now that Emily wants Stephanie to be in control sometimes, that Emily likes when Stephanie does things like tie her up or pin her down. She’s sure Emily likes it as much as Stephanie likes being told to get on her hands and knees to be taken from behind.

It’s a good set-up they’ve got going, she thinks. The give and take, their little games of dominance and submission that haven’t started to challenge Stephanie’s personal boundaries yet, but she thinks they might sometime soon. Maybe while alone together on this trip. She’s kind of in the mood to be tested.

The possibilities and scenarios that assault her imagination are so distracting that it doesn’t even register with her that she’s close until she’s already coming, moaning against Emily’s mouth, lips touching but not really kissing as she feels Emily’s tongue darting in and out, still teasing even as Stephanie starts to come back to herself.

She doesn’t hear the angry, arguing voices on the phone anymore so the call must have ended or maybe Emily hung up, but she’s grateful all she can hear is their heavy breathing and the loud hum of the jet engines carrying them farther and farther away from Emily’s husband.

The thought makes her lips curl into a smile and she kisses Emily again now that she’s of sound mind once more and she lets her hips resume rocking. Not hard, or fast, but enough to be able to feel Emily still inside her. It’s enough to get Emily participating again and Stephanie shivers as Emily’s fingers curl and press into her.

“Was that your way of thanking me?” Emily says with a lazy smile when Stephanie has to pull back to moan.

It takes her a few seconds to rebuild the events of the past couple of hours, their conversations and references, until it clicks. “It’s a start,” she says as suggestively as she can. She knows the impact is probably lessened a bit by the way her eyes keep trying to close and how hard she knows she’s tightening herself around Emily’s fingers, but she doesn’t care much. They can have their verbal tête-à-tête another time when Emily’s not knuckle-deep inside her and when she’s not making Stephanie help her to lift her dress over her head and off so she can pull Stephanie down at a new angle that puts her breast in Emily’s mouth.

It forces Stephanie to shift higher up Emily’s body, but it’s easy with how far back the seat reclines, almost 180º.

What it also allows her, she discovers by accident when she’s balancing herself to work her way up on her knees, is that now she can reach behind herself and find Emily again, even wetter than she’d left her.

It’s not the best angle, and she has to choose between sitting up and touching Emily or bending forward to have her nipples kissed and licked. Her own need wins out for a while, until her nipples are too sensitive to withstand more attention. Then she sits back, sits up nice and straight because even if it’s narcissistic, she knows she looks good in this position and reaches back and into panties she long ago should have stripped from Emily to find her clit, warm and swollen with need as she rides Emily’s fingers.

She feels Emily’s hips lift beneath her and it reminds her of what it was like to have Emily sitting astride her this way and despite the numerous positions they’ve tried with Emily’s strap-on, something as basic as this has yet to happen. She’s allowed Emily to be the one in control if Emily was wearing it which has put Stephanie (very willingly) onto her back, or her hands and knees, or the washing machine.

If it wasn’t packed away in her suitcase stored somewhere on the plane, she’d stop and retrieve it and take care of that oversight right here and now.

But, that will have to wait for another time, maybe tonight at their hotel. The thought makes her hips move more quickly, rolling again and again against the fingers that are inside her. They’re both moving, now, and Emily’s lifting her hips like she’s fucking her with them, and she’s really not, Stephanie’s seated too high, across her stomach, for it to have any effect but it’s probably less about trying to fuck Stephanie and more about the way Stephanie’s fingers are framing and squeezing Emily’s clit as it slides between them with every thrust.

Emily’s free hand finds Stephanie’s left breast and she’s not really doing anything more than holding on, but Stephanie doesn’t mind. She can do all the work for now; she knows Emily will more than return the favor(s).

“Fuck,” she whines, feeling the pleasure starting to coil inside her again. She can’t believe she’s doing this, she never can believe it when it happens, but now it’s even more unbelievable because opening her eyes for a second to look down at Emily, she can see the window next to them and nothing but blue sky and clouds and she’s literally flying.

Emily’s saying something, she can’t tell what though. Her ears are ringing from how hard her heart is beating but she’s nodding as she says it before her eyes slam shut and her head tilts back and her back arches off the seat and Stephanie comes with her.

She almost falls backward because she can’t bend forward without surrendering her ability to touch Emily but an arm around her waist catches her. There’s so much adrenaline and arousal flowing through her veins she wonders how she’s ever supposed to stop this. She wonders how they ever manage to stop, to act like platonic friends around each other, ever. It’s amazing to her that they can ever do anything but do everything they can to make each other feel this way.

A hand glides up her sweat-soaked back and she’s forced to slide backward until she can’t reach Emily anymore, and she’s brought down. Emily wants to kiss her and who is she to deny Emily that? Or anything, for that matter.

She hears herself moan into it, and she’d be embarrassed by how turned on she still is if Emily didn’t chuckle through their kiss knowingly. She’s still stroking Stephanie slowly but she can tell Emily’s working toward reclaiming her hand.

“How long until we land?” she asks before moving to kiss Emily’s neck, lapping at her skin and relishing the taste. She’d broken a sweat, too.

Emily laughs again and it sounds magical to Stephanie. “Save some for tonight, baby.”

“I’m never going to get tired of this,” she admits as she sinks her teeth into Emily’s neck, not hard enough to leave a mark or even inflict much pain; just enough to make Emily gasp because she knows Emily likes when she uses her teeth.

And she does gasp. But it’s followed by a hand on the side of her face, guiding Stephanie away until she’s looking down at Emily, a thumb stroking Stephanie’s cheek. “Hey, we’re good, right?”

Stephanie’s confused by the question. Of course, they’re good. They’ve been “good” since Day One. Did she say too much? Was that too revealing? Too open or honest? After Emily telling her she could get used to lazy Saturday mornings at home with Stephanie, she thought something like feeling insatiable around Emily would be less than problematic.

“Yeah,” she says with a smile that she hopes doesn’t betray her worry. “We’re good.”

“Good,” Emily replies and guides her down into another kiss, this one so soft and gentle it makes Stephanie’s toes curl in a different kind of way. “Let’s get dressed,” she says when they part. “I bet you brought a crossword puzzle book or something, didn’t you?” she adds with a smile.

Stephanie thinks about the book of vacation-themed Mad Libs in her purse; she’d bought it yesterday thinking it could be fun to see how much it would take to get Emily worked up over a story being so ludicrous, but now she feels like she might get teased about it with the way Emily’s asking her.

“Um…”

“I knew it,” Emily says with a grin before starting to sit up with the help of the electronic buzz of her seat, making sure to not topple Stephanie off her lap in doing so. “You’re so fucking cute. Let’s do it together. Let me up so I can use the bathroom?”

Stephanie blinks at her and she imagines she must look a bit owlish; she had expected Emily to mock her but instead, she’s happy and ready to play a game with her. “Sure,” she says happily as she backs off Emily’s lap and onto very unsteady legs. It’s not made any easier by the plane hitting a small patch of turbulence as she does so and she wobbles, Emily catching her with hands to her waist.

Then, as though she couldn’t help herself, Emily’s leaning in and taking Stephanie’s nipple into her mouth again, nothing rough or harsh, just soft warmth and gentle pressure and a tongue swirling around it. It makes Stephanie squeak and brace herself on Emily’s shoulders and she watches her finish before she leans to the right to give the other the exact same treatment.

She feels dazed by the time Emily sits back and not exactly turned on in the way she has been; she’s not desperate for an orgasm or writhing in need, but she feels heady and a bit drunk or maybe high and she wonders if maybe she is. Maybe Emily, especially this Emily who’s gentle and caring and giving, is her drug of choice.

If so, she knows she’s already addicted.

~ ~

~ ~

Chapter 9

[bthenoise]

Celebrate 10 Years of ‘Constellations’ With August Burns Red’s 10 Favorite Moments From The Writing, Recording & Touring Process

When it comes to most album anniversary tours, some fans tend to think those 10, 15 or even 20-year treks are just for the longtime listeners and nostalgia chasers. Instead, many seem to forget about the bands actually playing those beloved records on a nightly basis. 

Take metalcore juggernauts August Burns Red, for example. Gearing up for their 10-year anniversary tour for 2009′s groundbreaking LP Constellations, the seasoned outfit has thoroughly enjoyed tour prep as they’ve run through songs like “The Escape Artist” and reminisced about some of their fondest decade-old memories.    

Be it playing tour games on the road, surviving terrifying snowstorms or the impact of playing “Indonesia” live for the first time in the Southeast Asian country, looking back on 10 years since Constellations was released, JB Brubaker, Brent Rambler, Matt Greiner, Dustin Davidson and Jake Luhrs have all accrued memories that will last a lifetime. 

Speaking with The Noise about some of those life-changing Constellations moments, Brubaker, Rambler, Greiner and Davidson compiled 10 of their all-time favorite memories from the writing, recording and touring process dating all the way back to 2007. To check out the list to get you even more pumped for August Burns Red’s upcoming tour, be sure to see below. Afterward, to grab tickets, head here.      

Lastly, if you’d like a chance to win free tickets – yes, FREE! – head here.

Brent Rambler

The Constellations recording process and touring cycle houses many fond memories for all of us. Here are three of my personal favorites that stick out. Let’s get cracking in chronological order!

“White Washed”

The lyrics for “White Washed” were some of the first more aggressive and “angry” lyrics that I had ever tried to write at the time. However, the words flowed like water because they were very in the moment. I started working on them immediately after a youth pastor surrounded me with a group of teenagers directly outside of our tour van. He proceeded to condemn [me] and the other members of the band simply for having a case of beer on our [tour] rider. He wanted to try and make an example of me in front of all the kids he brought with him. The whole thing was super inappropriate and out of line, BUT the lyrics for one of our most popular songs came out of it so it was worth it!

First Home

The recording process for Constellations was extra exciting for me because literally a week before we left I had an offer accepted for my first house. I remember being very proud because it was a big moment in proving to everyone that I could earn a living off of making music. For weeks while we recorded, I was heading to notaries and post offices to work on the closing process of the home, and since we were in Florida while making the album, I had to sign over power of attorney and do the sale over the phone. We returned home super late from Florida, but instead of crashing at my parents where all of my things were, I grabbed the keys and just sat in my new house.

Chicago House Of Blues

Constellations came out while we were on tour in the summer of 2009. The tour had some cool highlights, but I think the biggest one was selling out the Chicago House of Blues for the first time. At that moment it was our biggest headline show ever and packing such a notable venue felt amazing. Afterwards, we had a big celebration with the other bands backstage and it capped off a great night!

JB Brubaker

“Put Him Up!”

In December of 2009, we were on the road with Underoath and Emery. We became really good friends with the guys in Emery and would hang out with them every night after the shows. They had purchased their own passenger bus and gutted it and turned it into a tour bus. It was DIY but so cool. We’d hang out, drink beers, have dance parties and tell stories. Emery taught us one “game” that we still play on our tour bus today. Occasionally, when someone new would walk on the bus, Toby (Emery’s bassist/vocalist) would slowly start chanting “Put him up! Put him up!” The chant would catch on with other people on the bus until everyone was shouting it, at which point the newcomer would be picked up and crowd surfed to the ceiling of the bus. It was basically a “welcome to the party” greeting and always got a good laugh. We are happy to continue to carry the tradition on a decade later.

Touring Australia 

It was August of 2009. Constellations had recently come out and we were invited by Parkway Drive to support them on a tour across Australia. It was our first time in Australia and an honor to be supporting them. They were the hottest metal band on the continent and drawing huge crowds. After the monster travel day to Australia, we arrived to find a bunch of luggage didn’t make it. Qantas Airlines outfitted us with small care packages to keep us afloat until our baggage was recovered. Inside were heather gray sweat shorts and matching t-shirts. The first show was in Brisbane at an outdoor hillside [venue] called Riverstage. They were expecting 7,000 people which was more people than we had ever played for at that time. When we were setting up our equipment on stage before the show, I failed to take into account the voltage difference between Australia and the US. I plugged in my pedal board and heard a pop followed by the smell of burning electronics. I had fried my pedal board’s power supply, rendering my pedals useless. I had to borrow a pedal board from Architects, who were also playing on the tour. (I think we need to do this same tour lineup again!). When we took the stage that night I was a ball of nerves. I unfortunately played sloppy for the large Australian crowd, but I don’t know if anyone actually noticed or cared. We debuted our song “Meddler” for the first time that night. (I played that song particularly poorly.) The tour was overall a great experience. I have very fond memories of hanging out with the guys in Architects and playing massive shows in every city.

Touring South America

In August of 2010, we were doing a tour of South America. It was our first time traveling there. Our buddies in Blessthefall were coming with us and it was going to be awesome. The first show was in Sao Paulo, Brazil and over 1,000 people showed up. We were treated like celebrities and it was a completely surreal start to the tour. The final show of the tour was scheduled for August 28th in Caracas, Venezuela. About a week before the show, we learned of political unrest in Venezuela. The president there was known for being a hot head and pulling stunts like closing down the airports. It was determined to be unsafe for us to travel to Caracas because of the possibility of getting stuck there should the president lock down flights out of the country.  Instead, we booked a last minute show in Quito, Ecuador. With a week to get the word out, we weren’t expecting much. The show was held in a small youth center. There couldn’t have been more than 150 people there but it was such a special show for us. The appreciation and enthusiasm the crowd showed us was unmatched. We felt honored to have been received with such open arms and on such short notice. What felt like a disaster waiting to happen turned out to be one of the biggest highlights of our South American tour.

Dustin Davidson

The Day The Van Died

Thankfully I found a journal entry from Thursday, April 16th, 2009 so that I can write accurately with every detail about the day that our van died. We were pretty early into a tour with All That Remains and Born of Osiris when as you may have guessed -- our 16 passenger Chevrolet van (unnamed to my knowledge) took its last breath of air and sipped its last ounce of gasoline (which in those days contained 0% ethanol for you engine nerds). According to my journal, we woke up at a decent hour, grabbed continental breakfast from the hotel and headed out on the road for the next show. I was first up to drive on that day and while on the road about 60 miles away from our departure our sound engineer Jade asked me, “So how long do you think this van is going to last? Do you think it’ll make it through the rest of the tour?”

“Yeah, I think it’ll last for the rest of the tour - at least I hope so,” I replied. Just as I finished that thought our speed began to decrease rapidly while ascending a hill on the highway. I let off the gas and the engine shut off. As I was pulling over to the shoulder the temperature gauge shot up, the breaks were extremely hard to press because the brake booster went out and smoke poured out from under the hood when I was finally able to bring the vehicle to a stop. “Well, I think we need a new van,” I said.

I don’t remember how many miles that van had but it was surely over 200k so something like that was bound to happen at any time. Born of Osiris was able to pick us up so that we could make the next show which was in Syracuse, NY and after the gig our friend Ricky picked us up and drove us back to Lancaster so that we could van shop the next day and get back out on the road to meet up with the tour again.

The Storm That Left Us Stranded

In the winter of 2009, we did a short tour with Underoath and Emery. It was a very fun tour filled with hangs and packed shows. However, the drive home was something that I hope to never be a part of again. After the tour ended in New Orleans, JB and Brent flew home while the rest of us (Matt, Jake, TM Josh, merch guy Mychael and myself) opted to save some bones and drive the van/trailer home. We knew there was a huge rain storm coming but we had plenty of time to beat it home by getting on the road directly after that last show - or so we thought.

Sometime in the early hours of December 18th during our drive home, we blew a wheel bearing on the trailer and had to pull over to take a look at it. This was an ongoing problem for us back in the day. You see, this was a time before the Axe-Fx / Kemper. A dark time when we carried many guitar/bass cabinets. Our trailer was always filled to the brim. We were simply carrying too much weight and would blow out wheel bearings left and right no matter how we packed the trailer.

This blow out was one of the worst ones we ever had. Since it was still dark outside, whoever was driving the van couldn’t see the smoke so they ended up driving for a while after the bearing gave out which led to the bearing fusing to the spindle which meant that we couldn’t fix the problem ourselves. We had to wait for a small repair shop to open up so that we could have the bearing fixed and while waiting to have everything repaired the storm passed us. It was only rain at the time but we knew it would turn into a mild blizzard. We finally got on the road in the early afternoon but it was too late - the damage was done.

I don’t recall which highway we were on, but it indeed was shut down and we ended up spending the night in the van on the highway until we could get moving again early the next morning. Around 6am when traffic started moving again, we opted to drive to the next closest exit and get a hotel since the roads were still covered in snow. Our drive home was supposed to be about 18 hours without stops and it ended up taking us 3 days. It’s fun to reflect on it now and talk to those that I share that memory with, but it’s safe to say from that day on, I never drove the van home from the end of a tour again.

Matt Greiner

Constellations Artwork

It was December 2007. I was getting inspiration for album artwork from the most unassuming source, a black and white movie from the 1940s. It's A Wonderful Life is a movie about a supernatural intervention in the life of a frustrated businessman. In the movie, an angel is sent from heaven to show George Bailey what life would have been like had he never existed. At their high-school graduation party, George is reintroduced to Mary who has had a crush on him since they were kids. Under the moonlight, they're walking outside when George suddenly turns Mary towards the sky and asks, "You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down."

As I watched the scene unfold, I played out the idea of a rope tied to a star in the sky. I put pen to paper and ran with the concept, pulling inspiration from Matthew 6 where the idea of Heaven coming to earth is introduced. The stars represented steadfast anchors by which we find direction throughout our lives. The kites represent our own fleeting emotions that will alter direction just as the wind changes. I remember getting on the phone with Ryan Clark, the creative mind behind the company Invisible Creature, and explaining the artistic concepts that would eventually come to fruition in the pages of Constellations.  

“Indonesia” 

In 2007, I awoke to find that a relative had died in a plane crash. David Clapper had always been passionate about flying. It wasn't uncommon to see his single-engine Cessna flying over our family farm in Lancaster County, PA. He devoted his time assisting those in need in Southeast Asia by flying the sick and dying from the bush to the nearest hospital, which often times was a several hour flight. On one of his return flights to the bush, he encountered a storm that blew his plane into the side of a mountain. I remember going for a drive after finding out the terrible news. I was so upset that someone doing such a good thing had died in such a terrible way. Here was a man who gave his time and energy to helping others and, in the end, sacrificed his life doing so. I remember wondering what his last words might have been as the plane spun out of control, crashing into the side of the mountain where it still resides today. I learned an important lesson that day. That is, not every question in life has an answer, at least not one that will satisfy. "This is the time to turn down our heads and turn up our hearts."  

I remember traveling to Indonesia on the Constellations Tour. We played an outdoor venue for a large group of excited fans who were seeing us perform for the first time. When it came time to play "Indonesia," a feeling came over me that I'll never forget, an overwhelming sense of humility. The band I helped start in my parent's basement in Lancaster County, PA was playing in Southeast Asia performing a song written about my relative who had passed away on that very continent just the year before. The fans in the crowd seemed to sing about him like he was their relative, not some stranger who's name they merely read in the liner notes of a CD. Near the end of the song Jake screams the words, "David, rest in peace." I'll never forget hearing the crowd sing those very words so loud they could be heard over the amplification of our own instruments. A story goes a long way, sometimes even to the edges of the other side of the planet.  

[seecourtneytravel]

October 16, 2018 (Tuesday)

Malaysia

This is my last day in Singapore. My bottom bunk roommate, Jana, also has a flight today. Jana is from a country near Germany. All I remember is she was speaking to another roommate in german but I know she was from somewhere else.

Jana

Jana is a woman in her lower 50’s. I asked her what her story was and with the little English she knew she was able to to say, “I am newly divorced, kids are grown, I am alone, I am done with the life of constantly cooking, cleaning and being a house wife.” Jana was super brave. She has never known a life outside of the typical family life. Her kids were in there 20’s and already married. She said her journey would be for 6 months or more and she was just planning her trips as she goes. I don’t ever typically run into brave woman line Jana. Her story was refreshing and memorable.

My flight was at 1120am, Janas flight was at 1330pm. She said she would accompany me at the airport. It was funny because she was worried she would miss her flight, and it was 9am and I was just eating breakfast when I should have been worried about missing mine.

I started to rush with Jana after we finished eating. We had our large ruck sacks and I additionally had a roller luggage. I checkout out of the hostel and then we both walked about a half a mile all the way to the train station. I reached for my wallet and realized I left my purse at the hostel. “Oh my god!” I told Jana to wait with my luggage while I ran back to the hostel. My time was now super close. It was only then I started to worry I’d miss my flight.

After running my fastest mile, I was pouring sweat. I looked like a sweaty homeless woman. Jana was impressed how fast I was. As we were in the train towards the airport, I was concerned beause I had not checked in to my international flight and it was already nearing the 90 minute mark. I still had my Philippines SIM card in and needed to switch it to use my home SIM card for the data to check-in online. I looked around like a sweaty creep on the train to see if anybody had earrings on. I was hopeful to find a friendly face that I could ask to borrow their earring to release my SIM card slot on my phone. I asked this one lady and she took a step back and smiled at me waving her hands in a no fashion. I officially felt like a hobo.

We exited the train and I asked this couple who was laughing together and looked like other tourists. They immediately both reached for their ears to assist me. I quickly changed it over as the next train came. The guy said, “I bet it’s the last time you don’t travel with earrings!” He was right, seems like a smart idea now. I sat and hurried to check in. Most American Airlines will close international flight check-ins after 90 minutes, so I was super worried because it was passed the time of official check in. I completed it online and felt a weight leave my shoulders. I gave Jana a thumbs up.

The train approached the Singapore airport, from there we had to both take an airport air train to another terminal. We both were flying out of AirAsia airlines. Singapore’s airport was really weird. Everything was so futuristic and trustworthy. This airport was all self service. From checking in to checking in my bags. I was so mind blown for how technology was here.

To check my bags I followed the computer prompts and weighed and ticketed both my bags. I was overweight! And by that I mean my luggage was! I never thought that would happen. I now considered myself a travelling hoarder after that and realized I should rethink my needs and strategize. I exceeded the 20kg limit and was now trying to carry on a couple extra kilos.

Once on the plane, it was only an hour flight from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. Once I got off of the plane I made my way to my hostel called “Mingle.”

My first impression of the city was like any normal city. Tall skyscrapers, old mixed with new, and clean streets. Littering hasn’t been a common thing in Singapore and also now Kuala Lumpur. I was impressed. It definitely was much different than Singapore here, it was busy streets with a bit more crowding. It’s not uncommon to see a street rat but it’s still better than Detroit.

I arrived at my hostel in the afternoon and laid in my air conditioned room for hours writing and browsing the internet. Down time is a must on long trips. Or any trips. Once I got out of my room I explored the hostel starting with the top floor. I was greeted by a couple from Seria. They were super social and looked like and sounded like they were from the US. They said they left there country 13 years ago. I asked how they met and they said they met one day at a coffee shop through a friend. The next week the guy asked the girl out and by the next week they were married. And they are still together after 13 years living in different parts of the world together.

I talked a bit with them and then sat down on the rooftop picnic table. Across from me was a guy from Kazastan named Yerzhan. Next to him directly across me was a guy named Ben from Singapore. We all started talking in random conversation. It was fun to hear their stories of why they were there. After it all, Ben, Yerzhan and I planned to explore the city the next day.

Yerzhan

Yerzhan is a guy from Kazastan. His story was interesting and fun to hear. His wife was in Hong Kong for work and if I remember the situation coorrectly, he was in Malaysia for two weeks waiting for a visa to Hong Kongto be with her. Apparently his wife’s job granted only her a working visa without her husband so he was a bit stuck in limbo. I had a hard time remembering Yerzhan’s name, I continued to call him John. At the end of the trip I was able to get the two syllables down. He was an accountant for many years, when he decided that wasn’t his passion, he bravely made a total career change towards photographery.

Ben

Ben is a young guy that finished college and was on a couple day getaway from Singapore to Malaysia. He looked for work on his laptap each day sending out resumes and filling out applications. I’m not sure what his college degree was. He was Singaporean by nature and an athlete.

I was hungry and asked the two where they recommend to get food when it was already 9pm. They both just said across the street. I asked if they wanted join and they both did.

Both of the guys just ordered a juice drink and waited for me to eat. They pretty much kept me company. Ben was fascinated with how I was eating. He told me how to eat in Asia, “the correct way,” with my fork in my left hand and a spoon in the right. He said they use their fork to scoop the food on to their spoon to eat. I kept trying and couldn’t do it. Ben would literally stand over my eating shocked I could eat properly.

After eating we all headed to our dorm rooms. It was a super cozy 4 bed dorm. I fell asleep pretty hard that night.

[apartyofone]

Euro finale

Last of my notes:

The cabbie from Nice airport was talkative and friendly - already a change of pace from the icy cold Swiss. When I told him the name of the hotel he smiled and said - you're in for a very special stay! Wow - ok that sounded interesting. He dropped me off - and within 5 minutes I started to understand what he meant. The name of the hotel is Hotel La Perouse. I suggest anyone reading this account should Google it because my description is probably not going to be worthy of this grand place. Eh, never mind - I'll save you the time.  

https://www.hotel-la-perouse.com/

The hotel itself is built into the contours of a cliff that divides Nice - to the south is the long beach and promenade. (Sadly - the place of that horrible terrorist attack in 2016 -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_attack

But here’s a look at the hotel:

Yeah, it was that good.

The fun started when I checked in. The porter grabbed my too-heavy suitcase and made for the elevator. Which only went to one other level - 5 floors above the street, just one stop. Straight up the cliff. We wound around the hotel to elevator #2. That went another 4 floors. And then the final elevator - up to the top 3 floors! I finally memorized the route by day 2! My room was not facing the sea - damnit - but that probably meant my 300 Euro room would have been 500 or more. That's fine. I had a lovely cool patio against the cliffside, private and surrounded the dry native vegetation clinging to the cliff. The room itself was spacious and modern. In fact every hotel I chose on this top was fabulous for one reason or another. Even Geneva with it's strange sexual symbols throughout the place! Maybe those Swiss aren't so cold after all.

Now I was energized to explore this amazing town. The cab ride had been straight from the airport but the cabbie had told me about exploring the old town sections. That proved to be one of the highlights of this trip. I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the narrow streets and alleys of this ancient town. While I couldn't say that it was crowded with tourists, there were always a few people around. Every different little alcove had its own character to it. So many restaurants - many of them shuttered in the heat of the afternoon. I walked probably 4 miles around just one part of the huge old city, poking my head into courtyards and building if the gate/door was open. No one objected to the obvious tourist having a look around. Warm and welcoming - that's the theme of this part of France. At least where ever I journeyed. Maybe I was putting too much stock into the difference in Switzerland to France? Could be.

I knew I was coming back to this maze of streets on my final day, so I decided to extend my touristic range. I booked a trip through the hotel for a brief glimpse of Monaco and Monte Carlo for the next morning. Then I walked around the cliffside, away from the beach promenade,  to the less touristy area of Nice, near the harbor. The hotel did a great job of recommending restaurants and I found - and enjoyed - a seafood place right across from the yacht moorage. After exploring a bit of the residential blocks going into the hills I trudged back to my hotel. I think I logged a good 6-8 miles of walking! Had a nightcap in the delightful bar area near the pool and struck up a conversation with a lovely lady who was leaving the next morning. Unfortunately I couldn't talk her into extending her stay. But I might have a place to stay in Paris next year. : ) My bag might be heavy yet again.

My final day of vacation - and I think I took advantage of every single moment. After a nice breakfast with my new friend, I put her in her cab for the airport and I met my tour guide Joseph. I booked a  half day tour into Monaco - and it turned out to be almost a private tour! Only two other people on the tour bus - a couple from Italy - and two tour guides! The couple paired off with the Italian speaker, and I was with Joe, a fascinating Frenchman. Around 60 years old, Joe has spent his entire life in the tourism and travel industry, from hotels and hospitality, to cruise ships and now doing tours in Nice and Monte Carlo.

You know how there are some people that you instantly bond with? Well, Joe was one of those guys. (And let's face it - this is a pretty rare occasion in my rather closed off life). If I had more time I think he and I would have had some interesting times, showing me all of the real parts of Nice that tourists never see. I kept his card - I WILL look him up when I go back.

The hours we spent together were pretty amazing. Yes, we hit the tourist joints of Eze - an amazing enclave clinging to the side of the coast above Monaco - and through Monte Carlo. But he detoured to a different route back to Nice, through the chiseled hills that wind around the coastal communities. Not for the first time on this trip I thought my time in Geneva was such a waste! I could have spent days enjoying this amazing place on the earth. Ugh - next time.

Monaco is post card pretty. I only had a chance to see a few of the best sights. Oh yeah, and I ran into Prince Albert.

http://apartyofone.tumblr.com/post/173125069279/so-i-was-strolling-around-in-front-of-the-royal

Joe had a tour group booked in the evening but he pointed to his favorite restaurant, on the main square of old town Nice. I gave Joe's name to the restaurant host.....and I found myself at the best table in the place. The owner came out and trying to speak English grasped my hand. I took that to mean that any friend of Joe is welcome! He left a carafe of his house wine and so the meal began. I didn't even order. Out came this amazing fresh grouper served on saffron rice. All day I started to understand the relationship to north Africa, just across the Med. Now the spices in the foods were reflecting this complex cultural crossroads.

The sun had long gone down and the alleys of old town were dark - highlighted only by the numerous small restaurants tucked in the ancient buildings, tables spilling outside with bursts of sounds and songs. In any other city I probably would have felt a little threatened or worried about the darkness; for some reason (maybe the wine?) I felt very safe as I wondered through the lanes. Finally my feet gave out on me - thank God I had invested in great walking shoes for this trip unlike Euro 17 - and I regretfully ended up at my hotel. I resolved I would be back for more - much more.

I lingered at the outdoor bar for another hour just reflecting on my day. Alas, didn't find a new friend that night. But as I had a crazy early day - travel day - it was just as well. I walked up to the roof top one last time and took pictures.

After packing for my long journey home I finally fell asleep - satisfied that I had made the most of this Euro journey.

++++++++++

I started the day on the roof of the hotel. I wanted some sun rise pictures over the beach and sea. I was sooooo blessed with the weather on this trip. Joe had told me that the previous FOUR WEEKS had been almost non stop rain. Glad that my only bad weather was in London - almost appropriate there.

I knew my travel day home was going to be hellish - it didn't disappoint.

9 AM - Train from Nice to Paris - thank god not on strike. The seatmates in my first class car were all Americans in a group tour. They were buzzing about how they found a pick pocket and outed her to the police.

3 PM - Arrive in Paris, the Gard Lyon Station. I had hoped to dine at the famous restaurant above the station. By the way - if you need to ever book travel in Europe I recommend this site: https://www.seat61.com/. It's the ultimate guide to train travel and more. He recommended this amazing art deco restaurant at the top of this legendary station. Alas.... there was no elevator to the restaurant. And me, stuck with my fucking heavy luggage, was not going to be trudging up 3 flights of stairs. Oh well, next time.

5 PM - Arrive at De Gaulle Airport for my trip back to the US. Check in was so easy compared to what we have to endure in the US. I felt every bit as safe flying out of Europe as with the heavy handed US TSA. Had an amazing pre flight meal - even the airport restaurants in France are superb - to use up my last Euros. Boarded right on time for Norweigen Air flight.

12:00 Midnight, JFK Airport. Slept most of the flight on this most comfortable airline and airplane. Most notable thing - I was on aisle seat with two young males in the middle and window seat. On a 9 hour flight they didn't move once - not to the bathroom or even for food/drink. Zombies? Maybe.

My kids S and C were there to pick me up. Neither one are great city/freeway drivers. But they decided to stay up late and team up to bring me home. I slept most of the 1:45 trip home.

And finally we were back. The longest time I had spent away from my home for....wow....maybe decades. I recall some long sales trips when I worked with Mattel a long time ago.

I was  happy physically to be home. Mentally? Not so much. This trip satisfied many questions for me, in many ways. I had wondered if my view of Paris especially was colored by a first time infatuation. No, my love for that place is set in stone. My mind is even more made up.

I suppose too my unhappiness - maybe desperation!? - of our current domestic political situation is driving me away. Even if that cunt Trump is tossed out in 2020 the devastation he has left has scarred this country. I don't really want to be a part of the damage control - not with the sunset of my life before me.

++++++++++++

What will I remember from Euro 2018? So much.

 The book scene in London was energizing.

 Exploring more of my love of WW2 history. 

Immersing myself in Paris. 

The cold hardness of Geneva.

The warmth - people,  places and things - of Nice. 

A glorious 18 day sojourn, filled with memories and pictures.

Solo travel isn't so bad. Especially in the few spots where it isn't so solo.

This trip has only encouraged me to renew my mind, body, spirit- and passport - for more trips to come.

[avalindin]

California King Bed

Tom Hiddleston fic

Part 1: Issues

 *A/N: This is a mini sequel to Friend request pending...

________

Wednesday

She smiled from ear to ear. She hadn’t been truly happy in so long or as long as she could go back to remember. Her hands wrapped around one another. Her eyes closed, feeling the plane descend and touch down on the sunny lit evening of San Diego.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have successfully landed in San Diego, California. You are now free to use your electronic devices. Please stay remained in your seats until the plane has come to a complete stop. Check around your seat for any trash and personal items. From everyone at American Airlines, we thank you for flying with us.”

Aubery rubbed the raised button sized bit of flesh through her freshly dyed tangerine hair. It was a party favor from a car accident nearly a year passed that took a great amount of memories instead of her life but this, San Diego was always a dream she remembered. She was up and out of her seat with her hand clutching her shoulder strap on her bag. Her boots took her forward one step at a time until she ended at the carousel for her luggage.

The anticipation of waiting made her ignore the many chirps of her phone. Some were from a friend she knew was living in the area. They had plans for dinner and drinks with some memories that maybe she could grasp again. A full minute of non-stop chirps and looks from other passengers made her cave in as she reached for her phone.

I’m sorry.

Please talk to me.

I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. I’m sorry if it was something I said.

“If? That’s a big ass if…”

She rubbed the bump again out of instinct, trying to force herself to forget instead of having her mother’s words burned into her head.

“Aubery, you are not getting any younger.”

She pushed her food across the plate, wishing her mother would finish their little get together. For the many years she tolerated her words, her semi near-death experience was able to give her some clarity. Aubery was hoping it would be given to her own mother in the parking lot but in public would do just fine.

“Is this one of the things I’m supposed to remember? Hang on. I think I need to write this down for later.”

“How about you not be such a smartass? You’ve always been this way since you went off and did that movie, calling yourself Arbidy.”

There were flashes. Dena, she remembered, the smell of leather fabric and a bar bathroom stall.

“I do have offers from people I don’t know. Dena still helps.”

“She won’t be around forever.”

“Thank you, I know that.”

“I thought you were going into nursing like we talked about.”

“Like you talked about. I’m not.”

“I’m not bailing you out like last time.”

“Last time? You fucking kidding me?”

“Can I get you ladies anything else?”

Aubery sighed, knowing by now she would have teared up. Instead, she only smiled.

“We’re done. She’s paying.”

“Aubery Danielle!”

“No, really. We’re done, Maggie. I can’t remember dick and you are having a gay old time, giving me nothing but shitty memories and always putting me down. Lee is gone. He left you, he left me and that’s it. Try and have some dignity to move on instead of blaming everything on everyone else like the bitter old hermit you are.”

“You’re acting this way because of Lucius.”

“Lucius was just like you, caring, manipulative and a total asshole. He put my personal business out in the open just like you did when I was younger. Now, I’m taking a page out of Lee’s book and leaving you behind.”

She got up from her seat and yanked the large packaged envelope from her mother’s purse.

“It’s not that I don’t love our little talks. It’s just that… I don’t.”

She had no idea where the words came from but they felt so right. She turned on her heel and made her way home. In the small space she called her own, she opened the envelope and grinned as an average sized blue box with the Comic Con logo fell heavy into her hand.

Another chirp from her phone got her attention as she looked down to a random number. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember who it belonged to. Every once in a while, she’d get a text, choosing only to ignore it but this time she figured what the hell.

Did you land safely?

“Now that’s just creepy.”

Her thumb pressed the call button just so she could know. The line automatically picked up as she heard laughing background noises on the other end.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

“Hello? Nicholas’ phone.”

There was a gasp instantly drowned out by the intercom above her. Aubery plugged her ear to listen for her mouth breather.

“Look, man. If you don’t say anything, I’ll never know how perverted you really are. I don’t have this contact saved and not only do you keep sending; I don’t answer.”

There was something that could have been a sigh.

“Okay, whatever. Greetings from the West Coast, bitch.”

She ended the call as the conveyer belt shifted to life. She wasn’t bothered by the phone call. Her eyes zeroed in on the green grandma’s sofa fabric of her suitcase rolling back towards her. Her hand wrapped the handle, making her press forward to the sliding doors, planting her feet for a moment in the shining setting sun of California.

“Tom! You alright?”

Tom inhaled as quickly and calmly as he could with a forced smile to his face. Mark’s hand at his shoulder had pulled him back from his daze.

“Yes, all good.”

“Cool. When does your flight leave?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

“Mine’s in the morning. We’ll see you there.”

Tom nodded his head, making his way to his room alone. His door slammed behind him, leaving him to open his hand to the still lit screen. A while thirty seconds of hearing her voice after two years the last time he saw her. His heart thundered remembering the purple tie dye dress that slid down her shoulders, the neon pink heels that echoed his head after all that time.

He pushed back the lump in his throat and tried to focus on packing the last of his things. She was in San Diego and the next day he would be too. He shut off his lights and sank to his bed.

Such a big bed and she would have fit perfectly. He closed his eyes praying to find her, to hold her, something he never got to do.

“Okay. I got to do this right.”

Aubery kicked off her flats and turned herself, adjusting for maximum landing. She launched herself back as her whole body hit the king size bed. Her laughter failed to quiet as she peeled off her tights and what was left of her traveling clothes, giving in to her exhaustion thanks to the soft mattress.

“Worth the money,” she sighed.

-

Friday

Her hand wrapped around her long island iced tea and she knew soon it would kick in and reflect her life choices. If anything, it would help her remember. The hidden booth in the corner was perfect for dinner and the drinks that led into the evening. Her friend did what she could but nothing new came to her and she was grateful for the memories she did retain. Long after the check was paid, she was left alone with the drink she was nursing. The waitresses let her be. Aubery knew she couldn’t stay in the booth forever.

There was still so much that she had to do. First, was sleep off her emotions. Her lucky wouldn’t allow her to attend the Con for the full time but there was California waiting for her. There was always the beach. She edged her way out of the booth as it gave her goosebumps, swearing she could feel someone there with their hand on her leg.

“Ma’am?”

“Sorry. I was wondering if I could move this to the bar. I know it’s late but I don’t want to hog the booth.”

“Sure thing.”

The waitress grabbed her drink and led her to the bar to the only empty seat. She cleared the high stool, knocking her bag into the leg of the gentleman next to her. Her inebriated stat made her clear her throat, quick fast and in a hurry.

“Shit, sorry!”

Smooth.

“It’s okay.”

He turned with a flashing grin to her as she returned it.

“Good.”

“Here’s your drink, ma’am. Anything I can get for you, sir?”

He pointed to Aubery’s drink.

“That actually looks good. What’re you having?”

“Long Island Iced Tea, I presume or what’s left of it. I may get another.”

“Then I will take one and one for her too.”

“Coming up, Mr. Ruffalo.”

“Wait, what?”

Aubery’s face reddened more as Mark chuckled.

“That must be strong because I thought you would have said something by now,” he waved off.

“How the hell did I not put that together?”

“Half of your drink.”

“Smart man. It is definitely strong. The east coast could take some notes.”

“Are they really weak over there?”

“Yeah, that’s why our states are red.”

“Ugh, damn American politics.”

“I second that.”

Aubery turned to the new voice behind her. She only had a moment to look at his face before it filled with happiness.

“Arbidy!”

Aubery felt his arms nearly crush her, making Mark laugh. She wiggled away, chuckling nervously.

“I really don’t mean to sound like a bitch but how do you know that name?”

“Au- It’s me, Luke! We worked The Night Manager together. We’re both friends with Dena.”

“Oh, um,” she never enjoyed explaining but it had to be done, “I was in an accident last year. I cracked my head open and don’t really remember much.”

“Shit, I am so sorry!”

“No, it fine. I got this cool bump as a keepsake. Wanna touch it?”

“I’m fine.”

“I do,” said Mark as he reached for her dyed hair.

She faked a sharp wince, making Mark and Luke jump.

“I’m sorry,” she chortled, “but I never got to do that!”

Luke sat in the next available seat and raced through his phone.

“Okay, do you remember this?”

He’d brought up a folder of pictures with Aubery smiling as her neck was wrapped in a pink feather boa.

“Oh, God.”

Tears filled her eyes as she remembered Dena dragging her to a rave scared but leaving with a smile and a sweet-smelling boa she was gifted from the locals.

“That explains why I keep finding pink feathers in my things.”

“Hugh still asks about you.”

“Hugh. Jackman?”

“Laurie.”

“I know House?! Wow…”

Luke wrapped his arm around her shoulder, easing her a little as a few memories began to come back with a vengeance.

Saturday

Tom stepped out of his elevator, wonder if a drink at 2am was the best. He wandered the lobby, looking to the desk, thinking back to the training he did for The Night Manager. Something told him to stop and he did as he looked up to the emptying bar.

“Tom!”

Luke wrapped his hand around Tom’s wrist and led him in the direction of the bar. It would explain why Luke wasn’t in his room. His eyes found Mark and the many empty glassed in front of him and the woman in a light sundress. She pulled the edge of her dress down to cover her shorts. She turned her tangerine hair, knocking the wind from his chest.

“Arbidy.”

It was a single breath that he needed from her again. She was so different. He’d missed her so much. Aubery checked her phone.

2:43am

Nothing good ever happened but she’d make an exception as she sipped more of her brought drink.

“Aubery,” shouted Luke, “You can’t tell me you don’t remember this one!”

Tom lunged forward wrapping his arms around her waist, nearly to his level. He pressed his lips to hers, filling his veins with two years of emotion. Aubery wasn’t sure what was happening. She held onto the bar behind her with her head spinning on a full axis. She shoved Tom away and took a moment to look up. When she did, her blood ran cold.

“Aubery?”

She’d seen his face but it didn’t click until then. It was his hand at the booth that was on her leg. Her heels that clicked toward him. The eyes that burned into her were ones that had taken forever to notice her. A memory filled her head as Tom also remembered. It was too late.

“Asshole.”

“Wait…”

“I waited for 12 hours, you dick.”

“Aubery. You okay?”

“No but it was nice drinking with you guys.”

“Plea…”

Aubery grabbed what was left of her drink and tossed it into Tom’s face. She pushed her way out of her seat and stumbled to the door with Mark following a few seconds behind her. She left them and her phone behind with Luke to break the silence.

“What was that?”

“What part? The drink of the way she looked at me like she didn’t know who I was?”

“Tom. There’s something you need to know.”

Aubery tried to steady her breath as she looked in her bag for her phone.

“Arbidy, wait!”

Tom rushed outside with the phone she’d left behind. Mark was already with her to make sure she was safe.

“Let’s everyone try to calm down.”

Aubery was busy mouthing drink curses to Tom over Mark’s shoulder and he knew he deserved every one of them.

“Can I just explain?”

“No,” huffed Aubery.

“Look. Tom, we have somewhere to be in a few hours. Go get some sleep and I’ll get her a ride.”

“I’m not leaving her. I’ve already made that mistake.”

“I’m not telling you where I’m staying Nicholas Sparks.”

“Fine. New plan. She’ll come with us. We’ll use Luke’s badge to get her in as long as she keeps quiet.”

“Just don’t leave me alone with him.”

Aubery felt it was more for her because even though she was infuriated with Tom, she didn’t trust herself with what she felt for him. She kept her mouth shut and her head down as Mark led her to wherever that were going.

“Here!”

Mark flipped on a light to a conference room with cots spread out from wall to wall.

“Restroom’s there. You need a bucket.”

“No. I can hold my liquor. That I always remember.”

“You can rest here until you wake up. You never know with certain drivers.”

“I appreciate it,” she blushed, giving the badge back.

“Yeah, well, try not to thank me. You will once you talk it out.”

Mark slipped out the door, shoving Tom inside. She rolled her eyes at the sound of the locking door behind Tom. He held out her phone as she snatched it away.

“Can we talk?”

“May as well. Try and tell me the truth. No one else will.”

“Okay, uh…”

“I’ll start. Why’d you leave me in that lobby for 12 hours?”

He started to open his mouth again.

“Seriously, no bullshit. Five words or less.”

“I was scared.”

“Alright.”

“What?”

She ignored him and reached for the nearest blanket.

“I thought you were a good guy, Tom. Like I really liked you from the moment I saw you. It took eight months for you to figure out I was there and even then, I had to torture myself in those damn heels and open my legs for you to get your head out of your ass!”

“You walked into that bar by your choice!”

“Dena told me. I threw myself at you and you run away like a coward.”

“I’m here now, Goddammit!”

“Whatever,” she huffed.

She wrapped herself in the blanket and chose the farthest cot to roll herself onto. He kept some distance between them as he sat next to her cot.

“They all said you had an accident.”

“Just more drama in my life,” she murmured, “the more I try to walk away from it, it always ends up finding me.”

“Can I ask what happened?”

“Made Freud proud and found someone fucked up like my mother. I told him I wanted to take a break, he lost his shit. It was causing trouble on set so I decided to bow out. When he found out, he jumped in front of my car and I crashed. A light pole hit the top of the car and my head.”

She grabbed his hand and led it to the bump.

“Shit.”

“I was in a coma for maybe nine days. There are some things I do remember, some I don’t.”

She let his hand go but it was comforting feeling his hand on hers. Tom laid his head on the cot next to hers.

“You didn’t remember me, maybe it was for the best.”

She couldn’t help but smile.

“I remember how you made me feel. The stall, the booth. I could never stop smiling. I never knew why.”

It was killing him but he stayed put.

“Arbidy?”

“No, Arbidy was… reckless, bold, mostly trouble. I think I’ll go back to Aubery for a while.”

Her eyes drifted shut. She turned to her other side so that she faced the wall.

“Maybe I was too bold for you, Tom. Should’ve taken things slow…”

She was drifting quick and he couldn’t hold himself any longer. He moved onto the cot next to Aubery and wrapped his arm around her waist.

“Aubery.”

He couldn’t believe he had been a coward to her.

“Mmm.”

“I am truly sorry.”

“S’Okay…”

He buried his nose into her hair, wanting to be given a chance he knew he didn’t deserve.

“Aubery?”

“Mmm?”

“Can I keep you? Please?”

He wanted as Aubery fell asleep tucked between the blanket, the wall and himself. He would move eventually to take off their shoes and wash out as much alcohol he could from his shirt but he wanted to moment to last, just is case. He’d let her slip away once before and he never wanted to do it again.

-

Her head didn’t hurt from drinking and she considered herself lucky. Her side did ache and she knew to flip to her other side. The cot under her was heavy as she felt something roll into her. She already knew who it was.

“You could have picked another cot.”

“All taken, I’m afraid.”

She opened a single eye over Tom’s shoulder, seeing mountains of sleeping heaps on the other cots. She closed her eye and lowered her voice to not disturb anyone.

“Nice. What happened to the floor?”

“Terribly uncomfortable but you can always sleep on me if you wish. I would have done no more than cuddling. I swear.”

“Yeah, you wish.”

The AC made her chilly as she snuggled closer to Tom. She didn’t feel as mad anymore and he was so warm.

“Does this mean I’m forgiven?”

“It means you are a source of heat.”

“Here. Take my jacket.”

It helped as the leather jacket was wrapped around her shoulder but she wanted more. She tucked her head down into his chest, smelling nothing but him. Tom smiled, pulling her just a bit closer. When she didn’t fight him, he shifted so that she was laying on top of him.

“I remember how much you loved the leather. Is this better?”

She turned her head up as his hand drifted to her stomach. She could feel him hesitating. It was cute. She took his hand and formed it to the front of her chest as his fingers curled on their own.

“Yeah but I would have done more.”

Her knee shifted up, brushing near the inside of his thigh. It hurt, it hurt so much and he was surrounded on all sides to try and make a move. Shame that his body wouldn’t listen to his head. His hand reached up and brushed back the orange strands that fell from her ponytail.

All she wanted to do was sleep and she knew what he was doing. The bastard was trying to be bold.

Aubery opened her eyes as his burned into hers.

“Tell me what to do,” he whispered.

“No, I shouldn’t have to. Just don’t get us caught.”

A smile stretched across his face. He leaned forward and kissed her without making a noise. Though it would be a challenge and some fun, he wanted her too badly. She pushed herself from the wall and pressed herself against Tom. He shifted his hips slowly into her thigh, careful to not make the cot creak underneath him.

The AC above them kicked on and was able to hide their sighs and soft laughter.

“You may not like it but I miss you being bold.”

He didn’t wait for her to say anything smartass as he slipped his hand past her dress and down her shorts. Her button came undone by itself, giving his hand more room to meet the in between of her legs. Aubery was quick to bury her face into Tom’s neck and indulge herself by grinding her hips on his finger.

Tom felt it safe to bite his lower lip so he wouldn’t gasp from Aubery’s open and welcome legs to him. He traced her with his longest finger to her folds and dipped his finger into her. His own memories came flooding back from the time they were together. He forced himself to stop and pulled his hand away. Aubery pulled her face away in time to see Tom suck on the finger he’d teased her with. His eyes had sunken shut, needing very much to have her again, even if it meant pulling to the bathroom with 10 other sleep people in their way.

He turned her to her back, making the cot creak only once. He pulled the front ties of her dress apart and buried his face into her chest. His finger rubbed her roughly through the shorts. Her fingers curled into his hair to pull him off her breast. He let go, giving her warm skin a single lick.

“No. Not here,” she whispered, “If you want me, then I deserve a real bed.”

“Consider it done.”

He opened his eyes, smiling mischievously as Aubery reached for his belt.

“My turn. Come here.”

Tom almost gave them away as Aubery closed her front teeth around his ear lobe and her hand around his cock at the same time. There was some strength to her grip, enough that he didn’t want her to let go. His heart raced, fighting his deeper urges to push his pants lower. The hairs on the back of his neck stood as he heard the cots creak slowly behind him. So unprofessional to how he looked under his and Aubery’s blanket but he knew it was worth it.

Aubery let him go and traced her nails slowly up his stomach. She enjoyed torturing him, so much closer to him than they were in the bathroom stall. She closed his pants and lazily rubbed him through his jeans. Her grips gave made him calm as his thumb brushed across her bare chest.

“You need to sleep.”

“Will you be here when I wake?”

“What’ll happen then?”

“I want you to wait for me.”

Aubery stopped her hand.

“I am serious. I’ll only be a few hours but I don’t want to lose you again.”

She pulled her hand to her chest.

“Was I ever yours to begin with?”

“You will be now.”

Tom wrapped his hands around Aubery, encasing her with his body warm so she knew that he was going nowhere. He had a chance to prove himself and he was willing to make sure that he wasn’t going to fuck it up.

His eyes closed, hearing his phone vibrate. It was going to be a long day but as long as she was waiting for him, that would be all that mattered. As he slept, someone had gotten off the cot and given him room to turn on his other side. He felt her arm wrap around him. His deep sleep prevented him from reaching back and grabbing ahold of her hand. He had to have been dreaming as her warmth slowly started to disappear.

Wake up! Wake up!

“Smile!”

Laughter made him shift as his eyes opened. He looked up to Mark as he finished taking another picture of him sleep. He rubbed his eyes, looking to his costars waking on the cots around him.

“Ugh. What time is it?”

He rolled to his back, hitting his elbow on the bare wall. That was when he forced his eyes open.

“Where is she?”

Tom rolled to the floor, seeing his jacket folded neatly next to him with a piece of paper on top. He flipped the piece of torn paper open and felt his heart rip from his chest.

I’m sorry.

Mark squatted down so that they wouldn’t be heard.

“She was gone when I got here and that was at least an hour and a half ago. I’m sorry, man.”

He forced himself up and calmly closed himself off in the unoccupied bathroom. He crashed to the floor, shaking, completely out of touch with reality without Aubery there. He kept his mouth closed but he could only cry.

______

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[clemency-for-the-heathen]

‘To know and not to act is not to know.’ - Wang Yangmin

I’ll try not to repeat myself. I forced myself asleep as soon as I sat down on the plane to China Wednesday night, to banish the pulsing headache that was making me retch, and when I woke up we were about to land and it was 3 p.m. the next day. I was meant to be going to Tianjin, but that’s not where we landed. It turned out I had to transfer. It wasn’t specified during the booking process, it didn’t say on the ticket, the scarlet-nailed thick-as-a-pig-shit fake-tan bitch who checked me in at Gatwick didn’t tell me, and the stewardesses didn’t know whether I had to collect my luggage and re-check-in. It was then that I met a 21 year-old Chinese girl who’d been in London for a month and whose name I couldn’t pronounce, also bound for Tianjin, and she sorted out everything. Before our next flight she spent 3 hours teaching me Chinese. Explaining the 3 characters that comprise ‘airport terminal’ took about twenty minutes in itself. Why was I learning about arable farming in school instead of this? Out on the runway, the dusk was rose and dust, the land flat past the mind’s eye. When I got to Tianjin it was 9 p.m. and I had a sleepless 11 hour wait in the deserted airport without food. I read and thought and watched the night disappear hour by hour. China is a scary place and no one ever talks about it. Three times I had to stand around and wait whilst they called the airline to check I was really traveling on to Korea. Mate, why would I be trying to sneak into your shithole country? When I landed at Incheon, it was approaching midday on Friday and the sky was powder blue. 

 One of those big luxury purple buses took me back to Bundang - Jeongja specifically, right on the river, an affluent area I’d rarely frequented in the past. Sarah was waiting at the bus stop, a merry and porky South Carolinian in her early thirties who’d been responsible for hiring me. She took me to our nearby apartment complex. My room was on the 10th and top floor, freezing from vacancy but decent - wouldn’t have mattered much anyway, for the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. She let me stay in her cramped place all day sucking up wifi, watching Netflix and eating junk until showing up again at 8 with her 10 month-old baby and her husband, Tom, who was from Taunton. They’d actually both been to Portishead last year to get fingerprints done for visa applications at the Police HQ. Tom spent an hour telling me about his trip to North Korea a few years back and I spent an hour asking him questions relating to it. That’s my next destination, without a doubt, one hundred percent (to visit, not to live). Sarah stuffed an air-mattress, blankets, and a a plastic basket full of cutlery, detergent, and household cleaning products into my arms, and I went up to bed. 

 The next day I had burgers with them and Anthony, a giant body-building black guy (coworker, just like Tom and Sarah) who’d thrown his back out deadlifting stupidly heavy weights and could barely walk. If anyone had any beef with him, then was the time to strike. All three of them spoke less Korean than Chris, who’s been here three times for an aggregate total of about a month, which disgusted me, but they were all so funny and friendly and interesting and I was thinking, Don’t give me more grey areas, life, please. Their baby was eating macaroni cheese; the sight was revolting and cut down the half of my appetite that the jetlag hadn’t. 

 After lunch, in a fugue state from that very same horrendous jetlag, I walked down the river to Seohyeon, where the language exchange centre I first learned Korean at is, for one of my six goals this year is to sort my Korean out by studying with a man. The centre was beset by gloom what with all its East-facing windows, and empty but for one Korean man in his twenties sat studying alone. He introduced himself as Tony, and said that he was also looking for a language exchange partner. Oh serendipity, you little cunt, only showing up when you’re not prayed for, like football miracles and cool funny women with eyes so pretty I could kill myself. Just one thing: Don’t fuck me, Tony; don’t you ever try to fuck me, I successfully resisted the urge to say. 

 I don’t remember how I spent the Sunday, but all of last week I had training, which meant sitting in on Sarah’s classes and teaching parts of them. All you have to do is follow the syllabus, standing beside the interactive screen, having the children perform videos in front of a separate green screen at the culmination of each chapter (weekly or fortnightly). The marking is time consuming but effortless. I met the boss, Minnie, a scrawny women presumably named after her round protruding ears, who had that strange empty affability that suits labour camp leaders just as well as it does businessmen. I ended up going to immigration three times in five days, a nauseating Eastern Blocesque abomination 90 minutes away on the subway staffed by utter utter cunts (I know I say cunt too much, but if there ever were a bunch of cunts, it’s at Omogkyo immigration) thanks to her fuck ups, first not booking an appointment, and secondly booking the wrong one. It became apparent that Sarah was the actual boss, had hired me, was training me, had worked in other academies connected to this in China, Japan, and Malaysia, spoke to Minnie with the freedom of a Shakespearean Fool. For instance, Minnie came into the room and asked Sarah to finish some reports by the end of the day. Sarah replied, ‘Nah I don’t think I’ll be doing that.’ Minnie’s face went blank with seething consternation for a good two seconds before she clocked that Sarah was joking, at which point Sarah broke into her Southern cackle. 

 A man came with a bed and constructed it for me; a man came with wifi and installed it for me. I’m borrowing a bike off of Anthony for six weeks until the girl he’s already sold it to comes back to Korea. I bought a TV in order to use my Mac from an American girl for thirty dollars thanks to a Facebook group called Bundang Buy and Sell, which I’d never been able to use before, as I’ve never technically lived in Bundang. She’d told me to meet her at Seohyeon station, and that she might be a bit late. She was an hour late. Her apartment was 800 or so yards from the station. The TV was huge and weighed about five kilos, the transformer I needed in order to use it that she hadn’t mentioned weighed about ten. Encumbered to an infuriating degree, I waddled back to the station like a gullible cunt, sweating through my jacket and swearing through my teeth a serpentine hiss of fuck, fuck . . for fuck’s sake … for the love of fucking Christ. Why? Why? What did I expect for thirty dollars. However, her apartment was small and filthy, and I felt staggeringly fortunate by comparison, and not only because the attractive woman in the apartment across from me walks around naked every morning with the shades drawn up. I noticed by chance, but what am I supposed to do now that I’ve noticed, not look? Come now. She must know what she’s doing. She must know. 

 Got shouted to halt by a policeman who caught me jaywalking. I was so annoyed at Korea having adopted the stupidest of American offences that when he came up to me I belligerently said, ‘What?’ He pointed to the traffic light and said, ‘What colour is that?’ like a patronising school teacher with a hard-on for authority. ‘Red.’ ‘So don’t cross.’ ‘But I’m late.’ ‘Don’t be late.’ Yes sir, sorry sir. Next time I’ll make sure you’re not looking, sir. 

 I met Tony last weekend for our first language exchange session - an hour of Korean, an hour of English. His English is already fluent so there isn’t a lot I can do except help him to sound more natural. He’s been going to the language exchange centre for 4 years and somehow we’d never met, though as it happens my friend Brian who’s back in America right now knows him. He’d helped Brian get a suit fitted last year. I told Tony that Brian had described him as a ‘playa’, at which point he held up his left hand to show me an engagement ring. I asked him why he’d stopped ‘playing’ and he told me that it was because he’d met a girl who likes to get up early and exercise every day. I thought, Jesus Christ, yeh, that’ll do it. So he’s two days older than me, already engaged, has some lucrative job to do with clinical trials in Gangnam, and dresses immaculately as a gay - in short, puts me to shame, even though that’s not the life for me. He confessed that actually he thought I might be gay, seeing as when I first met him I’d specified I wanted to study with a man. It hadn’t even crossed my mind. I said, ‘But even if I were, why would I have presumed that you were gay too?’ He said, ‘Good point.’ With regard to my Korean ability, he thought it was really ok, better by a mile than most foreigners he’d met, but said that lots of bad habits have been allowed to get engrained from studying by myself for so long. As a consequence, we spend most of the time working on my pronunciation and the cadence of my speech, which is a horribly humbling process but only because its happening three years later than it should have. 

 My confidence is being boosted, on the other hand, by all the things I have to do alone, not having a girlfriend to thoroughly administrate my life anymore. I had to go into the phone shop and explain my situation and get my phone reconnected; I had to instruct the moron wifi installation guy on where to install it in the room and why; I had to go back to my old climbing gym today and rejoin as a member. They remembered me and asked where my girlfriend was. I explained that we’d broken up before traveling. They recognised me as a man no longer suffering GBH of the ear’ole and it seemed like we could have a fresh start, having never really been in the mood to make friends with them before. On top of all this, my ego was tested at the hagwon when I was advised by Sarah to pretend not to speak any Korean, because if Minnie cottoned on to me being even halfway decent, she’d try to make me do phone conferences with the mums. 

 Korean tutor - found; climbing gym - rejoined; hapkido - impossible, at least for the time being, since Master Kim no longer teaches past 9 p.m.; football - found and joined a team of ex-pats and Koreans that trains 25 minutes south of me on the Bundang subway line. My stint in Korea was put in perspective when I found out the ginger guy from Sheffield who’s captain and his Irish best mate have lived here for 9 years and one of them’s got a car. Considering I’ve not played with anything close to regularity since my teens, and laden with clunky running shoes, training went alright. Out of the twelve there, I’d say I was probably the fourth best overall. Twenty people showed up to the first game this weekend, though the captain told me that’ll fast shrink down to the low teens. Half the starting lineup are Korean, and none of them were at training in the week, nor apparently ever come. I think it showed, but the other team were so shit we won 5-0 anyway. I was quite abysmal for the duration of my 30 minute runout in borrowed boots at left wing forward, but I think I’ll soon shake the rustiness off. I also think there’s a place up for grabs in the midfield trio alongside the reliable captain and this short fat Korean guy who no one forces to lose weight or stop smoking cigarettes at half time because he’s got the first touch, vision, and intelligence of Zinedine Zidane.  

 Working on my novel and a sub 1 hour 20 half marathon - these pursuits are reserved for the mornings, my droogies. I’m getting up as early as I can and staring at the naked Korean woman for as short a time as possible, and then I get cracking. With all my stress and resentment channeled into my job, which really isn’t bad (one class was a nightmare, conducted by four wild rude arrogant boys, but Anthony came to my rescue, having suffered at their hands during his first month a few months back. I was to stare at the rudest one for as long as it took for him to stop grinning and mouthing off and eventually cry, and that would break all four of them. ‘You’ve gotta nip this in the bud now, man, or you’ll be suffering for a year,’ Anthony said. God was he right. From this day forward, I will be someone who nips things in the bud.), the hopelessness, depression, regret, and lack of appetite that have marked my last twelve months or so is really starting to drain. The sky is frequently blue and the food is oh so tasty, but that can’t be presumed to be enough. To keep them away, I’ve written five rules on five post-it notes and stuck them to my fridge: 

1: Do not concern yourself with that which you cannot change and/or does not matter.

2: Exercise every day.

3: Write for at least two hours every day; read for at least one.

4: Do not dwell on regret. If you learned from it, then that’s enough.

5: Do your best to make that which is not enjoyable as enjoyable as possible. 

 I look at them every morning. This might be considered a pretty cliched thing to do, but then again one of the important points David Foster Wallace was making with his titanic Infinite Jest is that Postmodernism has a lot of orphans to answer for, that its irony and chaos and catatonic realism are redundant, that saying, ‘Oh how banal,’ to anything remotely sentimental or ‘cliched’ in an emotional sense no longer gets us anywhere and perhaps never it. That’s why I eventually decided to also affix on post-it notes to the wall by my bed the story of the two wolves: 

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. ‘A fight is going on inside me,’ he said to the boy. ‘It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.’ He continued, ‘The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.’

 The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, ‘Which wolf will win?’

 The old Cherokee simply replied, ‘The one you feed.’

 If you’re wondering why this blog is called Clemency for the Heathen, it comes from one of my favourite speeches in all literature, delivered by the Judge to the kid in Blood Meridian: ‘There’s a flawed place in the fabric of your heart. Do you think I could not know? You alone were mutinous. You alone reserved in your soul some corner of clemency for the heathen.’ The more I think about this book, the higher the regard I hold it in. It’s up there with the best of the best of the best, sir, with honours. The heathen in question are threefold, as far as I can surmise, but what’s most amazing is that to my mind the line could be levelled at any human being (you have to read Blood Meridian, have to have to fucking have to). Anyway, Clemency for the Heathen has been the title of the novel I’m completely rewriting ever since luscious Nicaragua. 

[corpasa]

Wonderful Southeast Asia Trip!

I am finally back from my international trip where I visited three areas, four hotels, and took a gazillion trains. The background: My daughter and I went to Okinawa Japan where my son is stationed with the Army to celebrate his birthday and decided to also visit the main island of Japan and South Korea. This post won’t be a travelogue but I am happy to say we had tremendous fun. I rarely travel internationally–the last time was when I toured the Soviet Union (now Russia et al)–so didn’t know what to expect as far as languages, customs, foreign money, and everything in between. Words can’t express how nervous the whole thing made me (I’m not a brave person) but with my kids’ support, I did it and am happy I did.

A few highlights:

We planned to carry on our luggage and do laundry in the hotels. That often didn’t work as there were strictly-enforced weight limits on flights.

We traveled Delta’s Comfort Plus to and from Japan. This cost more money than Main Cabin but much less than Business Class and turned out to be a wonderful balance of cost and comfort. Check it out next time you take a nine-hour flight.

I worried about phone charges but that was solved by leaving my phone in Airplane Mode the entire time. Luckily, my son had local phone service so we used his.  

We stayed in US Military vacation housing. This is discounted luxury hotels they make available to Active and Retired military. It had everything I needed at a fourth of the price.

I bought a Scottevest for the trip with its dozen pockets and RFID protection for carrying my passport, military base passes, wallet, receipts, room keys, phone, headphones, rechargers, medication info, and incidentals. It was a life saver. 

The first thing I noticed as I arrived in Narita (the Japanese airport that was our port of entry) was how quiet the terminal was. The people didn’t chatter endlessly as Americans do. That changed when we arrived at Customs and Immigration, thanks to all the foreigners. 

Japan and South Korea have few trash cans and still no trash lying around on streets, on trains, on sidewalks. It seems that no one tosses their refuse on the ground. I ended carrying mine around until I came across the rare trash can or a restroom.

Japanese trains are clean, well-maintained, safe, dependable, affordable, and packed with riders. 

As one who speaks neither Japanese or Korean, I gained an appreciation for symbols and hand motions. Most signs included a visual of what they meant which was all that save me from complete confusion many times. 

The Japanese walk everywhere and do it quickly. Many people older than me passed me up and climbed multiple levels of stairs without slowing down (by the thrid flight, I was stopping to rest). I tracked my steps and floors on a health app and I often exceeded 17,000 steps and over 40 floors. Yikes! 

There are trains to take you anywhere you need. Most people don’t commute to work in cars and taxis are horrendously expensive. But, once again–these folks don’t mind walking. The train we’d take to our tours were always at least a half mile from our hotel. Lots and lots and lots of walking.

Many restaurants didn’t offer napkins with the meal. When we asked at one of the eateries, they gave us a box of Kleenex because that was all she had.

I ate 50% more food than normal and lost one pound. Woot!

A few problems–not unexpected on a long international trip:

I lost my Surface Pro laptop on my Air Seoul flight. Multiple phone calls did no good, nor did visits to the airline and airport lost and found. My biggest worry was security. I spent 3-4 hours changing passwords, locking down accounts and the device itself, and then daily checked my Find My Laptop account. It never showed up, nor did anyone try to use it. I found out too late that I should have installed a program called BitLocker that would wipe the device as soon as someone tried to use it. I still had my phone so became adept at doing everything (like getting boarding passes) from my phone. Sigh.

‘Send’ stopping working on my phone. ‘Receive’ still worked (thankfully) but I couldn’t Reply or compose new emails. Troubleshooting, I found out that Gmail still worked as did my webmail. My workaround became to go directly to the mail sites (rather than my phone’s aggregation of all mail sites). From there, I could copy-paste any message I needed to and reply. Update: It works again, now that I’m home, so it must have had something to do with Japanese/South Korean internet settings. Hmm…

My son broke his Chromebook. By the end of the trip, we had only my daughter’s iPad and our phones.

OK, Debby (over at D.G. Kaye Writer)–you wrote the book on traveling. What did I do wrong that I should fix on my next trip?

–A note on the picture: That was taken at the DMZ. Clever those South Koreans.

More on traveling

I’m traveling!

I’m traveling today…

21 Tips on How to Write Remotely

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice reviewer, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, and a weekly contributor to NEA Today and  TeachHUB. You can find her resources at Structured Learning. Read Jacqui’s tech thriller series, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days

Wonderful Southeast Asia Trip! published first on https://medium.com/@DLBusinessNow

[evnoweb]

Wonderful Southeast Asia Trip!

I am finally back from my international trip where I visited three areas, four hotels, and took a gazillion trains. The background: My daughter and I went to Okinawa Japan where my son is stationed with the Army to celebrate his birthday and decided to also visit the main island of Japan and South Korea. This post won’t be a travelogue but I am happy to say we had tremendous fun. I rarely travel internationally–the last time was when I toured the Soviet Union (now Russia et al)–so didn’t know what to expect as far as languages, customs, foreign money, and everything in between. Words can’t express how nervous the whole thing made me (I’m not a brave person) but with my kids’ support, I did it and am happy I did.

A few highlights:

We planned to carry on our luggage and do laundry in the hotels. That often didn’t work as there were strictly-enforced weight limits on flights.

We traveled Delta’s Comfort Plus to and from Japan. This cost more money than Main Cabin but much less than Business Class and turned out to be a wonderful balance of cost and comfort. Check it out next time you take a nine-hour flight.

I worried about phone charges but that was solved by leaving my phone in Airplane Mode the entire time. Luckily, my son had local phone service so we used his.  

We stayed in US Military vacation housing. This is discounted luxury hotels they make available to Active and Retired military. It had everything I needed at a fourth of the price.

I bought a Scottevest for the trip with its dozen pockets and RFID protection for carrying my passport, military base passes, wallet, receipts, room keys, phone, headphones, rechargers, medication info, and incidentals. It was a life saver. 

The first thing I noticed as I arrived in Narita (the Japanese airport that was our port of entry) was how quiet the terminal was. The people didn’t chatter endlessly as Americans do. That changed when we arrived at Customs and Immigration, thanks to all the foreigners. 

Japan and South Korea have few trash cans and still no trash lying around on streets, on trains, on sidewalks. It seems that no one tosses their refuse on the ground. I ended carrying mine around until I came across the rare trash can or a restroom.

Japanese trains are clean, well-maintained, safe, dependable, affordable, and packed with riders. 

As one who speaks neither Japanese or Korean, I gained an appreciation for symbols and hand motions. Most signs included a visual of what they meant which was all that save me from complete confusion many times. 

The Japanese walk everywhere and do it quickly. Many people older than me passed me up and climbed multiple levels of stairs without slowing down (by the thrid flight, I was stopping to rest). I tracked my steps and floors on a health app and I often exceeded 17,000 steps and over 40 floors. Yikes! 

There are trains to take you anywhere you need. Most people don’t commute to work in cars and taxis are horrendously expensive. But, once again–these folks don’t mind walking. The train we’d take to our tours were always at least a half mile from our hotel. Lots and lots and lots of walking.

Many restaurants didn’t offer napkins with the meal. When we asked at one of the eateries, they gave us a box of Kleenex because that was all she had.

I ate 50% more food than normal and lost one pound. Woot!

A few problems–not unexpected on a long international trip:

I lost my Surface Pro laptop on my Air Seoul flight. Multiple phone calls did no good, nor did visits to the airline and airport lost and found. My biggest worry was security. I spent 3-4 hours changing passwords, locking down accounts and the device itself, and then daily checked my Find My Laptop account. It never showed up, nor did anyone try to use it. I found out too late that I should have installed a program called BitLocker that would wipe the device as soon as someone tried to use it. I still had my phone so became adept at doing everything (like getting boarding passes) from my phone. Sigh.

‘Send’ stopping working on my phone. ‘Receive’ still worked (thankfully) but I couldn’t Reply or compose new emails. Troubleshooting, I found out that Gmail still worked as did my webmail. My workaround became to go directly to the mail sites (rather than my phone’s aggregation of all mail sites). From there, I could copy-paste any message I needed to and reply. Update: It works again, now that I’m home, so it must have had something to do with Japanese/South Korean internet settings. Hmm…

My son broke his Chromebook. By the end of the trip, we had only my daughter’s iPad and our phones.

OK, Debby (over at D.G. Kaye Writer)–you wrote the book on traveling. What did I do wrong that I should fix on my next trip?

–A note on the picture: That was taken at the DMZ. Clever those South Koreans.

More on traveling

I’m traveling!

I’m traveling today…

21 Tips on How to Write Remotely

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice reviewer, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, and a weekly contributor to NEA Today and  TeachHUB. You can find her resources at Structured Learning. Read Jacqui’s tech thriller series, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days

Wonderful Southeast Asia Trip! published first on https://medium.com/@DigitalDLCourse

[vmedley90]

Getting here...

Hi! Thanks for reading this post. If you are here, something brought you. Whether it was a quest for more information regarding upcoming travel, curiosity, or boredom- I hope you find the thing for which you are looking. If there is something in particular you would like for me to discuss, please do not hesitate to ask. 

This is the first of a series of blogs. I will publish them here for now until my website is up and running. They will all be transferred there. I’ve tried to keep the sentences short in the interest of time but it was a long journey and therefore it’s a long story-so let’s get started. 

We began our journey in my hometown. The first step in the long process of our official “move” was to ship our vehicle. We drove from my hometown in eastern North Carolina to Norfolk, VA. From Bragg, you can ship your car from SC or VA. We chose VA because it was closer to my hometown where we would be staying during his leave. We left around 10 or 11AM and arrived in VA around 1PM. He (my husband, the service member a.k.a babes) dropped me off at the hotel with ALL of our luggage and checked us in. As I literally drug all of our luggage upstairs he took the vehicle to the port. Even though he prepared the vehicle according to the instructions, there were still issues at the port. He had to go re-wash and scrub it clean once more before they would allow him to drop it off. 

He caught an Uber back to the hotel and we rested and prepared our things for the flights and bus ride ahead. Our hotel had a shuttle to the airport with just enough space for our luggage. Luckily we were the only passengers. 

Each of us had 4 bags total- 2 large checked and 2 small carry-ons. Yes, they were heavy. In total our bags weighted almost 270 lbs (AMC- Air Mobility Control- weighs your bags when you check in). Enough about the bags (packing list available upon request). Our first flight was with American Airlines. We flew from Norfolk to Philadelphia. It was about an hour- nothing special. We went up, got a snack, and came down. End of story. 

There was a short lay over until our next flight from Philly to BWI. The plane was teeny tiny. It was scary how small the plane was. It was probably a little bigger than a privet jet. Anywho. This flight was delayed by almost an hour. We were stuck on the tarmac for almost an hour for a 15 minute flight. Yes, 15 minutes. Not even enough time for the attendant to hand out water and soda! 

Once we landed at BWI, we had a long lay over until our next flight. Here is where things got a little dicey for us. We landed with American Airlines and our next flight was with AMC. Two completely different airlines. This didn’t register with us so we didn’t think to go get our bags from the luggage claims. Instead, we got some food and lounged a bit before heading towards the AMC check-in area. Babe- there’s luggage claims. we should go check for our bags. 

Me- yea sure.

As we approach the luggage claim area, I think to myself  “o those bags look familiar. Those are our bags. Why are they in the- LOST LUGGAGE??” Lo and behold, we were supposed to come and get them after we got off the plane; since we didn’t, they had been marked as lost. Luckily, we were able to claim them but then we had to lug them around the airport. We decided to just go to the AMC counter to see if we could drop them off. 

On the way to the AMC counter, a helpful USO volunteer helped us re-tag our bags and told us they may take them, they may not. We got to the counter and checked in. Here we were able to choose our seats. We opted for a two seat row near the back. It was spacious enough for us two long-legged folks (he is just over 6′0 and I’m about 5′10), my overpacked bag, coat/blanket, all the other accouterments I thought I needed to be comfortable. Was it luxury- no, but it was better than some of the other planes I’ve been on. More on the actual plane ride later. 

So after we checked-in and chose our seats, the attendant was gracious enough to take our bags so we didn’t have to lug them around. Babe and I made our way to the USO lounge and promptly passed out. We took turns getting up to walk around when one of us was awake but ultimately we slept a lot. I more than him. The USO lounge in the BWI airport was full but seemed spacious enough. There was a sleep room in the back for those who needed uninterrupted shut eye. There was also a play room for kids complete with cribs sleeping areas for children. There were games and toys and computers. At some point, someone brought in pizza but they had a stock of microwavable cheeseburgers and other snacks one could have. Everything was “free to the patrons” but a donation was encouraged. If that didn’t float your boat, you could get food from a limited number of restaurants outside of security. The USO lounge was outside of security also. You could go through security to get to the main food court but honestly who would want to go through that hassle. BWI had a food delivery service that would bring food to wherever you were in the airport. I used it. It’s handy. Not sure how long it will exist though. 

We spent about 6 or 7 hours in a dazed coma in the USO lounge- in and out of sleep. The flight was due to take off at around 8:30 PM so we headed up to security at around 6:30. It took awhile to get through because it was a really busy time but we made it. Once we got through security we made our way to our gate. We were pretty far removed from everything and everyone else in the airport- almost secluded but I guess it was for the best. OPSEC and all. 

We boarded the plane in an orderly fashion. There were both uniformed and un-uniformed service members both alone and with their families. The plane was absolutely huge. Pets and fur babies were loaded under the plane and you could hear their pitiful whines and barks before the plane took off. Each row had about 9 or 10 seats across. Towards the back of the plane, the rows tapered off to 4-6 across. There was plenty of overhead space and leg room for me and him. The ride was long (about 7 or 8 hours) but smooth. There isn’t much to see out of the window and its best to either focus on some activity or sleep. I would advise you to sleep because once you land, you will need to be able to focus. Meals were served but I was sleep the whole time and didn’t eat anything. Didn’t even need the ZZquil I brought with me. Babes stayed up and watched a few movies and fell asleep right at the end. If I remember correctly, the movies were fairly up to date. For the most part, the plane was quiet. There was one child who screamed the entire flight. THE. ENTIRE. FLIGHT. I felt bad for the parents and child both. 

The landing was smooth and uneventful. There was a short briefing over the intercom before we were let off the plane. It didn’t start until everyone was in their seats. If I remember correctly the instructions were only given once so you had to be able to listen carefully so you could remember what you were supposed to do. This is why it is important for you to be able to function once the flight ends- you have to get certain documents out and have them ready immediately upon exiting the plane. You exited the plane according to your flight plan. If Ramstein was your last stop, you were in the last group to get off. 

Once we got off the plane, we were at the Ramstein Airforce Base. We were herded into a huge “welcoming facility” for lack of better term. Maybe “processing” facility is a better choice of words. Either way, we went to a place and had to clear 3-4 different stations before we were able to get our bags. The lines were long and the children, cranky. The building was drafty. It was a long process. We landed around 10AM and didn’t get our bags until about 1 or 2 PM. The dogs barked the whole time. THE. ENTIRE. TIME. Here is where our story differs from the rest.

Since we came during the holiday, we didn’t have the luxury of staying in Ramstein for a night which is the norm. Once we got our bags we went to another holding area for another briefing and was then taken to our bus. The ride was 4-5 hours long with one stop about half-way through for food. I slept half of the way here too. We had a choice of McDonalds or local fare. We got to Graf around 7PM. We were taken to the Welcome center at the Soldier for Life building. Babes went to a special briefing while I spoke with USO volunteers and drank coffee. They were spouses also and gave me lots of helpful information. 

Once the briefing ended I learned that our sponsor, who had been silent for most of this process, was not here. He left us with a PFC who seemed nice enough but it was obvious he really didn’t know ALL that he was supposed to do and rightly so- this wasn’t his duty. His car couldn’t hold all of our luggage so he called a buddy and together we all went to Vilseck where someone, somehow, managed to get us lodging. If I recall correctly, the PFC lucked up on getting us a room there at the last minute. The check-in here went fairly smoothly and we were then able to go to our room and rest. Got to the room. Drug the bags in. Found PJs and other necessities. Showered. Snacked. Slept.

... and so, we were finally here. 

[travelfoody]

[Click above for the video review.]

Flight: PR115

Route: SFO-MNL

Equipment: Airbus A34-300 (ex-IB)

Cabin: Business Class

Seat: 4H, 4K

Background

Even though I recently reviewed Philippine Airlines’ (PAL) business class on some of their intra-asia routes, it’s been a long time since I last flew PAL on a long haul flight. Actually if memory serves me, the last time was when I was 12 years old on PR104 from Manila to San Francisco. Needless to say, I was really looking forward to flying long haul with them again after all these years. I happened to come across a good fare between San Francisco and Hong Kong via Manila on PAL and booked it at the last minute.

During certain peak months, PAL operates 2 flights to Manila from San Francisco. Flight PR105 is on their newer Boeing 777-300ER fleet, while the flight we were on was flight PR115, which is operated by an ex-Iberia A340-300. PAL’s A340s are slated to be retired soon and are slowly being replaced by the A330 and A350, so the avgeek in me decided to try it out the product before it goes away.

Our flight was scheduled to depart at 12:45am, while the 777 flight was scheduled only 10 minutes before us at 12:35am. We arrived at the airport at 10:30pm to give ourselves enough time for check-in and security formalities, and we also wanted to checkout PAL’s Mabuhay Lounge at SFO.

Check-in

There was a long backup of cars as we approached the international terminal at SFO, as several trans-pacific flights were scheduled to depart all around the same time. Tip: If you don’t mind walking a little, you can get dropped off on the other end of the international terminal (G) to avoid the congestion. Since PAL scheduled two widebody planes to depart within 10 minutes of each other, you can imagine the economy class queue at the check-in counters were massive. The business class queue wasn’t too bad, though. We waited for about 5 minutes before we were helped by Nelda, a friendly check-in agent.

Nelda swiped our passports and printed our boarding passes all the way to Hong Kong. We were advised that flights from the US now arrive at NAIA Terminal 1 and we will need to approach the transfer desk and take a shuttle bus to Terminal 2 to catch our connection. She also asked if we had any check-in baggage, which we answered “no” to. She seemed baffled and asked us why we didn’t have anything to check.  I just answered that we travel light.

As some of you might know, a lot of Filipinos flying to the Philippines often bring  pasalubong or presents to their loved-ones back home. Filipinos are also known for having big (and extended) families in the Philippines, which means a lot of presents to bring home. Many Filipino passengers opt to bring two 20″ x 20″ x 20″ balikbayan boxes instead of luggage to check in order to maximize on weight and space.

With our boarding passes in hand, we headed for airport security which had a HUGE line. Thankfully since PAL now participates in the TSA-Precheck program. There was a separate line for Precheck and we didn’t have to wait long to get through.

The Lounge

After clearing security, we turned left and followed the signs to the Mabuhay Lounge which is one level above departures.

Upon arriving at the lounge, a friendly lounge attendant checked us in and allowed us entry into the… Standing Room Only lounge! The Mabuhay lounge is probably the smallest lounge we’ve been to at SFO. The lounge felt very claustrophobic and virtually all the seats were taken.

Since we couldn’t take a seat, we decided to check out their buffet spread to find some assorted sandwiches, BBQ chicken wings, meatballs, and smoked salmon on sliced baguette. There were also some chips, fruit cups, and chocolate cupcakes on the spread. To the side was a beverage cooler with a selection of canned sodas, juices, and a few bottled beers. The back wall of the food area was a self-serve bar with about a dozen liquor selection and a soup warmer, in which they were serving clam chowder at the time. There was also a microwave, a coffee pot, and instant cup noodles were available. The spread was decent enough compared to some US carrier lounges, but none of the food offerings looked appealing to me at the time so I just took a bottle water.

Eventually, a couple of seats opened up and we sat down for about an hour or so while waiting for boarding to be announced. We also bumped into one of my good friends and chatted a bit.

Some people say that PAL means “Plane Always Late”, and unfortunately both PAL flights this evening were delayed. Boarding was announced around 12:25am for a new departure time of 1:15am, while PR104 (the earlier flight on the 777) was delayed for about an hour at 1:30am.

Boarding

We started our walk to gate A4, which was only a 5 minute walk from the lounge.

I decided to take a few shots of the 2 PAL widebodies right next to each other before taking the escalator down to the gate area.

Boarding promptly started as we arrived at the gate. Business Class and Mabuhay Miles elite members had priority access and we were boarded by no other than Nelda, our friendly check-in agent. She even asked if we were able to find the lounge, and we nodded.

The Flight

The entered the plane via door 1L, and were greeted by Racquel, the purser on this flight. We were directed to cross the galley and turn right into the main business class cabin.

PAL has 34 business class seats on the A340-300, which are configured in a 2-2-2 configuration.

image courtesy of Philippine Airlines

We were seated in 4H and 4K, the last row of seats in the main business class cabin.

there is also a mini business class cabin with 2 additional rows of seats behind the galley.

Waiting at our seats were a full size pillow, duvet, amenity kit, slippers, and business class menu.

Sadly there isn’t much storage around the seat other than the seat pocket and the narrow side groove under the center arm rest. This plane being an ex-Iberia plane had an old IFE sytem installed, which was not operational. Instead, the crew distributed iPad Minis and some cheap flimsy headset to all business class passengers (I used my own). There were about a dozen or so new Hollywood movies, and a few classics. Local, Asian, and American TV shows, music, and a handful of games were also loaded onto the iPad. You can also stream the same media content via WiFi when connecting to the myPAL access point using your smartphone. Sadly, no in-flight internet access was available on this flight.

After stowing our carry ons and settling in, a male flight attendant offered us pre-departure beverages and hot towels.

A few minutes later, Athena the other flight attendant working our aisle introduced herself. She then took our drinks and meal orders and asked if we would like to be woken up for the pre-landing meal service, in which we answered yes to.

Boarding was complete around 1:15am and the doors were closed soon after. The Captain soon made his announcements on the PA system and gave us a flight time of 13 hours and 25 minutes to Manila. We left the gate promptly at 1:18am making our flight 33 minutes behind scheduled.

During taxi, Racquel the flight purser addressed us by name and introduced herself. She gave us an updated arrival time of about 6:20am local time and thanked us for flying with them. We had a long taxi to the end of runway 28R and took off at 1:58am. Since this was an A340, we had a long takeoff roll and gradual climb.

Supper Meal Service

The initial ascent was mostly smooth and 10 minutes after takeoff, the seatbelt sign was turned off and the cabin crew sprung into action. Athena came by with a tray of amuse bouche. Then a few minutes later, she returned with the champagne bottle and flutes and proceeded to hand pour the champagne at our tables.

About 15 minutes later, the meal service started with white linen being placed on our tables, and the table settings came soon after.

For starters, I ordered the cream of tomato soup with chickpeas. It was served piping hot, and it was delicious.

My companion ordered the smoked salmon salad with scallops. I had a few bites of it, and it was pretty good.

For my main entrée, I ordered the Filipino pork adobo with brown rice. The meat was surprisingly tender and the rice was cooked well. It was very flavorful, although I wished they gave me a little more meat.

Meanwhile, my companion ordered the alimango (crab) cakes with chili sauce and rice.

For dessert, we both had a cup of Häagen-Dazs ice cream. My companion and I were betting that the ice cream would be hard as a brick, as we’ve had on some flights. We were both proven wrong as the ice cream was perfectly scoopable.

The Lav and Bed

At this point, I was already exhausted so I visited the lavatory to freshen up before bed.

The business class lavatory was really nothing to write home about. It was small, though it had some basic amenities like a L’Occitane handwash, lotion, and mouthwash.

I went back to my seat and converted it into a bed. The bed was angled flat, but thankfully the angle was only slight and I didn’t slide down. The full size pillow had good support and the duvet was very good quality. It actually reminded me of Qatar Airways’ new duvet.

I slept for a good 7 hours and woke up with about 3 hours before landing in Manila. I took a peek outside to watch the sunrise.

Pre-landing (breakfast) Meal Service

2 hours before landing, the cabin lights were turned on and the meal service started.

The crew started with a hot towel service.

Then came the drink cart, in which we ordered apple and orange juice. I also picked up a few snacks from the snack basket near the galley.

Soon Athena came by to set our tables. Warm breads were also offered and I chose the banana nut bread.

The meal started with a choice of cheese and cold cuts or assorted fruits. We chose the fruits.

We were also offered tea or coffee, and I happily obliged.

For the main, I ordered the beef tenderloin kabobs with rice and egg (tapsilog).

My companion opted for the bangus (milkfish) with java rice and scrambled eggs (bansilog).

I’m not sure if I’m just biased since I’m Filipino, but I thought both of the meals were delicious and very filling.

Arrival

The Captain soon announced our initial descent into Manila and mentioned that there’s some congestion on the ground, so we would be in a holding pattern for another 20 minutes.

The cabin crew started their pre-arrival preparations and asked if we needed anything else. The iPads were also collected soon after.

Racquel came by again, addressed us by name, and thanked us for flying Philippine Airlines.

20 minutes later, were on our final approach and had a smooth landing in Manila.

We taxied for a few minutes before arriving at Terminal 1 (the old terminal building).

Deplaning only took a few minutes and we were in the terminal soon after.

Transit in Manila

Upon disembarking, we looked for the transit desk which is right before immigration.

We approached the desk and a friendly agent assisted us. We mentioned that we just arrived on PR115 and that were transiting to another Philippine Airlines flight.  The agent asked for our continuing boarding passes and asked us to take a seat.

We were soon escorted through transit security. Our luggage were x-rayed and we had to go through another metal detector, then we walked up some stairs up to the departure level. Our escort walked us over to the end of the concourse where we took another escalator down, and then another to the bus gates.

We boarded the bus and it was a good 5-10 minute ride over to NAIA Terminal 2.

We soon entered the terminal building and approached the transit desk right by the entrance for our gate assignments. We went up a flight of stairs, and we were back in the departure area. We walked over to the Mabuhay Lounge to enjoy a cup of PAL’s arroz caldo and get ready for our next flight.

The total transit time from NAIA Terminal 1  to terminal 2 was about 40 minutes, so give yourself enough time for transit formalities. I was actually dreading having to transit in Manila, but it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. It actually felt more like transiting through London’s Heathrow Airport, just a lot less efficient.

  Thoughts

Overall I thought Philippine Airlines excelled in the soft product and catering department. The in-flight service was very good. The Philippine Airlines cabin crew weren’t as polished compared to crews from the likes of Singapore Airlines or Cathay Pacific, but the service was warm, attentive, and we felt that the crew were very eager to please. I loved that meal trays were not used for the meal service, and instead the dishes were placed on directly on the white linen.

The food quality and taste was also superb. I was happy to see that they had a Western, Asian, and Filipino selection for each of the meals. The portions could use some work, as the pork adobo I ordered on the first meal literally had only 3 small pieces of pork in it…pretty skimpy.

Now for the hard product:

Seat comfort, privacy, and storage on PAL’s aging Airbus A340 was pretty bad. While there was plenty of legroom to stretch out, the angled flat seat isn’t the best to sleep on especially for a 13 hour flight. There is almost zero privacy, except for a small divider in between the seats. The lack of storage area also meant we had to constantly get up to open the overhead bins to get our stuff. There were also no air vents on this plane. The installed IFE monitor and remote on the seat were both non-operational (as expected). The iPad solution was OK, but the cheap and flimsy headphones they gave out was probably the worst headphones I’ve used in business class.

As I mentioned above, PAL is retiring their A340s soon and replacing them with a much modern fleet, so seat comfort and in-flight amenities should get better soon. We actually had a much better hard product experience on the return flight on PAL’s Boeing 777-300ER (stay tuned for the trip report).

The full size pillow and thick duvet were very nice and made sleeping a lot more bearable on the angle flat seat. The L’Occitane amenity kit and slippers were also a nice touch…no pajamas though ;).

  Ground Experience:

I think this is where PAL needs work. The check-in experience was friendly, quick and non-eventful, except if you’re flying in economy and have to go through the very long queue. The Mabuhay Lounge at SFO is in dire need of an overhaul. The lounge felt cramped and needs a better seating arrangement. It was too crowded and there was literally nowhere to sit when we arrived. The bathrooms are all single stall and there were always people lined up by the food area to use the bathroom.

Food selection at the lounge was OK, but could use more hot food items considering PAL operates 2 flights at SFO every other day. And why serve clam chowder when you can serve PAL’s signature Arroz Caldo at the lounge?

PAL They should take a few cues from CX and check their lounge just down the hall.

Our flight was slightly delayed, but boarding procedures were efficient and we were able to board quickly.

Transfer in Manila took a while as MNL airport was scattered and inefficient. We were lucky we had 4 hours to connect in Manila so we weren’t worried, but I can imagine those with much shorter connection times would not be as as fortunate.

Bottom Line:

Would I fly PAL again? Absolutely! They have a long ways to go to catch up to their Asian and Middle Eastern competitors, but I can totally see the potential for them to excel in the business.  They were just upgraded by Skytrax to be a 4 star airline, so things are looking up. I’d like to personally thank Athena and Racquel for taking good care of us during the flight.

Keep it up, PAL, keep it up!

  (Note: As with all trip reports on travelingfoody.com, this flight was not subsidized by the airline. All flights and accommodations were paid for by us.)

Philippine Airlines Business Class San Francisco to Manila | Airbus A340-300 Flight: PR115 Route: SFO-MNL Equipment: Airbus A34-300 (ex-IB) Cabin: Business Class Seat: 4H, 4K Background…

[yesborg9]

Bavaria 2017

The wife and I traveled to Berlin in October 2015 and Munich in October 2016. This year we decided that we wanted to go back to Berlin. Our trip was booked in July and we were leaving at the end of September but the day before we were supposed to leave I checked the status of our flight and it did not exist. Apparently Airberlin was in the process of folding that summer and they began cancelling all flights from America, without any notification to the customers from the airline or Expedia.

We could not get a different flight to Berlin, but we were able to rebook to Munich with Lufthansa Airlines for early November. As much as I preferred Berlin over Munich, there were still some things we both wanted to do in Bavaria that we didn’t have time to do in 2016. The wife wanted to visit more palaces and castles. I wanted to tour a larger brewery and get further away from the city to see what the countryside was like. We were both able to accomplish our wishes on this trip, but it wasn’t without troubles.

Upon arriving to Munich Airport, we were missing the wife’s luggage. We waited a significant amount of time for it and eventually had to put in a lost luggage claim. Being a Saturday, we prepared for the worst and hit the department store to buy essentials to get her by for a day or two, as we knew Germany practically shuts down on Sundays. I foolishly separated from her in the store even knowing there was no way to contact each other as our phones wouldn’t work outside the US without wifi. After what seemed like an hour of searching for her, I gave up and went back to the hotel to wait for her, hoping she would come to the same conclusion. Luckily she eventually did and we had dinner outside on the only nice-weather day of the week that was wasted in the airport and a department store. She later told me that when she couldn’t find me at the store, she thought to herself, “he’s probably sitting out in front of the hotel with a beer,” and she was right. At this point she wanted to just cancel the entire vacation and go home, but luckily for us the phone in our hotel room didn’t work.

On Sunday I wanted to at least do something on our potentially ruined vacation, but my stomach decided otherwise. Not wanting to go far from the bathroom, we stayed in the hotel and watched Star Trek episodes on Netflix. Eventually we went to a nearby (wonderful) Italian restaurant for dinner, where she received an email saying our luggage was found and was being delivered to our hotel. As great as this news was, we returned to find the suitcase was damaged to the point that we wouldn’t be able to use it for the return flight, so we had to go out and buy a new one. It ended up costing about $90, which Lufthansa reimbursed to us. They also reimbursed us for much of the clothes and makeup purchased on Saturday! Finally, our vacation can begin.

Monday I was feeling good enough to go into the city center as it’s not too far from the hotel. We went to St. Peter’s and climbed 300 steps to the lookout at the top of the tower. Then we navigated north to the Cuvilliés-Theatre, an old opera house that the royals used next to their downtown palace. At that time the wife realized our $80 4-day train ticket was missing. I felt it was a longshot, but we walked back to St. Peter’s and sure enough someone found it and turned it in (would that ever happen in America?). Disaster averted.

Tuesday we hopped on a local train to Oberschleissheim to visit the Schleissheim Palaces, a lesser-known but still beautiful complex. We also went through the museum (which was the older palace) to be confused and disturbed by seemingly endless folk art depictions of both the birth of Christ as well as the crucifixion.

The crown jewel of our vacation this year was Wednesday. I’d booked us tickets to tour both castles in Hohenschwangau, including the famous Neuschwanstein Castle, known for being the inspiration for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty Castle. We hopped on a long-distance train and travelled two hours southwest to Füssen near the Austrian border, where we took a bus into the mountains to the small town of Hohenschwangau . Another disaster averted, I’d accidentally booked the tours for the wrong day, but luckily they weren’t very busy due to the crap weather [it was drizzling on and off all day] and they were able to rebook our tours. After some wunderbar currywurst for lunch we proceeded to the Hohenschwangau [highland swan] Castle which was the summer home of King Ludwig II and previous kings within his family. Sadly photography was not allowed inside the castle; it was absolutely beautiful. Most of the furnishings and paintings are original, including chandeliers and a large pool table.

After walking back down the long way around (to get pictures of the Aplsee [lake]) we took a shuttle bus up to Neuschwanstein [new swanstone] Castle. Where the bus dropped us off, there lies the rickety Marienbrücke [Marie’s Bridge, named after Ludwig II’s mother] over a waterfall where you can go halfway across and take the picture of a lifetime.

Again, pictures were not allowed inside the castle. Much of it was not finished before King Ludwig II bankrupted himself building it and was subsequently dethroned and murdered [officially the state considers his death a suicide]. The castle was only for him. It contained a large throne room, a huge kitchen, a room that’s literally a cave (Neuschwanstein was built into a mountain), and a large theatre, all for just Ludwig. He was unfairly known as the “Mad King” as he was homosexual and loved the arts to a fault. His dethroning wasn’t just due to his lavish spending on palace and castle construction, but the fact that he never wanted to take part in any actual governing. He was considering dismissing his entire cabinet of ministers as they incessantly annoyed him regarding his spending, but they acted first and had him declared insane. At one point he declared that he wanted Neuschwanstein torn down after his death.

Luckily the castle wasn’t torn down nor was it damaged during either World War. The Nazis used the castle for storage of plunder (mostly works of art) and gold. The SS planned to self-destruct the castle near the end of the war, but their plan wasn’t realized before being surrendered to the Allied forces. Today Neuschwanstein sees 1.3 million visitors per year, earning more revenue to the state than Ludwig, his family, or his cabinet had ever considered.

Back in Munich, the wife seemed to have the same stomach bug Thursday that I had on Sunday. Another day of Star Trek on Netflix. But Friday I finally got to see a marco brewery. I chose Erdinger, a lesser-known but still widely distributed brewery located an hour’s train ride NE of Munich in a town named Erding.

I had to book our 2-hour tour ahead of time as they only do two English tours a week and they sell out quickly. The tour was 15 Euros [$18] but included unlimited Bavarian pretzels, white sausages (a common appetizer in Bavaria), and unlimited beer. They didn’t serve the beer in sample glasses, they were full half-liter (16.9oz) glasses! The interesting thing about Erdinger beers is they’re all wheat beers. They continue to strictly uphold the Reinheitsgebot [German Beer Purity Law] by only using water, hops, barley, and yeast as ingredients, as most large Bavarian breweries still do. This makes Bavarian beers have the cleanest taste of any beers in the world, however it takes away from the endless variety of flavors and styles available with American beers. To me, most weisse beers, helles lagers, and dunkels from different Bavarian breweries all taste the same.

Before the tour started, we were given alkoholfrei beers. I chose the Zitrone [lemon] flavor, and it was very good. I’ve never tried a near-beer before, so I was surprised when it tastes like Sprite. Being a Friday afternoon, the brewery had already ceased operations for the weekend, so we were unable to see any live brewing or bottling in action. After the tour, I sampled their Leicht [light] beer and I was quite impressed. Most American light beers are around 4%, but this was 2.9% and still had great flavor. I have a hard time understanding why American light beers are terrible when German light beers are good with even less alcohol. I also enjoyed Erdinger Weissbräu [wheat], Kristall [unfiltered wheat], Urwiesse [darker wheat], and Pikantus [wheat bock].

We were given one last adventure when our train back to Munich stopped halfway home. We didn’t know why and no one on the train spoke any English. We got off at the station, still 25 miles from our destination, not knowing what to do as apparently all train service to Munich on that line was down. Many of the college kids with us on the Erdinger tour were catching cabs as there were no busses to be spoken of either. After some thought, I remembered there were busses in Erding that went to the airport. The wife then suggested we go back to Erding and take the bus to the airport where we could take a different train back to the hotel. This plan worked well and we arrived back in Munich about 2.5 hours later than planned.

Despite all of the hardships we endured, I actually felt more satisfied with this vacation than last year’s Munich trip. The city is beautiful, but this was the first time we were able to experience the German countryside and smaller towns away from the city. The wife spent a year learning basic German which the locals seemed to really appreciate. And as always, the food was great. Last year I said I might not come back to Munich, but after this 2nd trip I think I’d love to visit again, either for Starkbierfest or to celebrate the true Oktoberfest.

[textales]

“Cut Bank Cop”

“Oh god, we’re not stopping?!”  This can’t be happening.  I shook off and zipped up, slammed the restroom door open, grabbed my bag and ran toward the nearest exit. Trying not to whack into the other passengers, I shrieked “I have to get off here!” as the train known as the Empire Builder moved slowly east toward Chicago.  What the hell?  

I’m supposed to get off in Essex, a teeny town of less than 50 people, smack dab in the middle of the Rocky Mountains on the west side of the Continental Divide.  I made the trek from California to surprise my father on his 80th birthday. The party would be at my step-sister’s cabin, just down the hill from the train station, perched on banks of the middle fork of the Flathead, directly across the river from Glacier Park in Montana. 

My step-brother Mark and his wife drove over from Bend, Oregon. The three of us were going to be surprise guests at the party - they’d pick me up from the train and we’d show up at Jane’s place for the big reveal around noon. I couldn’t wait to see the look on my father’s face when we piled out of the car, since for weeks I’d been apologizing for how I couldn’t be there.  Truth is, I wouldn’t miss this for the world – I mean really, it’s not every day a dad turns 80, right?

Our clandestine plan was working perfectly until that moment.  Just an hour earlier, I called Mark from Whitefish to let him know the train was on schedule. “Grab a cup of coffee and hang out on the front deck….we’ll be there soon,” he said.    

As I ran through the dining car I watched the pine trees slowly moving by. “Oh shit,” I thought to myself. “Where is the next stop? Is it Shelby?  Holy fuck…this can’t be happening. I am a fucking idiot.” I pictured Mark and Andrea waiting at the train station as I’m nowhere to be found, with no way to communicate since cellphone service is nonexistent in this part of the planet.

Trains, Planes and Automobiles

I was so proud of myself for making this happen, finally.  This was Take Two - just one year prior I’d planned the same trip with a nearly identical itinerary, but then to surprise my step-mother on her 80th birthday.  On that trip my sister was the co-conspirator and the only one who knew I was coming – oh, besides my friend Tom who drove from Helena (a four hour trip each way!) to shuttle me around.  But that plan never got off the ground – literally – since the plane never left Oakland.  There was something wrong with the front landing gear, and without parts to fix it or a replacement plane to send (and after making us wait for hours while they tried to sort it out), the airline canceled the flight and refunded our money.  

Since I couldn’t find another flight to get me there in time for the surprise (short of hiring a private jet), I canceled the trip entirely.  It’s not like I was going to Los Angeles – trying to get from the Bay Area to the Glacier Park International Airport is never easy, let alone on the last minute of a Fourth of July weekend. Fast forward to a year later and here I am thinking to myself: “Not again!”

Do the gods just not want me to be here?  It’s one thing to miss a trip due to a mechanical problem completely beyond my control.  But missing the party because I decided to use the bathroom on the train (especially since I knew we were so near the stop) would be downright idiotic. I’d made my way from Oakland to Kalispell by plane, and then caught the train from Whitefish to Essex, and now I’m going to miss my dad’s birthday party because I was listening to “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” while standing there with my dick in my hand?!  

It’s not like I’ve never been on a train.  To the contrary, I take trains all the time and figured I had plenty of time to pee. But it didn’t stop at the station. What gives?

“I have to get off the train!” I screamed, passing by the Forest Ranger tour guide with a headset who just minutes ago was touting the rugged splendor of the American West to attentive tourists in the Sightseer Lounge car.  

Now we’ve stopped…whew…the tour guide guy must have called the driver dude. Seeing desperation in my eyes, one of the uniformed attendants said “Go to the last car and they will let you out.”  His reaction suggested this wasn’t the first time this had happened.

I could hear mutterings of other passengers who were understandably annoyed. “Why have they stopped?” “They stopped twice.”  Blah blah blah. I don’t care if they’re pissed – I am NOT going to miss my dad’s 80th birthday.  

I made my way through the aisles carrying the only piece of luggage I had. It was a messenger bag I borrowed from my big gay husband.  It had “Gladiator” embroidered on the side and was a souvenir from a trade show he’d worked.  It didn’t matter what I’d done or how far I’d travelled or if I missed the train or even if I ended up in jail:  if I lost that bag I might as well not come home.  As instructed I ran to the end car. It was the sleeper car, all dark and quiet with a sign on the door that that said you can’t be here unless you have a ticket. At first the woman running the sleeper car was about to shoo me away. “I’m not sure I can let you out here.”  Then her radio crackled, she mumbled something, grabbed a key and pulled a lever. “Watch yourself” she said as I stepped outside onto the gravel.  It was a maybe three feet off the ground but it wasn’t like I was jumping out of an airplane.  Whew….I was out of there and on solid ground.

Panting and out of breath, I noticed the conductor guy I spoke to in Whitefish. Now he is standing on the cement platform maybe three cars from the sleeper car where I’d just jumped out.

“Didn’t you hear? We called twice,” he said as he pushed a button on a hand-held scanner thing that I assume registered some sort of passenger count.  

“I’m sorry, I thought I had a minute” I said apologetically.  

As it turns out, while I was taking a pee and listening to Dionne Warwick on my iPod, the train had slowed to a crawl as we passed the Izaak Walton Inn, moved another few hundred yards and landed, as planned, at the official platform where it was going to stop anyway.  Had I paid attention and been at the intended exit door when they called I could have gotten off the train sensibly and without all the panic and drama.

I later learned that Essex is a “flag stop”, meaning the train stops there only if someone has pre-arranged to get on or off at that station. The conductor did have me marked to get off there which is why, thankfully, they stopped as scheduled. All of my freaking out was so unnecessary.  

I thanked the conductor guy for managing the situation and apologized for causing a commotion.

Then just like magic, out of nowhere appeared a young dark-haired girl in a red Ford van.

“Do you need a ride?”

Oh, duh, I completely forgot…I’d pre-arranged the hotel shuttle from the Izaak Walton Inn to pick me up.

Good lord…what just happened?  My head was spinning.  But I had that Gladiator bag on my shoulder so I knew all was okay.  Whew.

Meet Me in Montana

The Izaak Walton Inn is a charming, rustic Tudor-style 33-room hotel built in the late 1930s as lodging for railroad workers. Looking a lot like a gingerbread house plucked from Switzerland, it’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is situated in what could be some of the most remote wilderness in the continental United States.  Cell phone service is non-existent and there are no phones or TVs in the rooms (although there is a payphone in the lobby and limited Wi-Fi for hotel guests).  For years I’ve wanted to stay in the main lodge or in one of the nearby cabooses which have been converted into mini cabins – and part of the appeal being the freedom from being reachable by cellphone. There’s a cute little bar with a pool table and seating for maybe a dozen or so, and there’s a phenomenal restaurant serving surprisingly sophisticated food for such an outpost.  Not that I’d eat it, but the menu had Trout Almondine with cranberry wild rice and littleneck clams steamed in white wine with garlic.  

With just two Amtrak stops daily (the morning train heading east from Seattle to Chicago, evening going west,) you’re hundreds of miles away from any “real” city and you could almost forget about civilization, except for when the freight trains rumble by. Everything from cows to cars ride on those rails, and the freight trains run almost constantly, even in the dead of winter.    

Mark and Andrea met me ten minutes or so after I checked in….a woman named Marta (imported from one of those northern European white places where people ski) helped me get settled.  

I squished into the back of Andrea’s two-seater and seven minutes later we arrive at the cabin where my dad and stepmother greeted us with the anticipated amount of surprise. Red even cried a little. Bingo! Now that’s the reaction I was hoping for!  

Finally, after all the chaos, I’m here at my destination and I can spend time with my dad and parts of the family I’ve not seen in decades.  Of course I’m still amped up on adrenaline from thinking I’d missed the train stop, so when Mark invited me on a hike to check out the old swimming hole I happily said yes.  Besides, there will be plenty of time to relax when the sun goes down. I’m so looking forward to telling stories around the camp fire.  

It’s almost criminal how little I know about my home state. Even though I was born, raised and lived in the Treasure State until I was 22, I’d been to the Flathead area less than a handful of times.  When asked about Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks I’d reluctantly have to admit I don’t really have much experience in those places.  When I was a kid I avoided those tourist traps.  Oh sure, I knew about moose and grizzly bears and mountain lions and other potentially life-threatening critters that could eat you, but my Montana was less hunting and fishing and more neon and parties.  The only other time I drove on Highway 2 was maybe 15 years ago, so it’s not exactly familiar territory. Now I’m curious – there is still a sense of mystery about this land and so much of it I haven’t yet seen. I’m not expecting to see a grizzly bear, but it wouldn’t kill me to put my feet in the water.

The river was higher than usual because there had been an abnormally high amount of snow over the winter. Even though it was July and the sun was gleaming and it was in the 80s, the water was maybe 33 degrees.  There were groups of people floating on rafts and although it looked fun I thought they were crazy…just a minute or two in that almost freezing water would put anyone into shock. Call me a pansy if you must, but I think I’ll stay on dry land.

As we rounded the curve near the old swimming hole we noticed a yellow kayak on the rocks of the river bank.  Who would go kayaking in this water?  Are they nuts? And where did that come from?

There was no paddle to be found.  And Mark noticed there was no skirt (something I wouldn’t know to look for but he knows what he’s talking about). We yelled to see if the owner was nearby, maybe taking a pee.  “Is anyone out there?  Yo, is this your yellow kayak?”  Silence. Nothing.  

The kayak looked newish. There was no license sticker like you need with a boat, nor was there anything to suggest this thing was owned by a guide or a place that does organized rafting trips.  I figured we should just leave it there. We could come back in an hour.  But Mark was insistent that because there was no paddle and no skirt there had been a situation.

He peeled the cover off and tipped the kayak upside down to drain the water. It was full - clearly it had been completely submerged.  “What’s that?” I asked as he pulled out a bundle that looked like a rolled up raincoat.  “It’s a dry bag” said Mark as he ripped open the Velcro to look inside.

I noticed a cocoon attached to the outside of the dry bag. Clearly, this cocoon or spiders nest or whatever it was - this was proof this kayak and its contents had been here for a while. Mark opened the thing which clearly hadn’t done its duty as a “dry” bag, since the contents inside were all soaking wet.  Inside was a wallet, a set of car keys, and a cell phone. 

Mark checked…the last time the phone had been turned-on was six days ago. The wallet had a Driver’s License and credit cards.  Oh shit…now this is serious. We yelled out again, “Hey….is anyone here?”   Again, silence, except for the sounds of the gentle rapids of this river that was barely above freezing since it’s technically runoff from a glacier.  

Mark and I returned to the cabin with the dry bag and its stuff.  We’d go back later to retrieve the kayak.  Peggy and Jane were prepping for Red’s big birthday party as Mark explained what we’d found on our short hike.

“Don’t touch anything, that is evidence” Peggy stated calmly.

Jane picked up the landline to call Flathead Search and Rescue. She wondered who might be on duty this weekend (everyone knows everyone in these parts) and kept her cool while making the call.

“No, call 9-1-1. This is an emergency” screeched Peggy.

“Oh Mom. It’s not that big of a deal,” said Jane.

“It is if there’s a dead body,” uttered Peggy with all the wisdom of an 80-year-old grandmother.

As I stood there envisioning divers in scuba gear dredging the river bottom, I couldn’t help but think that if there’d been a report of a missing kayaker from six days ago it would have been all over the news by now.  Wouldn’t there have been search parties and helicopters?  I vaguely recall a report of a guy lost in the Bob Marshall Wilderness….it was on the TV news in Kalispell and in the Daily Interlake newspaper and I knew about it through Facebook. But that was months ago…this guy’s phone was hot just six days ago.

Mark paid no attention to his mother’s warning and was still digging through the wallet. Behind the driver’s license was another ID: this guy was a police officer for the small town of Cut Bank, about 75 miles east of where we were.  

A Cop?  Oh my…the plot thickens.

While Jane talked to the dispatcher at Search and Rescue, Mark and I took the Rhino (a 4 wheeler ATV) up river to get the kayak - they’ll certainly want it as evidence.  And now that I know missing guy is a cop my mind starts to run amok with all kinds of conspiracy theories and potential plots and outcomes.  This is thrilling.  And I thought almost missing my stop on the train was a rush.

We returned to the river bank where we left the kayak. Much to our surprise, now it’s gone. What the hell?  Mark yelled out, thinking kayak guy might be close. Again, nothing but the sounds of the rapids.  

Had Cut Bank Cop busted someone who really wanted him gone?  Did he or an accomplice plant this as evidence, hoping someone like us would stumble upon it and call the authorities?  After several months or years would someone be collecting the insurance money and he’d surface in Mexico or Belize?  If we were to believe the cell phone we found in the dry bag, he had literally been up the creek without a paddle for six days.

With no kayak in tow Mark and I took the Rhino back to the cabin.  I was anxious to hear what the Search and Rescue people had to say. Would they be sending a team with scuba divers and cadaver dogs?  Why don’t I hear helicopters yet?”

Meanwhile, not to be bothered by any of this commotion, Red was sitting on the front deck, leisurely whittling away at a piece of wood he was carving for one of the grandkids.  “Hey look,” he said, calmly glancing toward the river as a guy in a yellow kayak, with a paddle, made his way down the river.  Remembering dude’s name from his driver’s license and Cop ID, Mark yelled out “Hey, are you (so and so)?”

“Yes…..oh wow, is that mine? Did you find that floating in the river?” he asked, referring to the dry bag Mark had in his hands.  “We found it in the kayak and noticed there wasn’t a paddle or a skirt and were afraid of the worst.”

Cut Bank Cop, so very happy to have his wallet, keys and cell phone back, explained that he and his wife were up river when she lost control of her vessel, flipped over and managed to get herself to the shore.  Watching it all happen, almost in slow-motion, he beached his kayak and walked up to meet his wife who was clearly now done with this river ride experiment. Fuck this…she’s going back to the car. She left in a huff, headed to wherever they’d left the car, a place called Payola.  Oh, and now, well, she’s technically missing and so is her kayak. But dude wasn’t the least bit worried.  “She’s got a gun” he said.  “She’ll be fine.”  

I can’t help but think about the document I sign every year that says I won’t take money under the table for playing someone’s record – but this is different Payola and not even spelled the same way.

Anyway, he’s cool as a cucumber. Shouldn’t he be at least a little worried?  His wife is stumbling through the wilderness in a place where grizzly bears eat people.  Just earlier this year some bicyclist ranger dude ran across a bear and met his demise on a trail less than a mile from about right here. Would she make it to Payola? Jesus…this is getting crazy.  If he isn’t going to worry about her, well, I will. 

After thanking us profusely for fetching his wallet and phone, Cut Bank Cop went with Jane to get his pickup truck a few miles up the road while Mark and I went looking for the wife’s missing red kayak.  

As we were bombing down the road in the Rhino we ran across a neighbor who mentioned he found a woman walking around, all soaking wet and pissed off.  She wanted a ride to Payola.  Whew, okay, she’s not bear food and she’s not dead.    

A couple minutes later, after Mark and I observed a red kayak ditched at a neighbor’s private beach, I noticed a pickup truck approaching with # 38 on the license plate.  “That’s a 38-Special,” I thought to myself.  In Montana a 38 on your license plate means the vehicle is registered in Glacier County – the same county where Cut Bank is located.  Sure enough, the driver is Cut Bank Cop, out looking for his wife’s missing red kayak that Mark and I spotted at just that moment.  

“As luck would have it, we found your other kayak too!” Mark uttered.  He then helped load it in the bed of the “38 Special” as Cut Bank Cop kept thanking us for saving his ship.

“I can get another wife…but the kayak, can’t lose that.”  

He was so very grateful and offered us a reward for finding his missing stuff. 

“Absolutely not,” said Mark.  “We are Montanans, after all, and we look out for each other.” We said our goodbyes and returned in the Rhino to the cabin.

As I glanced at the Gladiator bag sitting on the deck, next to my dad who was still carving the wood thing for the grandkid, I took stock of the day.  No missed trains, no dead bodies, no grizzly bears gnawing on wayward kayakers.  

Okay, enough adrenaline rush for the day. Finally, it’s time for that beer and a chat with the old man around the campfire.  After all, this is what I came here for in the first place.

[justtryingtocarpediem]

Farewell, America! Hello, Rwanda! This is my first blog post from The Land of a Thousand Hills. I have officially been in this beautiful country for a little over 10 days and I already feel I have experienced more than I could ever put into words. I am a little behind with posting so this first post will be about our first three days in Kigali. My following posts will cover PST (Pre-Service Training) and life in Rwamagana.

In my last post, my cohort and I were headed to JFK International Airport to catch a series of flights to Rwanda. We arrived at JFK an hour before we were allowed to check-in so most of us just sat around and chatted. When it was finally our turn to check-in for our flight, we ran into some problems with carry-on baggage weight restrictions. I have never had to weigh my carry-on items for any flight (international or domestic), however, Brussels Airlines made our group weigh our carry-ons. Of course, almost all 25 of us were scrambling to unload weight from our carry-ons into our checked baggage. In retrospect, it was pretty funny to watch our whole group with our suitcases and belongings strewn across JFK Airport. People were putting miscellaneous items into others suitcases or throwing away items. It was stressful, but we managed and miraculously all 25 of us boarded the plane headed to Brussels. While waiting for our plane to depart New York, it finally hit me that I would not be on American soil for at least a year or maybe even longer. It was a very terrifying, but also thrilling moment to realize that I was finally starting my Peace Corps journey.

We survived the first leg of the journey to Brussels and arrived on Wednesday, June 7 around 7AM. We had a 3-hour layover and then began our second and longest leg of the journey to Entebbe, Uganda. Finally, we took our last flight from Uganda to Kigali, Rwanda and arrived around 9PM. You could feel the excitement and curiosity in the air from myself and my cohorts who have all dreamed of landing in Rwanda—the country we would be spending the next 27 months in and serving as Peace Corps Volunteers in. As we stepped off the plane, the first thing I noticed about Rwanda was that it smelled like a campfire or bonfire in the summer, which I would later learn is the smell of charcoal burning on the imbabura. All of our baggage arrived as well and we were eagerly greeted by Peace Corps staff outside the airport. We were transported 10 minutes away to a hotel where we had our first Rwandan dinner and then allowed to head to our rooms and finally sleep in a bed. I will talk more about Rwandan food later in a later post. I traveled over 28 hours from California to get to Rwanda so I was pretty exhausted on Wednesday evening and did not have that much trouble falling asleep despite the time difference. On Thursday, I took my first cold shower which was not terrible, but also not amazing. We started the day with several sessions including meeting the Peace Corps doctors who gave us lectures on malaria, how to set-up and use our water filters, and we met with our Peace Corps Rwanda Health Project Team for a brief introduction. We then were taken to Peace Corps Rwanda Headquarters which was only a five-minute drive from our hotel but it was also our first experience having a chance to see Kigali in daylight. While at headquarters, we filled out copious amounts of paperwork and were taken to get Rwanda SIM cards for our phones and then had our medical interviews with our PCMOs (Peace Corps Medical Officers) where I was given the rabies vaccine and my malaria prophylaxis. It was an incredibly taxing day and by the end I could not wait to crawl in bed. Friday was our last full day at the hotel and it was spent attending Safety and Security sessions, Homestay Orientations, and language classes. We were split off into groups of 6 and taught basic greetings in Kinyarwanda. Before coming to Rwanda, the aspect of Peace Corps that most intimidated me was learning the language. I would definitely say that languages are not my forte. I am not exaggerating when I say Kinyarwanda is a difficult language, but the language classes have so far been relatively fun and I seem to be grasping it fairly well. I hope it stays that way! On Friday evening, I had to repack all of my essential items into one suitcase that we would be allowed to bring with us to our host families. We are not really sure why PC makes trainees do this, but it is not as bad as it seems. The rest of our nonessentials were stored in our other bag and left at our training hub which we have access to everyday so it really was not a big deal and I was actually thankful to have less luggage to keep track of. I am really looking forward to the day when we finally move out to our individual sites so that I can hopefully not have to live out of a suitcase and spend hours packing/repacking. I took advantage of the hotel Wi-fi on Friday night after re-packing and was able to connect with my parents and friends back home because I was not sure what my connection would be like once I got to Rwamagana. Saturday was our last morning in Kigali where we continued with some language sessions and were given other last-minute information about the plans for the weekend before we ate lunch, loaded the bus, and departed for our training town, Rwamagana.

From what we saw of Kigali, it was beautiful! It was a bustling city filled with hills and greenery. I was shocked at how clean it was. We did not get to see the downtown area or the nicer area of Kigali where the President lives, so I am excited to go back after we finish PST to explore a little more. I have heard how wonderful Kigali is and how it can be a great retreat after spending long periods of time at your village so I am looking forward to using it as a reprieve from village life. My first impressions of Rwanda have been great so far and I am ecstatic to see what the future holds for me here in this amazing country.

This photo was captured by a fellow PCT, Chris Winans, who is an amazing photographer and got this shot as we were flying over Africa around sunset.

Finally arrived in Kigali!

First night in Kigali.

Hotel lyfe.

Cold showers but I’m not complaining.

Views of Kigali.

Sunset in Kigali.

Peace Corps Health 9!

Sending lots of love from Rwanda!

xoxo

        Murabeho, America! Muraho, Rwanda! Farewell, America! Hello, Rwanda! This is my first blog post from The Land of a Thousand Hills.

[rachelisnotatwork]

Week 17- all good things come to an end...

The problem with Ocracoke is it is in the middle of nowhere, which meant we had to get up pretty early on Monday to get the ferry out of there. I compensated for our early start by wrapping a hoodie around my eyes and falling asleep in the car on the ferry, which I maintain was not at all creepy for the other very awake inhabitants on this tiny, tiny ferry that carries about ten cars.

Once we got back to the “main" islands, we grabbed some to-go breakfast (sadly no pancakes and so forth) and made a quick stop off at the Wright Memorial. We’d been planning to go there before Ocracoke but my desire to see the hill they launched the Kitty Hawk off was not strong enough to want to see it in the driving rain. Monday was sunny, so we went. It’s a big dune that they grew grass on to preserve and then they put up a very art-deco lump of stone at the top with a pompous inscription on. You did get a view of the whole island from up there, but the whole island isn’t much as this is pretty much the only thing at over 5 metres elevation (whilst on Ocracoke I did ruminate that it was probably the worst place in the world to be if a tsunami hit).

Then we spent forever in the car. But when we finally got to Washington, we were visiting friends who had made us dinner, so that made it all worth it!

Tuesday we had a lazy day (as opposed to all those “busy” days that had preceded it...) We had brunch locally and then we headed into Washington. 

We toured the Library of Congress, which in American fashion had some Bibles they were extremely proud of and banged on about at length. The building is beautiful though so it was worth sitting through the “aren’t our Bibles amazing” part of the free tour.  Plus they had a World War One exhibit on with some quality posters in.

We then tried to get lunch, which isn’t easy around the library of congress (I suspect the politicians have an amazing canteen tourists totally aren’t welcome at), and then we pottered around the botanical gardens. The botanical gardens has a tiny outdoor bit and a giant indoor green house, which was pretty nice and also had a room full of deadly plants all of which you could easily reach to nab a few leaves off. Guess when everyone has free access to guns, most people can’t be bothered to go down the deadly nightshade route.

Wednesday we met up with another friend who lives in DC and who had amazingly taken the day off work to hang out with us! We went to the theatre Lincoln got shot at (having seen the chair he got shot in last time) and I learnt his assassin supposedly got a Weber C ankle fracture jumping off the balcony but it might have actually come from falling off his horse later (a story I find a bit more likely having seen a few Weber C ankle fractures in my time and none of them looked ready to run across a stage and jump onto a horse. Then we pottered down to the American Natural History Museum to enjoy some free photography, giant diamonds and dinosaurs.

Marcel was very keen to tour the Supreme Court. I was not, because as I say, not my monkeys, not my circus. So we split up at that point and he went there, and I went off for a much more enjoyable leisurely lunch and catch up.

Thursday morning we had to head off to New York. Our original plan had been to return the car in Washington and get a train to NYC. Then we found out that the train between Washington and NYC was going to be a minimum of $182 for both of us. So we called Hertz and they let us change our return destination for $11. Much better value for money. We did decide we should probably take to a car wash to get rid of the dust of the deserts and the thousand dead bugs that had smashed into it on its journey of thousands of miles. But it was raining really heavily and they were all shut (which seems to be a feature of the day we return long-term rentals) so that was off the cards. We did however do a charity shop run to dump some surplus now we no longer had the car to act as extra storage. I very reluctantly let go of my electric kettle along with all of the change we’d accumulated in the car due to our problem of only being able to recognise quarters.

Marcel insisted we then go for breakfast at the same chain of pancake place he’d fallen in love with in Alabama. We got there and found out they didn’t have the sour dough pancakes he really liked and depressingly in Washington it seems to be the law they print the calorie counts of all their meals, which is really THE way to spoil a pancake brunch.

It continued to teem with rain on our way up to NYC. We made a point of stopping in Delaware for coffee, as we’d not realised we even had passed through it the last time we went. We drank starbucks (this time with the closest approximation of Marcel’s name we’d seen!) and watched bins blow away in the wind. Delaware is beautiful.

We dropped the car off at Newark Airport (incidentally the car rental return area has an ill-wind blowing over it which smells like a slaughter house, which is extremely disconcerting and grim) and then started the very, very slow process of getting into New York and across to Brooklyn to see the friend we were staying with. By the time we arrived, despite having done nothing but sit in various cars/trains/subways we were shattered so got take-out and ate in.

To make up for the previous day’s brunch disappointment, Marcel insisted we go to a place we’d frequented on previous trips called Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds. They had buy two, get a third free on slices of pie so we really overdid breakfast. 

It was pretty windy and cold so we made indoor day plans. To continue our nerdy podcast tourism theme, we went to the Met and listened to the appropriate Memory Palace episodes. Which was actually a really good way to see the Met and it made me go to the American wing, which I’d never been to before but is actually quite nice.

In the evening we went out for arepas. I think we’d mistaken the branch we’d been to before so ended up in the world’s tiniest arepa restaurant where (after we’d queued for ages) we ended up pretty much with our knees to our chins. But the food was delicious and it allowed me to go on a massive plantain binge. On our way back we wanted to get dessert so we went to Camilla’s local branch of Snowdays, the shaved ice place. Incredibly disappointingly it didn’t have thermochromic spoons but I bravely ate onwards.

On Saturday we had a bad brunch (most water-y shakshuka ever, and after an extremely long wait; as a committed bruncher, I was disappointed) and then walked over to the brooklyn botanical gardens. We were meeting a friend there so we enjoyed a slow meander under the cherry blossoms that were just starting to come out and checked out their very impressive bonsai tree collection. Marcel has now decided he wants to have a bonsai tree, whereas after reading the description of the massive faff of keeping a bonsai tree I’ve decided I only want a bonsai tree when I’m rich enough to afford my own bonsai pruner.

We then headed over to another friend’s cocktail party (with beautiful sunset views) and followed up that with meeting our host and her friend for dinner over in Williamsburg. Which despite being quite close to where we were staying in Flatbush was a massive arse to get back from, so we ended up sharing a cab.

On Sunday we headed back over to Prospect Park to visit Smorgsburg, Brooklyn’s outdoor food market. It was a beautiful sunny day and there were about a million people there, which was “suboptimal” as I’m not at my best before breakfast and dealing with large crowds of people with baby strollers is beyond me. I ended up eating an ice cream sandwich for breakfast, which I entirely blame on them.

We then headed to the transit museum, because I love trains. It was housed in an old subway station (even more exciting) and had lots of antique stock, complete with hilarious weird antique adverts. So definitely worth a trip.

After that we headed to the Upper East Side to meet up with a distant cousin I had not met before. We’ve been facebook friends for a while, and when he heard we were travelling in the USA he invited us for drinks. I’m normally quite reluctant to meet strangers as I’m terrible at small talk but we had an absolute blast and ended up staying rather late as we had not only dinner plans, but we also had to go and pick up a packing slip for a parcel we’d ordered to a friend’s address. But definitely worth it. Clearly all von Simsons share the quality of awesomeness (and modesty).

The following day we tried to pick up the parcel. I had got my friend to sign it over to me as her agent. I had taken a picture of her ID. I had taken a picture of her holding her ID and me holding the parcel slip together. Was this enough to get past the woman at the Post Office on a power trip? It was not. Which was level 10 annoying but to be expected.

Afterwards we went for a long walk in Central Park and then along the High Line and ate ice lollies and talked about how weird it was that we would be going home that evening after so long. 

Our flight wasn’t until 11pm so we squeezed in a cheese binge at Murray’s Cheese Bar before heading home to sit on our suitcases and load all the books into Marcel’s hand luggage so we could stay under the weight limit. On the way back, the subway was pretty crowded. The man next to me asked a fairly innocuous question and since we were less than one stop away from our station I decided to break the cardinal rule of public transport and answer him. We promptly got stuck at a red signal and he turned out to be floridly manic and spoke mostly in rhyme, interspersed with singing 80s songs at me. That was the longest twenty minutes of my life.

We headed over to the airport. Upon arrival at JFK and I immediately remembered why I hated JFK. We had more than 2 hours to go until our flight but the security queue was spilling out of the assigned lines into the main lobby with a more than two hour predicted wait time. Our airline (Norwegian) didn’t offer online check in for JFK, which would have been fine if they had had more than one counter open for the three flights they had leaving. At this point I was rather hoping we were going to be offered to be bumped as I wouldn’t have minded an extra day of holiday... But alas they eventually checked us in and we did make it through the (extremely grumpy) security as they’d brought in dogs to speed things up (which I feel always makes me look suspect due to being frightened of dogs, especially large-toothed dogs that have a legal right to be in your personal space).

Norwegian is a budget airline, and this was a co-share with a budget Spanish airline who was actually running the flight so I will leave to the imagination how “good” our flight was. There were two small advantages though. Firstly, we were in the emergency exit seats and secondly, whilst we were waiting for the flight we were sitting opposite an insanely annoying woman who use the hour we were left waiting at the gate to call everyone on her phone to talk very loudly about perceived slights of the world around her- with a bit of a racist tinge. She then got her ticket out and I noticed she was sitting in our row in seat C and we were D and E. A furious but very silent argument then started between Marcel and I about who would have to sit next to her, but when we got on the plane THANK GOD she was the other side of the aisle to us as once she got on the plane and no longer had her phone, she then talked non-stop at the very polite middle-aged British couple sitting next to her who couldn’t work out how to shut her up.

And so the 4 month adventure ended. 6 countries and once around the world later, we were back on the Overground feeling like we’d never left. So naturally time to plan the next adventure...

[sunkissis]

I spent hours researching our trip to the land of fire and ice, one of my highest priorities was taking phenomenal photos. I signed up for a photography class and educated myself about my Nikon camera settings and lenses. I bought a new zoom lens but I needed something that would allow me a wider angle for close up shots. The problem was a $2,500 lens was not in my budget. I was so stoked to find out that Samy’s Camera rents Nikon lenses! I was able to try out different lenses for $25 bucks a day. I fell in love with a wide angle lens and bought a tripod because every person who has traveled to Iceland assured me I would need it to take photos of the Northern Lights. However the lens was large and heavy and along with two other lenses, the tripod, extra batteries, accessories and an external flash (that we never used) there was no way everything would fit into our camera bag. Antz somehow squeezed everything into his suitcase. I had to repack like ten times because my heavy boots didn’t fit and I kept going over the 44 lb weight maximum.

This was just one of the ten outfits I packed. I bought thermal leggings from Amazon and wore layers everyday because even on windy rainy days, I was sweating from all the hiking. I had the hardest time finding the right coat to wear in Iceland. I did not want a puffy coat because they don’t look so great on me and they only come in boring colors. I ended up finding a fantastic white wool coat from Asos on sale for like $73! It was so warm and I was the brightest person in Reykjavik.

  Making it rain in Icelandic Kronas! I found the best currency exchange place located in our new bank in Glendale.

The first day of our trip went surprisingly seamless. I may sound like a broken record but I strongly recommend flying with Wow Airlines. I will say, their gate at LAX was kinda lame and it felt like we walked for miles to get there. However they are a fairly new airline to LAX, so they don’t have a lounge area to wait in yet. Since we arrived so early and didn’t want to stand or sit on the floor for an hour, we waited in the nearby Virgin Atlantic area. Luckily, we saw the Wow crew walking by so we knew it was almost time to board. Other than that, everything was great. We had the sweetest flight attendants (ours looked like Margot Robbie) and the pilots invited Liv into the cockpit when we landed. The plane was clean and the seats had more room in coach than other airlines I’ve flown. There are only two seats for the window row so Antz had to sit across from us in the middle. All flights from Los Angeles arrive in Reykjavik at 4 am so that is something you need to plan for if you are checking into a hotel. We had a full day planned so it worked to our advantage.

Our Uber driver was a little crazy, he followed the weirdest route to LAX which took us on a journey through the back alleys of downtown but we made it on time! LAX is one of my favorite places in Los Angeles. The TSA line is always miserable but there has been improvements on the design of the international terminal.

Once we made it through the lines of agony, we did some pre-flight shopping at Fred Segal. Then we picked up a light breakfast of pastries.

Can someone please buy these for my next trip??!!

Most folks seem to have a problem when it comes to traveling with young kids but honestly, Liv has been our lucky rabbits foot. We get to board the plane first, the flight attendants absolutely love her which gets us perks and she’s a pleasure to travel with. It’s true, the earlier you travel with your kids, the more open-minded and exposed they become.

Fortunately no one sat next to Antz so he had plenty of room to spread out.

I love that we can give our daughter the gift of travel and a proclivity for adventure. As we were flying over Canada, I felt so grateful that we could afford to take this trip instead of putting it off for “one day“.

Liv ate an entire box of rice crispy treats. Don’t forget to pack plenty of snacks and water, nothing on this flight is free!

I waited my whole life to see the incredible Northern Lights. The week before we arrived in Iceland, they had the most vivid and clear Northern Lights in recent history. The government shut down all the lights in Reykjavik so people could view them better. I tracked the weather and the nightly skies on this website everyday until our trip. I slept during most of the flight but I did wake up and happened to look out the window. That sad green smear you see above is the Northern Lights. I tried and failed to take a photo with my rented lens because it was impossible to take a shot while we were moving and the glass from the window wasn’t allowing my camera to auto focus. When I took the photography class I specifically asked about taking photos at night and the key is to use a slow shutter speed, which means using a tripod. Every shot I have seen of the northern lights look like this…

That early morning was the only Northern Lights we were able to see because clouds came in with our flight and obscured the sky for the whole week. The Liz curse strikes again!

You wanna hear another great story? I booked our car rental back in July. I went ahead and splurged on an SUV with a snow package and all the extra insurance I could buy just in case. My friend Christina recommended getting a portable WiFi box so we will have coverage. I also got a navigation system even though the last time I rented a car in London, it didn’t work. So, I was pretty covered for our rental which totaled close to $800 for the week. I was promised to get a BMW X3 SUV or similar. This is what I got and believe me when I say, I acted like a disgusting, entitled American and threw a tantrum when I saw this Opal whatever it is. The chick at the rental place was like, “Bitch…you can walk.” So, here’s my Icelandic $800 pimped out ride. Well, at least it had a heated steering wheel.

The only place to eat that was open at 6am was disappointing Subway. Yet, after a long flight, we were starving so it was good to have something familiar. I got the “Cool American” flavor Doritos. It was insane that the sun doesn’t rise until 9 am. It was pitch black at 8 in the morning.

Guess those snow tires I paid for came in handy. They chilled in the trunk for the whole week. I think I could have been happier with the car if it was white. What color is this, depressing beige?

It was freezing by the time we arrived at the Blue Lagoon. I was worried we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the visit because of how cold it was outside.

The Blue Lagoon was breath-taking. It was cold but once you’re in the water, it’s lovely. Now I was glad I paid for all of our extra luggage because I brought our aqua sock water shoes. Bare feet in public spaces is my phobia! There is an indoor entrance in the water so you don’t have to walk outside in the cold. Kids under 8 are required to wear floaties but the water level was shallow enough for Liv to stand on her tippy toes.

Really, best day ever!! You must bring a GoPro to the lagoon. iPhones won’t cut it.

So surreal, it was so warm and beautiful. And we only had been in Iceland for five hours.

After a quick shower, we were back on the road, headed to our hotel for the first night. I booked the iconic Ion Luxury Hotel for our first night in Iceland because it is located in the middle of nowhere. Like, so much so that they don’t even have an traditional address. Of course, our rental’s navigation system took us an hour out of the way to get there. We were the only car driving on an endless stretch of road so I was pretty nervous we would get lost. Luckily, Iceland has awesome maps on the side of the roads for us clueless tourists. They are so thoughtful. I first read about the impressive hotel when it was featured in Afar magazine. It is known for being one of the best hotels for viewing the Northern Lights. Since it has the word luxury in the name, you know it’s expensive and also sold out even six months in advance. I must have called to make reservations every damn day until finally three weeks before our trip, they found a room for me. I was elated because this meant we could go to their beautiful Northern Lights bar and sit by the floor to ceiling windows to see the Northern Lights. It never occurred to me there would be a week of cloudy skies but we enjoyed our night at the hotel anyway.

This river was boiling hot. Iceland, you so crazy! There is steam coming from power plants all over Iceland. People who live there never have to pay to heat their water. Energy is also dirt cheap because they power mostly everything from steam.

Let me say, this hotel is unique and off the beaten track. It definitely had a James Bond sexy vibe to it. We were told that helicopter belonged to one of the guests, fancy! The Silfra restaurant is so reknown that tourists are bussed in from Reykjavik. We didn’t think to make a reservation since we were staying at the hotel and they almost couldn’t accommodate us.

A cool thing about the water in Iceland, it’s 100% from the natural springs. Iceland has the purest water on the planet so you can actually drink from the shower, the faucets or even the ground. We went to a store and tried to buy bottled water and the woman was like “No, you go to the hotel and fill up your water bottle from the tap!” Honestly, the best water I have ever tasted. It felt nice to take a long hot shower and not feel guilty about a drought.

We arrived at the hotel about noon but our room wasn’t ready yet so we hung out in the lobby. Our jet lag set in and we ended up falling asleep. I know I was snoring! When our room was ready, we had just enough time to change our clothes for our horseback riding tour. We booked a private tour through the hotel so a nice girl named Hannah picked us up and drove us to her family’s farm.

The two hours was over in an instant. It rained lightly but the sun peeked out. The horses were incredible, I was Snapchatting and taking photos most of the time so my horse was like “Ok, lady I guess I’ll control myself.”

When we got back to the hotel, we were starving. Silfra restaurant was packed. The hotel only has 24 rooms but there were booked for dinner. Iceland’s specialty is seafood and lamb but we had amazing sushi too. I used my charm to get us a table even though they require reservations. This was our most expensive meal during the trip.

OMG! This langoustine was heaven. Antz loved his seafood soup. Liv’s burger was meh.

After a quick FaceTime with my BFF, Aimee we went straight to bed. I’m actually relieved the Northern Lights weren’t out that night because it felt like we were awake for 24 hours straight so off to bed we went. It was incredibly hard to wake up early for our next long day.

Iceland Day One I spent hours researching our trip to the land of fire and ice, one of my highest priorities was taking phenomenal photos.