Getting Out of the Corner

I had the chance to take a trip to Scotland this week. In reflecting on the experience, I came upon the following from Mark Twain:

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

Now, I don’t claim that roughly five days in and near Edinburgh exploded my perspective. However, I learned a few things and perhaps expanded my mind just a bit.

Challenges to Some Long-Held Habits

I see a lot of people on this platform and elsewhere declare themselves “humbled” by the receipt of some award or honorific. Let me offer another perspective: driving on the left side of the road with the steering wheel on the right side of the car through a series of crowded roundabouts in a rainstorm is humbling.

There's a lot written about the importance of "getting out of your comfort zone". What is more comfortable than the way you've driven for 40+ years?

Going the wrong way down a “tram-only” lane? Also extremely humbling. I almost humbled myself into a pine box.

Challenges- seeing how you operate when you’re not just going through the motions - are eye-opening. And by eye-opening, I mean scary and sometimes infuriating. Like the opportunity to get flummoxed by a brand new set of gadgets (wi-fi, thermostats, appliances).

And I got some minor satisfaction when I navigated these puzzles. As one example, I had a filing I needed to make with the S.C. Public Service Commission. Over the years, I have submitted hundreds of these.

When I navigated to the Commission’s website on Monday morning while sitting in our cottage, I encountered the below:

At first, I felt . . . Wait for it . . . Cornered. A brief sense of panic. An eventuality I had not considered. I considered my options.

I connected via the hotspot on my phone and made the filing. Huzzah.? Of course, I didn’t face an existential threat.? To paraphrase Leonard Cohen, my challenges are middle-class and tame .

But, as my dad used to say, I noodled it out.

Useful Tools for the Travel

This journey was enabled and enriched by several tech tools that weren’t around when I travelled in my younger years. Without the GPS navigation in my rental car, I would still be lost in West Lothian following the first wrong turn.

I’ve written about the utility of AllTrails.

Here's one view it helped me achieve:

Another essential tool for driving in and around unfamiliar cities is JustPark. You're much less likely to go the wrong way in a tram-only lane when you're not looking for a space.

And of course the ability to book on Airbnb made it all happen. I strongly recommend having a stay at our location:

A Challenging Venue?

You might be asking yourself, as the friendly clerk in The North Face shop wondered aloud to us:

What made you choose Scotland in early April?

The weather was, with the exception of the day we arrived and the day we left, abysmal. Oh, the dreadful wind and rain . Hence the trip to The North Face for proper gear. Lucinda and I trudged through mud and water and fields filled with sheep and their buachar.

And we wandered around Glasgow and Edinburgh and the Galashiels. It felt different and new (or old). The landscape, the accents, the architecture. I would say the cuisine, but we did not sample the Haggis. We had so much fun together. And so much of the excitement was pushing into the unfamiliar.

"Broad, Wholesome, Charitable Views" Are Facilitated by Laughter

This was just lucky. I found out that How Did This Get Made was having a live show in Glasgow on Sunday night. We laughed alongside some 2500 Glaswegians. The feeling of that experience is going to be with me for a long time.

(I challenge you to find anyone more clever and funny than Jason Mantzoukas) .

Conclusion

We ran out of time and we caught the plane, and we're back in the county with the blues again .

I don't know exactly what I am getting at. Getting out of grooves (even those that are clearly not ruts) is good for me. It might be good for you, too. That said, I was very relieved to take a right turn into the right lane last night.

No good segue here, but I would have made good use of a mudcrutch on our hikes.