Storytorch

My husband Mark and I left the US for our recent trip to Scotland from Washington Island, Wisconsin, rather than Iowa. For various logistical reasons, the car available to take to the Green Bay airport was my little two-seater.

In planning our trip, Mark set up the air travel; I arranged hotel accommodations and rented a car. We would be making a giant loop through northern Scotland—Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness, Isle of Skye, and then back to Glasgow for the flight home.

About to click on a standard transmission (the norm in Europe), mid-size vehicle, I noticed the "luxury" option a few lines down on the Orbitz chart. For not that much more, Hertz would rent us an automatic transmission Mercedez-Benz! Thinking about the hundreds of miles we'd be driving on the right hand side of the road, from the right side seat of the car, I splurged.

As we sped along the M-way from Glasgow to Edinburgh, we developed our new mantra: stay right, look left, stay left, look right. Mark, who drove a right-side-drive standard-shift VW bug in the US his senior year in high school, kept his cool. In the left seat, I navigated us to our Edinburgh hotel, along major thoroughfares that changed street names almost every block.

Over our nine day journey, sorry to say, I declined to learn a new skill. With the ability you'd expect from a former commercial B-757 pilot, Mark negotiated incredibly tight turns in pouring rain enroute Inverness, kept us safely in unbelievably narrow lanes enroute the Isle of Skye, held steady through single-vehicle underpasses on each leg, and did not flinch when meeting Scottish lorries and double-decker tour buses. The Mercedes hummed.

Back in Green Bay, we loaded the luggage into my little red car. Now the designated driver, and using all six forward gears, I brought us home to Winterset. With one suitcase strapped on the arm rest between us, Mark couldn't see much of me. Instead, he gazed out the window at the beautiful shoulders of the standard American highway.

Today's Fortune Cookie Fortune:
You will appreciate the ability of others.

Here in Scotland, the sound of bagpipes is common. In the tourist town of Edinburgh, opportunistic pipers clad in Highland dress stand on many a corner, playing for tips. During the famous Military Tattoo, which we watched on Thursday night with thousands of others, several hundred magnificent, kilted bagpipers played in unison during the Massed Pipes and Drums performance.

In Inverness, we found Castle Street lined with kiltmakers' workshops and Scottish souvenir shops, strains of "Commin' Through the Rye" beckoning from every open doorway.

Yesterday, my husband Mark and I took a boat tour down the River Ness and onto Loch Ness. During the three hour excursion, we sat at a comfy booth in the cabin playing Scrabble, frequently walking out on deck with our binoculars to enjoy the gorgeous countryside along the Loch and to scan the dark, frigid waters for Nessie (no sign).

I noticed a printed instruction placard on the cabin front wall that seemed to illustrate steps for bagpipe playing. Toward the end of our cruise, taking a closer look, I found the photos were not at all man squeezing his pipes in Highland dress, but a stout lady demonstrating proper use of the boat's life vest.

We decided that, in Scotland, combination life-vest-bagpipes would be perfect. You could inflate your vest by blowing into the pipe. While treading water, you could play a lively air to simultaneously entertain yourself and call for aid. And, should help not arrive, you could go under for the third time, piping yourself out to the final notes of "Auld Lang Syne."

Today's Fortune Cookie Fortune:
You will not try haggis.

On Friday, enroute Edinburg to Inverness, my husband Mark and I stopped in the port city of Leith to tour the royal yacht Britannia. Launched in 1953, this beautiful ship served Queen Elizabeth for 44 years until its decommission in 1997.

Prior to our tour, I thought "Humph, why should taxpayer money foot the bill for a monarch's personal boat?" After learning the history of royal yachts (Britainna is the 83rd in a long line stretching back to 1660), and walking Britannia stem to stern, my attitude changed to nostalgia. The gorgeous ocean vessel is now maintained by the charitable organization Royal Britannia Trust. Lunch in the tearoom was scrumptous.

Displayed on a rear deck was the NATO international radiotelephony spelling alphabet. The alphabet assigns a code word to each letter of the English alphabet so that critical combinations of letters can be pronounced and understood. As a career US Air Force man and then a commercial pilot, Mark has used this alphabet most of his life. He turned his back on the display board and rattled off all 26 code words to me. When he finished, the tourists within earshot applauded politely.

On the drive to Inverness, I practiced over and over until I do them all in order: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, Xray, Yankee, Zulu.

Today's Fortune Cookie Fortune:
You will have memory problems.

While on vacation in Scotland, I've been reading American chef Julia Child's memoir, My Life in France. I admit the hype about the recently-opened film "Julie & Julia" influenced my selection at Borders in the Philadelphia airport. I was only about twelve when Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published, and I've only seen clips of her PBS show "The French Chef."

So interesting are Julia's reminiscences about discovering France and French food, about finding her passion in cooking, about writing an in-depth, all-encompassing book on a single subject, and about learning to teach classes on television that I dozed little on my flight over the Atlantic.

As someone who also found my passion in working with my hands, who also spent years writing an in-depth how-to book, in my case Quilter's Complete Guide, and who also learned to demonstrate step-by-step techniques to a television camera, I found myself relating to Julia on almost every page.

Julia's love of France, especially Provence, her intelligent, self-effacing manner, and her obvious affection for her husband Paul made me an instant Julia Child fan.

I have only about 40 pages of My Life in France left, and I'm torn between a desire to gobble it up and a desire to wait and savor it later. In a way, I'm seated before a plate of Julia's sole meuniere—satisfied, but saving room for a little mousse chocolat.

Today's Fortune Cookie Fortune:
You will discover a new hero.

In my youth I briefly possessed a baton. I can't remember if I twirled in grade school or junior high, but I can still see my instrument—rubber crutch tips on each end, shiny, spiraled metal between.

If the various tricks had names they're forgotten too, but I could spin my baton from left to right hand, twirl it individually through each finger, toss it up, then turn around and catch it behind me as it came back down. There my baton skills ended and my baton career stopped.

Last evening, in Il Positano, an Italian restaurant just up the street from our B & B here in Edinburgh, Scotland, my husband Mark taught me how to twirl the spaghetti of my spaghetti carbonara with fork against tablespoon to create perfect, bite-sized portions—so easy, so delicious, so not-slurpy.

Today, at one of the scores of kiltmakers along the Royal Mile, I inquired about a custom-made ladies' kilt in my maiden-name tartan, Graham. Whether I'll go for it or not remains to be seen, with the dollar so weak against the pound, but I can see myself striding down a US city street, the wind twirling my Scottish plaid pleats. 

Today's Fortune Cookie Fortune:
You will have fun learning to do something new.