Wednesday/Thursday July 13/14

 

I had a panic attack with a mislaid passport last night, and it took a couple of brandies to steady myself.  I procrastinated packing and cleaning house, but managed to get everything in, with room to spare, to my surprise. I opted not to bring the Southern Comfort as I planned to check my bag.

 

I guess I’d looked forward to this trip more than any of the trips I took, including the very first.  Iceland was at the heart of all my traveling desires, the crown jewel of Viking Scandinavia, and finally, I was bound there.

 

I had an Uncle that had died the previous October.  He had cancer, and wasted away slowly.  Dad had asked me to come over with some pictures of my trips, as he knew that would cheer my Uncle Lee up. Lee had my Uncle Loren looking after him while he hung around the exit door.  Lee looked pretty depressed, and was on oxygen while Loren cooked dinner.  I never heard, but I’d guess my dad had Loren come up to do the hard work or something.  I had a vision of my mother rolling her eyes and saying something like, I told you so.

 

Lee didn’t look terrific of course, but was interested in my pictures.  We struggled to set up the slide projector and traded barbs amongst Dad, Loren and I.  We had to go to the classic slide projector, as the normal one didn’t seem to want to accept the slide tray.  The slides did cheer Lee up a bit, and he really lit up when he heard I wanted to go to Iceland next.  When he died, he left me a big chunk of money, which I promptly used to take this trip and live like a king.

 

Andy showed up on time and we did our traditional breakfast.  He scared me a little with a story about leaving his camera gear behind at Bonneville dam the previous weekend.  We made it to the airport, and the lady at Northwest was nice enough to fly me direct to MSP from PDX with a window on an Emergency exit which had twice the length and half the width of a normal seat, because of the door.  I had been booked through Seattle, so this was a definite plus. I slept most of the flight.

 

Icelandair to Keflavik was as much of a treat as SAS is for me.  I couldn’t take my eyes off two flight attendants.  One had darker, stern but sculpted Nordic features, the other was Laurie Bowers as a blonde. Both filled out tight skirts very well.

 

Laurie Bowers was my first major league crush in high school.  Scott and I met her at a speech tournament when I was 15 or so.  I have no idea how we got suckered into doing something as stupid and nerdly as speech tournaments, but they were nice places to troll for interesting girls.  They guys at those things were all dweebs of course.  We knew it wasn’t the place for either of us, but it provided plenty of fuel for our schoolgirl cackles and pre-beer drinking belly laughs, so there was some value to them, and I believe we managed to attend a few.

 

We met Laurie in one of my poetry rounds, in McMinnville. Laurie was cursing, cynical, and critical, all of those things girls weren’t supposed to be, in addition to being pretty good looking. To add to her allure, she was from Parkrose in Portland, which to us was the big, dangerous city. She had a chiseled look to her that I still think of as one of my standards of perfection.  At times I’d glance at her and think of Jolene, a Sheridan High beauty, although I still think Laurie had her beat cold.  Laurie, Scott and I struck up a very odd Jules and Jim friendship that had a very strange evolution.

> >

CURRENCY

MAPS