Road Remedies

NO JUBBLIES IN LJUBLJANA
Quick detour to Croatia, as my article – Stone Cold Beauty – just appeared in Road and Travel.

Here I chronicle how I shamelessly lied to a Good Man, that rare thing, so hard to find. Yes, indeed, I lured him to former Yugoslavia, promising beaches full of topless Balkanites.

***

Rain blanched the spring landscape grey, a hue somewhere between battleship and institutional gruel. Storms churned across all of Eastern Europe. Thousands evacuated as the Danube overflowed. No one was stripping to scanties at the shore.

“Where, exactly, are the ladies?” Edward asked, as we surveyed an overgrown Roman ruin. “You promised chicks,” he complained days later, as we hiked along the Plitvica Jezera, a cascading chain of peacock-colored lakes. “Maybe that Black Madonna icon could send me just one gorgeous woman?” he suggested at the famous pilgrimage church of Marija Bistrica.

And finally, in a fit of exasperation – and to distract from the bomb craters and old tank barricades on the Bosnian border – “What type of wingwoman are you anyway? I fly 5,000 miles and you can’t produce a single babe?

***

I'm a bad, bad friend. "Momentarily amusing", but otherwise useless, if sources can be trusted.

Well, when pressed, I can:

Change a tire with a spoon.
Edit a thesis, article or application letter.
Swear like a sailor, much to my parents' chagrin...
While prissing about in a pashmina. Ha! Isn't it ironic, Alanis?
Punctuate. Almost as well as my idol, Roy Peter Clark.
Bleed entertainingly on an E3 – 5.11a – climbing route.
Sing Gordon Lightfoot hits until you scream. Then hum.
Pilot a 9,000-pound truck and letch at river guides. Simultaneously.
Laugh at you and all you hold dear. But you'll laugh along. Promise.

The package is compelling, I'm sure you'll agree. Maybe not 10,000-frequent-flyer-miles compelling – Edward was rather bored during that Alaskan winter – but worth a pint at the very least.