WHEN I GROW UP...
"Somewhere in time," I told Rachel, "there's a 15-second sound bite, radiating into the universe. You're saying, 'I want to be a vet.' And I reply: 'I'm gonna be a writer'."

And here we are.

Rachel does animal acupuncture, among western-medicine duties. She's exactly the person you want your childhood friend to grow into: compassionate, funny, brilliant and thoughtful (the two don't necessarily go hand-in-hand). She turns heads too, which pleases me, because I remember us play-acting: "You're a gorgeous empress with tawny skin and black ringlets, I'm a stunning warrior-princess with honey hair and a pet leopard."

OK, well, I only have Jake the Tabby and Mixed-up Molly Miss. And "beautiful" only happens on a good-hair day. But close enough.

We overloaded on Seattle activities: Fremont public art in the rain, like Lenin and the Troll; Hammering Man outside the Seattle Art Museum; views from Alki and West Seattle; Pioneer Square; the International District; Indonesian food at the Malay Stay Hut.

Scuttling back to Ballard, we caught dusk at the locks, one of my most treasured spots, one where I reset and recharge.

Walking home, we encounter a sign: "Glassblowing lessons."

"You never noticed a glass shop two blocks from your house?" she asks.

"I swear, it wasn't here before," I say. Lamely.

Suddenly Rachel is inside. Shit, shit, shit. I'm not in banter-with-dukes-or-dustmen work-mode. I'm Jane Citizen, out for a sunset stroll. My journalistic superpowers are not engaged.

How can I invade another artist's workspace, even if the studio is open to the street? I mean, c'mon, it's probably just hot in there...

Rachie – a much more genuine soul than me – is chatting away, examining finished pieces. The studio is only a few days old, much to my relief. Good. I'm not an unobservant monkey-child, after all.

But shy still, outside my professional persona. Who am I, when not Amanda Castleman, freelancer for the Rough Guides or MSNBC or the Seattle Post-Intelligencer?

***

We run by Archie McPhees kitsch emporium, still intent on the Emerald City whirlwind tour, then Enlighten and the Old Town Ale House, the neighborhood's least packed and most vilified bar, because of its controversial group-reservation policy. Much as I've howled, turned away with ten friends, it's nice to find an impromptu seat on Saturday night.

Rachie and I are well and truly knackered. But there's a hitch. She inherited land in Guanajuato, a colonial city in Mexico.

"I must learn to salsa. Immediately," she announces.

***

And so gussied up, we head to Capitol Hill to dance at the Century Ballroom. A lesbian couple run this grand balconied hall, which is why it avoids meat-market status, I suspect.

Folks are here to dance, not mate ... for the most part.

That said, men far outnumber women. Recovering from the flu, I'm feeble and a bit lightheaded. No guy accepts this excuse with grace, so I'm forced to hide in the ladies' loo to recover my breath.

Unaccustomed to feeling weak, I'm angry. Nonetheless, I struggle on, dancing with leads from Mexico City, Columbia, points unknown. One man marches – arms outstretched tango-style, grin manic. He's not bad, but truly bizarre.

I gulp air by the window. I ran a fever here last January too. Stubborn, I rose from my sickbed to take my mother, Ellen, on her first salsa excursion.

It was worth it, even if I couldn't stand up for a week.

GLASSY EYED
My oldest childhood friend arrived from San Francisco for the long-weekend. Ever the class act, I drove right past her at Sea-Tac airport. Twice. I blame the rental Aveo (IB's comment: "A Chevy? I leave town and all hell breaks loose.").

I pointed the car – chosen, I might add, for Enterprise's weekend special – south immediately. One of Rachel's hobbies is stained-glass, so the Museum of Glass seemed a natural first stop.

"Scenic Tacoma," I sniggered, in classic, raised-close-to-Canada, Washington-state snob-style. As Susan Sontag says in The Volcano Lover:

“Every culture has its southerners – people who work as little as they can, preferring to dance, drink, sing, brawl, kill their unfaithful spouses; who have livelier gestures, more lustrous eyes, more colourful garments, more fancifully decorated vehicles, a wonderful sense of rhythm, and charm, charm, charm, charm; unambitious, no, lazy, ignorant, superstitious, uninhibited people, never on time, conspicuously poorer (how could it be otherwise, say the northerners); who for all their poverty and squalor lead enviable lives – envied, that is, by work driven, sensually inhibited, less corruptly governed northerners, clearly superior. We do not shirk our duties or tell lies as a matter of course, we work hard, we are punctual, we keep reliable accounts. But they have more fun than we do. Every country, including southern countries, has its south.”

I duly underwent my epiphany, as all cynical travel writers must. Tacoma was, indeed, better than expected: a plucky mill-town-making-good ... or better, at least. And I'll return time and time again for the Bridge of Glass, crafted by hometown hero Dale Chihuly.

Its Seaform Pavilion resembles nothing so much as an overhead coral reef. A 50x20-foot lightbox backs over 2,364 creations of spun sand, including whorls, spirals and tiny seafaring cherubs.

We gaped and gawked, necks straining.

In the end, all I could do was echo, once more, with feeling: "Scenic Tacoma."

Indeed.

LONELY ROAD
All my carefully arrayed logic went out the window today. I woke and missed IB. The loss felt physical, a howling knot of pain that threatened to splay my ribs like a Ridley Scott alien.

Cliches crowded my head. Of absence and hearts. Of setting things free.

And then Joni Mitchell's voice sailed through the sadness.

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
Looking for the key to set me free
Oh the jealousy, the greed is the unraveling
It’s the unraveling
And it undoes all the joy that could be
I want to have fun, I want to shine like the sun
I want to be the one that you want to see
I want to knit you a sweater
Want to write you a love letter
I want to make you feel better
I want to make you feel free

I wouldn't clip his wings, nor mine. If sour mornings are the price, so be it.

Really, I hate mornings anyway, so rock-bottom isn't that far a fall before noon...

UNSUNG ADVICE
The Trip Chicks teleseminar "Insider Secrets of the Travel Experts" is now online. Anyone with an hour to spare can listen to me enthuse about inflatable neck pillows. At length.

The inevitable packing-tip question arose, which was problematic (beyond "roll your clothes" most travel writers begin mumbling). Truthfully? I'm rubbish at loading luggage. What I excel at is travel and observation and expression. Silly, silly me.

Oh, I've picked up a few tricks, sure: plug adapters, prescriptions in the carryon, notifying credit cards before travel (and checking for currency-conversion fees, a nasty new practice). But the one truly brilliant bit of advice I have, no one wants to hear.

Those neck pillows – the $7 generic jobbies from the airport newsstands – are my secret weapons. I slip into sleep, vertebrae cushioned from the dread "whiplash awake" head bob. I nap so thoroughly, my reputation for slumber irritates companions and colleagues alike (I even dozed through the much-chronicled Smurf Ass episode on Royal Jordanian, no mean feat given the size, hue-saturation and sheer bulk of this massif).

Take heart, amici miei: I'm more at risk of deep-vein thrombosis for not roaming the cabin or pulsing my glutes enough. That's right. Forget booty dancing. These days the wiggle is all about bum-burning workouts at 35,000 feet.

But back to the neck pillow, a piece of leisure-industry genius. I haven't even explored its finest aspect: when you're wearing what appears to be an inflatable toilet-seat cover around your neck, no one speaks to you.

Privacy is pretty much guaranteed, because fellow passengers assume you are insane and spend the entire flight waiting for your shoes to smolder, instead of detailing Aunt Millie's bingo triumph or Lil' Giuseppe's third-most articulated burp.

Neck pillows: companions of the not-so-rich and famous, the must-have jet-set accessory of 2006. Remember, you read it here first...

IMMORTALITY GADGETS
Inventor Alex Chiu claims to have a patent on "the most important invention in the world": magnetic finger and toe rings that cure disease, reverse the aging process and let you live thousands of years!!!

His full-page newspaper ad concludes: "A pair of these immortality gadgets costs only $45, shipping is included."

Gotta get me some of them Holy Grail Gizmos, counteract the late worknights...

GOOD GRAVY
Normally, I would not poach another blogger's material. But I simply must quote Mimi Smartypants, because her 1.10.06 entry about Sam Lipsyte's Home Land has become a secondhand staple among my friends:

"The narrator is daydreaming at the Thanksgiving table, not hearing his overbearing-jerk father's request to pass the gravy, and is snapped out of it when the father screams, 'GRAVY BOAT! STAY IN THE NOW!'."

Mimi's pretty sassy, if you like flip three-martini-playdate moms. Previously, I didn't, but she's given me fresh appreciation. Ms Smartypants, we salute you, the ladler of existential gravy goodness.

HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE
I just finished a Travel Age West piece on Patras: "Newly cosmopolitan, Greece's third-largest city is the European Cultural Capital for 2006".

The carnival grows pretty wild in this port and includes a “chocolate war,” which I'd love to witness someday. Karnavalos, the king puppet, leads the final, wild procession on the day before Orthodox Lent. After a solemn farewell, he is burnt on Agios Nikolaos Pier, as fireworks ignite the sky and dark gulf.

Research spotlighted two compelling characters from Patras' past. Giannoula Koulourou believed she would wed a US President between the World Wars. Ash-smeared revelers (boules) still stage mock weddings, satirizing her thwarted ambitions. Also, a Bavarian raisin-import-lackey, Gustav Clauss, founded a winery there in 1861, heavily fortified to ward off brigands. Was his sweet purple Mavrodaphne vintage named for the grape or an unrequited love? Either way, his legacy was more dignified: the Achaia Clauss "imperial cellar" today is home to 128 rare barrels worth millions of euros.

Valentine's is fast approaching, a Hallmark holiday I prefer to avoid. But I can't help wondering: what of my affection for IB will last 50 years? 150? Besides some snarky comments in cyberspace perhaps?

I'd feel worse, if not for this month's National Geographic cover story, which explains: "Studies around the world confirm that, indeed, passion usually ends. Its conclusion is as common as its initial flare ... If the chemically altered state induced by romantic love is akin to mental illness or a drug-induced euphoria, exposing yourself for too long could result in psychological damage."

RED-CARPET WORLD PREMIERE
Jen Leo outed this blog on today, while kindly mentioning my writing classes. Tentative, I'd been delaying the launch fanfare. But I can't imagine a better debut than in Writtenroad, an industry staple.

Plus, when not editing saucy travel anthologies, Jen plays big-stakes poker, I'm told, and runs Vivalasvegasblog.com. And she auctioned a date last Valentine's Day for a Parkinson's Disease charity (winning bid: $200.09). So I'm honored to be kicked out of the nest by such a cool chick.

 

CHIN UP, DUCK!
My adopted aunt passed through Seattle yesterday. At least, I think she did. From the flu-haze, I can produce a vague memory of Kayla laying out water, tylenol and a wet washcloth for my brow. This fairy godmother also left the illustrated Elements of Style, which really kicked the fever-hallucinations up a notch. C'mon: what's with that purple people-eater tree anyway?

Thank goodness she had the maternal authority to put me to bed, so I could mend. Usually I drag around ill for days – if not weeks – in a sort of zombie half-life. Except last winter, when I couldn't stand up for three days, lost ten pounds and coughed so hard tissue in my side ripped. Big fun.

My British doctor is to blame for any stoicism. "If you're well enough to bicycle to the office, you don't need treatment. Take some vitamins," he'd say. A fan of herbal medicine, he once wrote me an NHS prescription for rosehips. He's right there on the front-line against ubermicrobes.

No. I take that back. It's not just the English stiff-upper-lip, muddle-along thing at play here. Self employment and crummy catastrophic health insurance are the other culprits. I can't afford to be seriously ill in America.

But such thoughts are much too heavy for an invalid. So it's back to old Strunk & White, which made freshmen honors English such a misery.

Polly loves cake more than she loves me.

 

SNOW FALLING ON FIRS
Last night, I went to winter in Mead, Washington – my only taste of "sticking snow" all year. Damp, fat flakes poured from the sky, "putting wings on the trees," as my uncle explained.

My work shoes skittered over the broad semicircular stairs. Aunt Maura grabbed my arm, both of us giggling hopelessly. "I really am a city slicker now!" I joked.

She made a nest of blankets beside the cast-iron stove. I curled up and stared out the window: the fire's reflection was a quavering gold window superimposed on the moonlight snowscape. People waste a lot of money on drugs or gurus or ritzy resorts for a vision that sublime.

Except I was distracted. Earlier, we'd attended a high school basketball game, where my 14-year-old cousin performed at half-time. Her award-winning drill-team did this ... well ... booty dance; I can find no other word for it. The girls – flouncing in pink and black microkilts – were self-consciously adorable. They also were quite accomplished as both athletes and artists.

It was the sexiness that got to me. Some clearly were going through the motions. Others shimmied and bucked with authority.

Not that I care what teens do on couches or backseats – my hypocrisy hasn't gone too far. But booty dancing? At half-time? When did T&A become a letter sport?

"Does it bother you as a parent, seeing young girls aping adult erotica?" I finally asked Maura.

"The sexiness is just the style these days," she pointed out.

True. Had I not just read Cheryl-Anne Millsap's column in the Spokesman-Review? "It's no fun buying dainties at Victoria's Secret surrounded by high-school age kids," she complained. "The kids have taken over the grown-up's playground."

Martin Rogoff, a retailing professor at Philadelphia University, shed some light on this: "There's something we call age compression," he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Young people are leaving their childhoods early, forsaking toys for other pleasures, such as shopping."

I was working up some righteous indignation. I'd almost achieved bile. Then I remembered the dancers leaving the gym. One chawed a hot dog, others squabbled about the theme color for the next day (turquoise). They bounded into the snowy night – limbs still fidgeting dance moves – and zigzagged over the sidewalk, trying to catch flakes on their tongues.

And the moment was pure as driven snow.

WHISPERS AND WHISKERS AT SPOKANE FALLS
Today was chokka with business meetings, except one involved an hour's stroll through Spokane's impressive Frederick Law Olmsted-designed park, followed by a private tour of the Skyride. Amy and Andy – my newlywed friends – joined us, despite her fear of heights. They cuddled close, hands clasped, as the gondola lurched over the falls.

Native American Poet and Novelist Sherman Alexie calls it, “that place where ghosts of salmon jump.” A million fish would pool here, spawning amid the spray each year. The Spokane, Couer d' Alene, Colville, Kalispel, Nez Perce and other tribes gathered on the banks. But the dams stopped all that, long ago.

Chief of the Spokanes Alex Sherwood stood above the falls in 1973 and reminisced: "Indians from all over would gather every year for the annual salmon fishery. It was beautiful then, with thousands coming for many miles. You could hear the shouting welcomes as they arrived, the dancing, the singing, the trading, the games, the races, always the hearty hugs – and the fish! The fish sometimes so thick that it seemed that they filled the river. Sometimes, even now, I find a lonely spot where the river still runs wild.

"I find myself talking to it; "River, do you remember how it used to be – the game, the fish, the pure water, the roar of the falls, boats, canoes, fishing platforms? You fed and took care of our people then. For thousands of years we walked your banks and used your waters. You would always answer when our chiefs called to you with their prayer to the river spirit."

"Sometimes I stand and shout, "River, do you remember us?"
- Excerpt from The Spokane River, its Miles and its History, John Fahey with Robert Dellwo

Mute – despite its roar – the Spokane drops 60 feet here; the froth is suitably bridal this time of year. I ask if anyone's ever shot over the falls and survived. Everyone in the gondola looks askance. What? I'm just being a good journalist and asking the morbid question we all must be contemplating. How can you dangle in a lilac-colored car above a cataract and not wonder? Does confidence in Swedish engineering completely squash the imagination?

A later search reveals a 1927 attempt. After 20 minutes, Al Fausset emerged bleeding from a whirlpool. "They've got whiskers on 'em (the falls) an' they sure can give a feller an awful tossing," he told the Spokesman Review.

Fausset died 21 years later in Seattle, my hometown (more or less). According to the book Liquid Locomotive, his son Irv claimed the nursing home – not cancer – finished off the daredevil. "He couldn't stand the regimentation … It was the first time in his life someone told him what to do: when to turn off the light, when to go to bed. It got him down and he just couldn't take it.

"He lived three lives to most men's one. He got a lot of fun out of life. Funny thing was he never knew how to swim."

 

HOW DO YOU AFFORD YOUR ROCK AND ROLL LIFESTYLE?
I awoke on Irish linen in the Davenport's Parlor Suite – roughly the size of a small house – this morning, then swam and soaked in the hot tub, pimping the high-roller, travel-writer lifestyle many dream about (after they finish the Oscar-rockstar reel).

The trouble with that fantasy? It neglects the toilet rocking on its moorings in the garret back home. The ink-stained secondhand clothes, the crummy pension plan, the five o'clock courage of self-employment.

I worry about the expense of kitty grit. And how to wrestle the litter sacks home without a car. Do you still want my world?

Don't get me wrong: the perks are unbelievable. I have dog sledded in Colorado, canoed in Appalachian backwaters, swum with dolphins in Mexico, tangoed in Finland, biked in Ireland and ridden a roan mare in the Rockies. I've stargazed, snowboarded and raced a sailboat on company time. I learned to scull, fly-fish and play extreme croquet.

A minor aristocrat once kissed my hand, bowed low and clacked his heels in Rome, the Eternal City.

In Jordan, I learned to "mooooove with the camel" and wear a Brazilian bikini in a Muslim country (nothing I'd recommend). I also mud-bathed beside the Dead Sea, plunged down a 400-ft scarlet sand dune and refused a Bedouin sheik's proposal – to become wife number two – while veiled in a desert camp.

In the glamorous, greedy city of Hong Kong, I rode in a helicopter, experienced Chinese acupressure and palm-reading, sipped gin-and-tonics at the Foreign Correspondents' Club, won HK$110 at the Sha Tin racetrack (about 14 bucks) and danced until dawn in a scarlet bob wig and pink aviators, despite my capitalist guilt.

But I haven't been to the dentist in six years. Every system has checks and balances, you see.

When my teeth fall out, travel writing will cease to be glamorous.

 

EXPULSION FROM THE GARDEN
The Goldman family stood me some vegan soup and Chardonnay in the Peacock Room after the wedding. Many of these kindly people were concerned that I might be single, following my over-frank speech last night.

No, no. I have an Inappropriate Beau. He's in Sydney, starting a six-month, round-the-world trip.

This information elicits gasps of shock and horror, wherever it's unveiled. “How do you manage?” people say, patting my shoulder. “You're so wise and mature to let him go!”

What, exactly, was the alternative? Casting myself on the runway? Or, less literally: curtailing his dream, when my own are so large and geographically ambitious?

I'm no martyr. Just a travel writer able to tolerate I.B.'s walkabout, because I'll have plenty too.

I return to my suite and curl up with Road Angels. This serendipitous second-hand-bookstore find offers much comfort.

Kent Nerburn writes: "I've watched the light go out of too many of my friends' eyes as their lives turned from a crazy garden of weed and wildflowers to a well-manicured lawn. I'm not ready for that yet. I need 'bears behind trees' – surprises in life that are bigger than a plugged sewer line or an unexpected finance charge on my credit card ... If I don't have them, my life becomes just a long-term maintenance project.."

And so he leaves Minnesota to chase old dreams along America's left coast. He does it for himself, but also for his wife and child. "The only way I can assure that they will get the man they deserve is to blow out the pipes now and then. And the best way I know to do that is to set off on a journey into the unknown. It takes some of the spiritual shrimpiness out of my soul and makes me humbler, more appreciative, and less cynical. In some indefinable fashion, it keeps me young."

Aha! I knew my tolerance had a deeper source than ballast for my future trips. Clearly I.B. is on a sojourn of spiritual de-shrimping.

Let no woman stand in the way, however much it sucks to be sans date at a wedding...

 

PLAYING NICELY WITH OTHERS
The root beer floats were a mistake. I knew this … but how could we watch Buffy without being in sugar shock? Anyway, a bride's last night solo should be of her choosing. And if this obliges me to eat several brown cows, who am I to argue?

Through a series of mishaps, Amy winds up at J.C Penny's for her upsweep. “All I know is that generations of old ladies have been very happy with their 'dos from the salon,” she announces.

Anne and I gesture, frown, cajole and eventually direct Amy's thin hair into a suitable style. “They're both editors in one capacity or another,” the bride apologizes to the shell-shocked, but game, hairdresser. We're experimenting with processional and recessional music on the Powerbook, snippets of Bach, Handel and 10,000 Maniacs.

Abba's Take a Chance on Me blares. “Now you're just messing around,” Amy scolds.

***
We dress in an overheated room at Hannah's Garden Inn, the 1908 bed-and-breakfast where the wedding is being held. My cranberry chiffon stubbornly resists the iron.

“Maybe you shouldn't have brought it home on your bicycle,” someone points out, not unreasonably.

“No, no. The thing just wrinkles regardless,” I insist. Anne's wielding the steamer dangerously close to my body. I endure the scalding, mainly because I get to wisecrack: “are you blowing smoke up my ass?”

Opportunities like that are rare and not to be missed.

This silliness is much-needed. Despite our editorial savvy, we know little about how to corset a gal with dangerous curves into a strapless gown.

We're tugging and tucking and tightening, racing against the clock. The photographer wanders in and captures me winching the ribbons, knee jammed into Amy's back for leverage like a paler, wilder Mammy. Now there's a Kodak keeper.

***

Then the bustle is over. Andy and Amy sign the ketubah, their spiritual contract, along with the secular papers. I witness both.

And then we're downstairs, doing the drag-step to the huppah (Jewish wedding canopy) that the groom built. The parents light candles, which are set perilously close to my shoulder-blade-length hair and highly flammable, still wrinkled frock. I'm worrying about a bridal wardrobe malfunction, trying to forget that today is the two-year anniversary of my divorce, when suddenly it clicks.

Amy and Andy. Married. That's the point.

I tear up, but manage not to blub. After they sip grape juice, I read the first blessing – a fantastic bit of luck. Just last night, I was delighting in the line “this marriage, a study”: so appropriate for the wedding of a professor and graduate student.

The poem also contains lovely bits equating marriage with milk and honey, the laughter of women. I try not to weep or ignite … and soon Andy's stamping the glass and leaning forward for a kiss. “Wait for it,” the rabbi says, or some quite secular equivalent, and everyone laughs. Then we all race back down the aisle. It's done. Mazel tov!

***

The rest is incidental. Anne and I nearly destroy Amy's dress – ripping an eyelet and jamming the zipper – then finally lace that sucker securely. We pose for photos, drink and eat. I make a sweet, silly speech, explaining how I introduced the pair: Amy's romantic star ascending as mine sunk.

“She spent hours on the phone – international – comforting me. And sometimes we'd talk about Andy … how they hit it off with a conversation about ancient dog crucifixion … how sweet and smart he was …. how nervous she was to meet finally.

“'It's no big deal,' I'd tell her. 'A date is just two nice people doing nice things together nicely.' These words have come back to haunt me. A lot.

“But here's to Amy and Andy. May you always be nice together.”

On one hand, that's a pretty milquetoast toast. On the other, what more could you wish for two dear friends?

As my marriage dissolved, we no longer gave each other the kindness accorded to strangers, the simple courtesies, the double-check before temper-ignition (“did you say that I was loathsome, or did I mishear 'toothsome'?").

And really, who should you keep more safe than the ones you love?

So play nice, kids.

UP IN SMOKE
The pre-wedding festivities are a blur. My fellow bridesmaid, Anne, was in a nine-car pile-up the night before. She and her family spent about nine hours at the E.R.; happily everyone's intact, just jolted.

“I'm not wearing a matching neck brace,” I tell her. She doesn't look terribly amused. Maybe it's a bit soon for hospital humor.

***

We primp Andy and Amy's new house – a gorgeous Craftsman full of wooden floors and window seats – welcome guests, devour food, walk the pug. The bride shreds through my suitcase for rehearsal attire. She winds up in my burgundy cashmere sweater and a grey pussy-willow-print skirt I gave her last year. “Something borrowed,” we laugh.

A petite Korean woman hurtles into my arms at dinner that evening. My fatigued brain takes several seconds to process: it's Mimi, now a full-fledged professor. Twelve years ago, Amy and I forcibly enrolled her as a Classics major. She's the only one who stayed the course.

The three of us were roommates, the first time I lived in Rome. Our French doors overlooked the Campo dei Fiori, the outdoor market in the city's core.

The bars' hub-bub lasted late into the night. After closing, workers smashed all the empties on the piazza's cobbles. Street sweepers sucked up the glass about 2am. Silence. Brief, fleeting silence. Then vendors began sledging together pipe-metal stalls and singing opera about 4am.

Strangely, I slept well for the first time in my life.

***
Two Italians stood beneath our balcony. One clutched his breaking heart.

"Come down, my Juliets," this complete stranger crooned. "We will buy you red wine and roses.”

“Sono sposata,” I lied, brandishing my fake wedding ring.

“No problem! We're not jealous!"

***

I married a man I met there in Rome. He was an American academic. After eight and a half years, the union imploded in Athens. “My big fat Greek divorce,” I labeled it. Like hospital humor, many people do not find such things funny.

***

We reminisce carefully, along with Mim's partner, Brian, who also lived in our cramped medieval apartment. Little mention is made of my ex, John Curtis Franklin. Instead, we focus on other friends, including John Butterfield, now a lutemaker.

***

Sophia, the flower girl, rescues us all from maudlin memories. “I have something to show you,” she whispers urgently. I follow her elfin mass of curls into the base of an old smokestack. Wind and echoes surge up the 225-foot brick tunnel, now a sanitized feature in the Steam Plant Grill.

Mimi, Brian and Amy join us. We holler into the night sky. And – for a heartbeat – I feel like a 19-year-old girl again; the sort of girl who would oversleep her shuttle, perched on the edge of the Forum for the first time, seeing a fresher world with brighter eyes.

FOUR O'CLOCK COURAGE
The shuttle driver knocks. And waits. Knocks again. Peers. Shuffles. Lights blaze, but no one stirs inside the Queen Anne redbrick. As he retreats down the porch, a young woman in pink Capri pajamas hurtles outside. She apologizes profusely, hands pressed to her heart.

“Anything, anything you can do, please,” she begs. “I understand if you can't, though. I overslept. I'm so sorry.”

Driver John is uncomfortable. “I'm in no hurry,” I offer.

He radios for advice. Should he loop back in 15 minutes to collect her? “That would be really nice,” the dispatcher crackles. I nod.

We plunge down the Denny regrade into Belltown, where a sharp-featured woman stands outside her condo. Even a studio here, I'm guessing, runs at least $350,000.

Madam, however, is clearly not the studio sort. “Well, I would have left her,” she announces in an East Coast accent. “I mean, it's not fair. No one likes getting up this early. I would have liked more sleep too.”

“I'd hate to see anyone miss their flight,” I say mildly.

“Well, she should have gotten up on time then,” Madam crows. “We shouldn't have to be delayed for her.”

I gesture to the clock. “Are you worried about missing your flight? I have plenty of time…”

“-so do I,” she slices. “But it's not fair.”

Goodness woman, what made you so brittle? And why are we alpha-dogging at each other's throats?

“She's just a young thing. And she was such a sweetie.”

“I don't care. Rules are rules.”

John interjects, modifying this theme: “I'm only following orders.” His shoulders hunch around his ears. He wants out of this clash of Titanesses. So do I.

“Well,” my teeth are gritted. “Just consider it your good deed for the day.”

The driver finally breaks the silence. “So, where are you going?”

“To Hawaii. To relax.”

Amen, sister.

***
The late passenger was a 20-year-old George Washington University sophomore, studying feminism and globalization. She'd slept through two alarms, feeling poorly after a tonsillectomy. Her parents were away for the weekend.

She was the sort of sweet, earnest young woman that lived in unheated host-homes in Ecuador and Guatemala. She was off to Shanghai next, nervous but eager.

But Madam would have let her miss the shuttle. Because those extra 15 minutes at the Sea-Tac Starbucks really make the trip. Hurry up and relax, already!

Someone needs to tell Scrooge Christmas is over.

Enough said.

TIME FOR SORROW, TIME FOR JOY
All my packing-snarkiness is coming home to roost. I have five pre-dawn hours before the Airport Shuttle arrives. Thus far, only my cranberry chiffon bridesmaid dress is in the carryon.

But one of my best friends – graduate student Amy Tillery – is marrying an American archaeologist I met in Ankara, Turkey: Professor Andy Goldman, who excavated at Gordion, once home to King Midas (though he burrows deeper to Roman remains). I introduced these two dear people, they fell in love and I snagged her cheap, sunny and spacious apartment in Ballard.

My diabolical plan worked perfectly, until I faced the gift-giving medley of Chanukah, Christmas, birthday, wedding and housewarming. Plus my gown, flight to Spokane and other wedding-party expenses. Then she reclaimed much of her furniture from my flat, forcing me to shop. This made me bad-tempered throughout the ole season of lights. I am a reluctant and charmless consumer.

But all is forgiven, because I am just so completely delighted by this marriage. Even if I have to wear a matching frock (first time ever – shudder) and haphazardly sling sweaters into my suitcase at 3am (spontaneity is one of the secrets of the travel-writing trade, you see).

Complimenti e auguru, cari amici!

RADIO FREE AMERICA
The Trip Chicks' Insider Secrets of the Travel Experts was more enjoyable than I anticipated. Good panel-mates helped: USA Today Columnist Captain Meryl Getline, Travelers' Tales Editor David Farley and South Florida Sun-Sentinel Travel Editor Thomas Swick, who wrote my favorite critique of the industry.

He asked Why Is So Much of Travel Writing Boring? in the distinguished Columbia Journalism Review. "What can you know – and feel – about a place when you don't meet the people who live in it? We learn through human contact, and the knowledge that we gain is of infinitely greater value than any number of practical tips."

Ergonomic packers, I spit on your matching baggage!

Swick's also been guest-blogging at World Hum this week. A busy fellow is our Tom.

I've also kept occupied, racing off post-seminar for microwbrews and sadly unspicy Thai food with extreme-sports photographer Karen Johanson. We schemed about flying to Peru to profile Sofia Mulanovich, the Anna-Kournikova-marketing-bonanza-of-surfing. But we'll probably start closer to home at Surf Sister, a wave-riding academy in Tofino, British Columbia.

PLAYING CHICKEN
Colleagues – clearly enemies masquerading as friends – suggested me as a panelist for The Trip Chicks' Insider Secrets of the Travel Experts. So I'll be yapping on a teleseminar January 12, 2006.

Blimey. Questions include airfare deals and luggage tips. How do I blag my way through an hour?

Aha! By hiding behind sage Tim Cahill: "Pack half the clothes you think you'll need and twice the money," he advised in Hold the Enlightenment.

I also enjoyed this bit of advice too: "What you really want to do is meet indigenous folks, understand their concerns, find out how things work, make friends. You don't do this in the company of traveling English speakers. So have a quest, some bit of business that will shove you into the cultural maelstrom."

Inappropriate Beau and I disagree on destinations and quixotic ambitions – that's why he's wandering round the world alone for six months. But he's having a jolly good time thus far:"I like Sydney...it sorta like tropical Seattle," he reports.

This news is not well-received under the slug-grey sky of the Pacific Northwest. I don't care how many times people compliment my "dewy Seattle skin". That pallor's from drizzle and no matter how much coffee we consume – liquid joy! – the winters are a slog here.

GONE, GOING, GONE
I held it together in the last hours. I did not weep or cling.

Both cats are in my lap, or close as they can be, eyeballing crows on the neighbor’s roof. Jake squeaks like a metronome every few seconds. He’s crying for me; my kibble-bribed mourner, a tabby red in tooth and claw.

For distraction, I grabbed The Time Traveler's Wife, a holiday pressie from Mac-guru Jez Smith. Big mistake. Colossal. Because the novel starts thus:

"It's hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he's okay. It's hard to be the one who stays.

"I keep myself busy. Time goes faster that way.

"I go to sleep alone, and wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I'm tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that's been under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by absence?"

I read the whole thing anyway, in one greedy gulp. Other people's problems are much more palatable – and prosy – than my own prosaic ones.

WHEN A PASSPORT ISN'T ENOUGH
We had some last minute excitement (a visa? What?), solved online. As Finch says in American Pie, "god bless the Internet."

"You're a travel writer. You're supposed to catch these things," he protested.

"Yeah, I'm a travel writer STAYING HOME," I reminded I.B. "I next sojourn to exotic Spokane, Washington, to bridesmaid. Everyone's jealous."

Despite the turmoil, we had a lovely evening – a walk to the Ballard locks, dinner a deux, wistful lounging with the cats, which make him slightly sniffly. The Inappropriate Beau is also allergic to garlic; happily I'm still in denial about that catastrophe. Because really, a vegetarian and an omnivore who can't handle cipolle o aglio? Hence the name Inappropriate Beau (at least, in part. We'll discuss the flash car later).

We stopped into Karma Coffee to visit the machinery. I felt compelled to explain to the very sweet barista why we were gawping from the street, ice cream in hand, without entering.

"He helped designed that small-unit bean roaster," I offered. "We're excited to see it in action."

I.B. asked, once we were outside: "Do you set out to embarrass me?"

"Fair's fair. You shout 'author signing' every time we enter a bookstore."

Then I told him, yet again, about my fave New Yorker cartoon of late. Johnny Cohen depicted a scruffy beggar, holding a sign that said "meet the author". And he's such a good person and friend, he laughed afresh.

To repay such loyalty with abject humiliation, here's a pic of I.B. on his eve of departure, round-the-world.

 

LOST AND FOUND

My beau and best friend departs Monday to travel around the world for six months, beginning in Sydney, Australia.

Who understands wanderlust better than a travel writer? On the other hand, I'm not accustomed to being the one left home, which can chafe.

I found fuel for my discontent in the The Orchid Thief, a book ostensibly about exotic flowers in Florida, but truly about the passions that connect – and separate us – from the herd. In it, Author Susan Orlean interviews Lee Moore the Adventurer. The one-time smuggler of plants and Pre-Columbian pottery tells her:

"Oh, I'm not brave. I'm just sure of myself. I just remember when I was a kid, I once was going on a canoe trip in the Everglades and some of my friends decided not to go because it was going to be too much discomfort and hardship. But they did come to watch the rest of us head off on the trip, and I remember looking up as we pushed off and seeing the forlorn faces of the people left behind looking on. That's what started my life of adventure. I knew I never wanted to be the one left on the shore."

I'm on the bank ... and, well, quite surprisingly, the water looks fine.

Often our exterior and interior journeys coincide, feeding off each other symbiotically. As Pico Iyer summed it up in a Salon article: "We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves."

I know this truth. I lived it. Since my marriage withered in August 2003, I've ranged to:

Athens, Greece
Oxford, England (2)
Phoenix, Arizona (5)
Chicago, Illinois
Panama City, Florida
New York, New York (3)
Bristol, Connecticut (3)
Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (2)
The Rocky Mountains, Colorado
Rome and Lazio, Italy
Crested Butte, Colorado
Petra and Wadi Rum in Jordan
Hong Kong, a SAR of China
Vancouver, Canada
The Cumberland Plateau, Kentucky
London, Oxford and Seaham, England
Dublin and southeastern Ireland
Arizona's wine country (who knew?)

I left a broken home to find myself. Two years later, I was ready to find a home again.

Slowly – piano, piano – a real life emerged from my boxes and battered suitcases. Old friends arrived with art, armloads of homemade pottery and excitingly antiquated appliances (including the faux wood-paneled microwave that shoots lightening bolts at butter; I can't believe it's not Armageddon!).

I learned the postman's name (Tony) and how many limbs it takes to restart the heater's pilot light (three, plus some intermediate yoga contortions). I stopped a bike theft in the alley and watched a Hummer driver urinate on my hedge (seething silently in the passive-aggressive tradition of my city, Seattle).

I discovered that my neighbors are not breeding  ferrets for meat on their apartment's balcony, as I breathlessly speculated for months. Nope, those are in fact, all-singing, all-dancing black bear hamsters.

Last night, I came over all house-proud, as the Inappropriate Beau and I canoodled on my new sofa futon. He sunk my battleship without effort.

"After a year and a half, you finally bought furniture. The great travel writer is becoming a domesticated hack," he teased (I.B. likes to do that. A lot. It's pretty much his default mode).

"No! Erm ... well, kinda," I admitted. And then, in a pathetic gush of justification: "But I had no fixed abode for five years. I need cats and interior decor."

Damn. Was I just another Fight Club cliché? "Like everyone else, I had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct," Jack announces, before morphing into a sexy, psycho Brad Pitt. "I would flip through catalogs and wonder, 'What kind of dining set defines me as a person?'."

Except I crave both: the expedition – the dive into self and situation – then the retreat to home comforts. Catch and release. Or is that just a Catch-22?

"You should write about this," advised Inappropriate Beau with all the easy assurance of a non-author. (Or maybe he just hopes a rant against Swedish flatpack furniture will transform me into a sexy, sane Angelina Jolie).

Thus Road Remedies, the blog, was born – a meditation on home and away.

Because not all who wander are lost. Not all on left on shore are forlorn. And not all "assembly required" furniture is spindly and soul-destroying...