I’m going to Budapest.
It has been crazy since I got home from Crystal Falls on
Sunday. In fact, the craziness started as
soon as I got back into range of a cell signal, and my phone started
binging. I pulled over—if driving in the
city while using your phone is unsafe, driving down a mountain logging road
while doing it has to be suicidal—and discovered that I had a long list of
missed calls and voice mails all from the same number. I knew the number, it belongs to a good
friend, and I had a pretty good idea why he was calling.
Dan is a pilot for one of the big airlines. He started coming here for summers as a
child, and inherited his parent’s cottage when they could no longer take care
of it. He came here all during his children’s
growing up and still came with Marjorie, his wife, after the kids set out on
their own.
We got to know each other a little over that time, but only
became friends a few years ago when Marjorie passed away from a fast developing
tumour, and Dan retreated to Midden Harbour to deal with his grief. He started dropping into the office and then
I invited him to go out on the boat.
During that summer while he regained his footing, we spent days on end sailing
and fishing and drinking countless bottles of good single malt—we compromise,
he’s a Laphroaig aficionado, I’m a Tomintoul man.
Then, after he had gone back to work, I got a call from him
one day asking if I could make the afternoon commuter shuttle. It was Thursday and the paper had been put to bed, so I said “Sure,
as long as you get me back to the ferry in the morning so I could do distribution
of The Shoreline.”
“Not a chance, Dunc.
We’ll be in San Francisco.”
“What?”
“Get someone to deliver the papers for you. Doesn’t take a genius to deliver papers. We’ll be back by Monday, plenty of time to
put together next week’s rag”
So, I went to San Francisco.
That turned out to be the first of many trips I’ve been able to make
with Dan using his “Friends” fares.
Costs me nothing because he won’t let me pay—says it would be the same
as him paying me to go out on my boat.
This time, looks like it’s going to be Budapest. Took significant more fiddling to make
arrangements to get The Shoreline out, but what the heck, I had three
days. Ev is going to do the editorial.
Thomas, who used to do layout for me, has agreed to come in from the reservation
for a couple of weeks and do the setup and follow through on printing day. And Ev has even conceded to doing the
distribution. After all, she did want to
learn all the ropes.
I never have to worry about Butkus. Half the town fights over having him stay
even though it means a huge jump in the household grocery bill.
So, tomorrow will be spent getting out this week’s edition
with Thomas at my elbow. Then, on
Thursday I’ll go into the city, and by Friday I’ll be on the ground in Hungary.
I’ve promised Evolene
I’ll send back some foreign correspondence/travelogue type stuff.
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