A Re-Introduction, by Curly Due

     I write, then delete, write again, and delete again, looking for the perfect words to express myself, and impress you, my audience, my imagined audience. I remember a scene, in what is one of my favorite movies, "Finding Forrester." The movie, if you haven't seen it, is about a high school kid who becomes friends with a writer who is famous, for one book he had written, and then is never heard from again. In a scene, the kid is staring at his typewriter, and Forrester, the writer, asked the kid what he was doing, the kid explained, he was thinking about what to write. Forrester's response was, to just write, and think, when doing the second draft. Well, now I have the secret to great writing, so be prepared to be, amazed by my new writing skills.

     Not so amazing is the title of this post, "A Re-Introduction by Curly Due," meaning it has been so long since I have posted, a new introduction might be appropriate. As I had written in my first introduction, my wife and I have been fortunate enough to have traveled a lot, and I wish I had kept a journal. Why a travel journal, well if travel was nothing more than a vacation, then maybe a journal seems silly. For me, every travel experience is one more page in a chapter, every trip, is one new chapter in a book. And, when I get old, and I can't remember a thing, I might like to read the book, that was once my life. I am 47 now, and it is already a blur, what will I remember in 10 or 20 years? Vacations are right around the corner for us, and as usual, I am looking forward to writing about them. In less than a week, we are spending a long weekend in the White Mountains, then scuba diving in the Florida Keys and in April, 10 days in Venice. My Wife and I started traveling early in our relationship, our first trip together was to the Galapagos Islands, which was amazing, but it is our second that I would like to share.

     We went to the Galapagos Isands, and months later, I was doing a family trip to Ireland. The trip was a birthday gift to my Mom, who has always wanted to go to Ireland. Two weeks in Ireland, and I thought as long as we are there, we might as well spend another week, and see England and Scotland. Yes I know, see England and Scotland in a week, forgive me, I was a new traveler. So three weeks with my Mom, sister and her husband, and I invited my wife, girlfriend at the time, to come for the second week. She agreed, reluctantly though, and for weeks took every opportunity to express her concerns, which really started to irritate me. Needless to say, by the time I had left for vacation, we were fighting. We flew into Glasgow Scotland and set off to see Loch Ness. You can't go to Scotland and not see Loch Ness, right? More importantly, Mom wanted to see Loch Ness, so we headed north. Well holy crap, it doesn't look that far on a map, but damn, it take forever to get there. We made it as far as Fort William. Fort William is a beautiful old town, it's about halfway up the west coast of Scotland.

Fort William is the second largest settlement in the Highlands of Scotland, and lies near the head of Loch Linnhe.

So, we walked around the town, we being Mom, my sister, her husband and myself, we shopped, ate lunch, and I for one, wondered, who the hell is William Wallace? He was everywhere! It wasn't until after the trip, I saw "Braveheart." Anyhow, I managed to sneak off by myself for a bit, and sat on the bank of Loch Linnhe, a chance to ponder, it was beautiful and surreal, and this is where I considered my fight, with my wife. I wished we had not fought before I left, I wished I could call her to say I was sorry, and mostly, I wished she was with me, sitting there on the bank of Loch Lennhe, in Fort William, but I would have to wait a week for that. Our relationship was new, we had not spoke much about what "it" was, but here, on the bank of Loch Lennhe, "it" was more important to me than I had realized. One page, in my book. My wife came the second week as planned, we made up, and spent the week together, with my family, and here we are, 16 years later, many more fights and make-ups under our belt, many more pages and chapters to our book. Another page, brings me to dinner in Tuscany.

     It was just about this time, two years ago when we went to Italy with our friends, S & D. We stayed in a beautiful villa in Radda in Chianti.

Fattoria Poggerino was absolutely perfect, and the view was ok too...

One evening at the villa, we enjoyed dinner, prepared for us by the proprietor. There were six of us, my wife, our very dear friends, S & D, and a couple we had never met before. We talked, enjoyed dinner, drank wine and got to know a little bit about this couple, who live north of Venice. The amusing part of the story is, I introduced myself as "Russell," and later in the evening my wife had referred to me as "Curly." As it turns out, this couple has a friend with the same nickname. They were further surprised by how much I reminded them of him. So for the rest of the evening I was affectionately referred to as "Curly Due."  Well, we were on our way to Rome the next day and exchanged phone numbers and have chatted on and off ever since. Another page. In just a few weeks, we are off to Venice, and yes, our friends will be coming to meet us. I look forward to dinner, wine and more conversation with our new friends, and another page.