Flying home from Oahu.
I'm on the aisle. Callie has the window, eyes closed, wrapped in a blue United blanket. Somewhere in my carry-on is the notebook I bought in Edinburgh ten or so years ago. I can't remember which book I was researching. Might have been Killing Kennedy, but it was definitely a Killing book. Between 2010 and 2020 I didn't write anything else.
The plan on that trip was to land in Scotland, take the train down to the Lake District for a couple days hiking in bitter cold winter weather, then ferry over to Ireland for a swing-through research stops for the book. Yes, that means it was definitely Killing Kennedy, which would have been 2012. Because we spent a couple nights in Galway visiting the sites of a JFK visit he took months before his assassination. We pushed back to Dublin after that, swinging south first to sleep in Dromoland Castle during rainy February weather. I remember one particularly harsh day we ran on the golf course in a downpour then retreated to the castle's bar for an afternoon before a roaring fire, reading books, and eating an early dinner. Crab claws in a garlic broth. The fireplace was so near my clothes smelled like wood smoke the rest of the trip.
At the start of the trip, in Edinburgh, we visited a museum where I bought a cool spiral bound notebook. I have it with me now. It has an elaborate cover illustration of an old map of Italy, with the British artist Turner's journey in the nineteenth century highlighted. To make it more durable, a clear plastic piece protects that map and thus the entire contents of the notebook. I bought it because I love Turner's paintings, visiting his works at the National Gallery whenever I'm in London.
But the notebook is more than a cool souvenir. I decided to make it the repository of all my travel writing for that journey and every trip I have made since. Each page has a date and location, then description of how we spent our travels.
Sometimes it's exciting, like the Killing Jesus research in the Holy Land. My guide drew a map of where the old City of David was in comparison to the modern Jerusalem, which is still there on the page. Sometimes it's a nice description of a long walk in a cool place or some other romantic memory with Calene. A show. Lots of talk about food. Weather and smells. Sometimes I forget to write in the notebook while I'm actually on the trip, so I backfill when I get home. You can spot those sections pretty easily, because they're more of a summary than an in-the-moment description.
Sometimes I even forget to write about a trip at all, to my utter disappointment. More than any book, those journeys are the touchstones of my life. I go back through those pages now and then, picking a memory at random. Then I'm there, in an instant, the mood and the emotions and sights and smells and sounds of a trip brought come rushing back.
Wi-Fi is spotty over the Pacific, so checking Fantasy Football scores is out of the question today. So, once I finish this missive, I'm going to slide my laptop back into my new Thule backpack and slide out that dog-eared notebook.
I'll write about this week on the North Shore, running on the thick green golf course grass and sweating buckets in the coastal jungle that was once an Army Air Force Base in World War II. I'll write about the SS Bowfin on display down in Pearl Harbor, and my amazement at how small the inside of a WWII submarine felt. There's yesterday's race at the Hawaii Country Club, where my teams finished second (boys race and girls race), and one of my guys powered to an outright victory in the individual standings. The rain squall that came and went in sixty seconds while we lay on the beach yesterday. Sunsets, so many sunsets. And the 4:30 solo drives to Kailua, Calene staying behind in our bungalow while I drove the thirty-five miles to where the team was staying in Airbnb’s with the other coaches. Window rolled down. Utter darkness of a simple two-lane North Shore farm road with no streetlights. Live recording of Springsteen's August Wrigley Field concert blasting on the speakers — but not too loud, because something about volume seems to interfere with the other senses, blocking those tropical smells and how warm and humid the predawn air feels. Orion in the Southern sky a surprise, because I was unsure whether the belt would be hanging in such a low latitude. Then, after conducting that 6 am morning workout as the sun rose, hot black coffee from a roadside shack and then the two-lane road back in the other direction, that lovely blue Pacific which I had heard but could not see on the outbound leg lovely and waves whispering on my right.
I don't think I'll forget those drives any time soon.
I have no plans to publish that notebook, or return to those notes and craft some larger story out of them. It's just nice to know they're there. The notebook is only half full, those empty remaining pages reminding there's a lot more of the world to see.
And write about.