The south side of the I-95 Harbor tunnel, looking through a rear view mirror was the last glimpse I got of Baltimore as my dad and I drove towards the airport. It’s a view I’ve come to love over the years. So much so that when I was 20 I gave myself a stick-and-poke tattoo of the skyline on my wrist. It stands inside a crudely poked belt meant to represent the rustbelt of which it is a part.

Watching the city drop off the horizon is an experience my dad and I share every time I leave for a trip.  We were cruising in the family truck, a blue and grey ’96 Chevy Silverado that I use to drive, back when I was having trouble finding work and needed wheels to get around.

“She runs pretty good,” I said to my father. “Yeah, well I fixed the misfire, replaced the exhaust and got a new windshield because of that crack so I’d say she’s in top shape.” “Sounds like you’re going to hang onto her then?” “I think so,” he said.

When he first got the truck it was meant to be a flip job.  Dad’s the general manager of a car dealership and every few years he likes to buy and sell a car on the side as an investment and for some fun. Selling cars is in our blood. It started with my grandfather who then had six boys with my grandmother and in turn passed the trade along. My other two male cousins both work in dealerships now too. I had a brief stint as a lot boy when I was 18, but other than that, I’ve managed to avoid the industry much to my father’s delight. “You don’t want to work these kinds of hours,” he always says. 60-70 hour 6-day work weeks can dominate a person’s life. He’s proven it to our family first hand. Still, he’s put enough sweat and blood into his job to where, when he needs to take a few hours off to drive his boy to the airport, he’s sure as shit is going to do it, and no one is going to tell him otherwise.

Driving someone to the airport is a love my dad passed on to me. There’s a shared excitement between the person driving and the person leaving. You get to speculate on all the different adventures that might happen, reflect on the things you’re leaving behind and say all the things a person says to one another when they don’t know the next time they will see each other. We’ve gotten it down to an art form over the years. It wasn’t always easy to “communicate feelings” between my dad and I, but as we’ve both grown older we’ve gotten pretty damn good at it.

“My son, I think this is going to be a life changing experience for you,” he said as we took the I-195 West exit toward Baltimore Washington International Airport.

“Let’s hope so,” I said. “If it doesn’t then that means I didn’t do it right.” It was almost six years to the day that we took this drive for my move to New Orleans. That car ride was filled with more nervous energy than excitement. I felt young and invincible back then and my parents could see that.  They are both still a little nervous during this go around, but only as much as any decent parent would feel.

As we pulled up to the terminal I spotted the Air Canada sign and we parked curbside. This was it. Go time. Dad kept the car running and we both grabbed my bags out of the truck bed. He reached into his pocket, pulling out his money clip and discreetly handed me a fifty-dollar bill. “Lunch money?” I asked. “Yeah,” he said.

He pulled out his phone and snapped a picture of the two of us. I took out my phone and did the same.  We gave each other one last hug, he told me to be safe, and I walked inside.

 

The Air Canada kiosk was empty apart from the two employees, one of them in training.  I gave her my passport and ticket that I had printed at home. After a bit of fumbling behind the counter, the trainee printed out my new boarding pass and I headed for the terminal.  Neil and I had plans to meet at the gate. Well, at the bar closest to our gate.  I made my way through the terminal, camera backpack, travel pack and small backpack in tow. My right shoulder started to hurt from the weight of the bags. “Shit!” I thought. This is going to be a long trip if I am going to be constantly lugging this gear.  Normally I am pretty good about traveling light. I treat it like a challenge. Few things make me happier than traveling light and still feeling like I have everything I need, but this trip was different. I carried what amounted to a small production studio on my back..

I walked past the first bar closest to our gate because it was too crowded. Luckily I found another one a hundred yards further down. I ordered two Coors Lights and two whiskeys, sat down at a table, being careful not to hit people with the tripod that was strapped to the side of my backpack and waited for Old Neil to arrive.

About ten minutes passed before Neil and I found each other. “Oh hey Neil! What are you doing here?” I said jokingly. “Oh, I’m about to go to Europe!” He replied. “Me too!” I said. “How about we go together?” “Well that sounds like a great idea,” he said.

Neil sat down across from me and we both picked up our glasses of whiskey. “To Five2Nine,” we both said to the sound of our clanking glasses, then we threw back what would be the first of many libations consumed over the course of  our crossing.

The shot hit my stomach like a medieval mace, forcing me to take pause for a moment as my body acclimated to the introduction of the liquid poison I’ve learned to both love and hate at the same time. To be honest, I really shouldn’t have been drinking at all. A week before the trip I had wicked hangover that I tried to curb with four Advil and a glass of orange juice. The combination of medicine and citric acid brought about a nausea that forced an almost instant urge to vomit. The resulting retch tore a blood vessel in the lining of my stomach and when the liquid hit the porcelain, all I could see was bright red. This, by any standard, was a sign that I was hitting the bottle more than my body could handle. Still, it’s funny how quickly you can forget the severity of your condition when faced with good cause for celebration.

The discomfort subsided and Neil and I quickly steered our discussion towards our trip. It was 3:30pm and I had begun to wonder whether or not we were cutting it a little close as far as when we should be heading to our gate. I started to get anxious and asked Neil if we should head over. “Nah man, we’re fine,” he said. “Besides, I kind of like it when they call your name on the intercom. It makes me feel important.” “Alright,” I said. We sat there for about 15 more minutes waiting for the announcement but I never heard it. Finally, we got up and walked the hundred yards to the gate only to find that they had already shut the door to the tarmac.

Slightly panicked, I shouted to the Air Canada attendant at the kiosk “I want to go to Canada!”

“Neil Defalco and Matt Kelley?” She asked in a noticeably irritated voice.

“That’s us,” I replied.

“We were just about to leave without you.”

“Sorry,” I said, “we didn’t hear anyone calling us on the intercom.”

“I called you guys five times…”

Neil and I looked at each other with a “well shit…” kind of face then handed her our boarding passes and walked up to the now locked door to the plane.

The attendant opened the door and sent us down the steps to the twin prop DH8 with a full passenger load that was waiting for us. We stepped outside to see a flight attendant and several airport employees waiving us over.

 

We quickly handed off our bags and boarded the plane. We passed more than a few frustrated faces between the door and our seats located in the second to last row. We buckled in and took a deep breath. Not 30 seconds passed before the plane started to move and the in-flight announcements began, first in English, then in French.

Our trip had almost ended before it even began. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little bit exciting. Still, I wasn’t sure if it was the kind of excitement I was looking to have at the very onset of our trip.

The flight from Baltimore to Toronto was about a one-hour jaunt start to finish. We passed over the Appalachian Mountains at one point and I snapped a picture.  Two weeks earlier I had been camping and kayaking in the Virginia and West Virginia stretch of Appalachia. My friends and I go every year. We do a 28-mile, two-day run down the Shenandoah River. This year a few of us went down early and did some mountain top camping. Looking at the rolling hills and green valleys that I’ve grown so fond of, I took a moment to appreciate home one last time.

 

As we started our descent into Toronto Neil and I noticed a wide stretch of river covered in mist. “Holy shit! Is that Niagara Falls?” I said. “No way,” said Neil. He leaned his head closer to the window for further inspection. “Wait a second, yeah it is! How about that?” Neither of us had seen the falls before and from our altitude it didn’t look as big as people always make it out to be, but the closer we got the more it became clear that it is most certainly a monstrous force of nature. I snapped another picture and shortly thereafter the plane’s wheels dropped out of their wells and we were on the ground.

 

 

There was little time between our flight to Toronto and our transatlantic flight to Edinburgh so there is little to say about what happened other than that there was some running and one devious trip to a bathroom to have a cigarette.

When we got to the gate, we checked in at the kiosk. Before we left Baltimore, Neil thought it would be best to upgrade our tickets to business class for the extra legroom. He had done the six-hour flight across the pond a few times before and assured me that it was well worth the cost. We ran into our first Scot when we ordered the tickets. A man named Ian was of the same mind in respect to upgrading his ticket. I heard the accent and introduced myself, quickly admitting that it was my first real trip out of the states. He responded with a handshake and a polite smile that masked a more honest look of “Who the fuck is this guy?” I picked up on it and immediately felt embarrassed. At that moment I decided that I would try to rein in my naïve excitement the next time I shook hands with a stranger.

I looked at my new boarding pass and saw that we were seated in the front row of the plane. “Oh hell yeah. First off the plane when we get into Edinburgh,” I said to Neil. “Nothing but the best,” he replied with a grin.

It wasn’t long before we started to take advantage of the complimentary cocktails that came with our seats and before we knew it, we were three sheets to the wind. At some point I took a glance around and realized the Ian the Scot was sitting front row with us just a couple seats over. We both watched as he ordered one beer and then another only a couple minutes later. Neil and looked at him and then each other with a “This guy is on our team” kind of an affirmation. At that moment we decided that we were going to see how far we were going to stretch the TSA guidelines for serving alcohol to passengers.

Ian quickly earned the distinguished honor of “First New Friend.” We told him how we were traveling to Europe to write stories and he told us about his adventures in Canada with some friends he had met while working in the Middle East. The second he said this to us our inquisitive minds kicked into high gear.

“Where did you work?” One of us asked.

“Mostly Iraq. You make three to four times what you would working in the west so it’s pretty great.”

“Where you ever in any danger?”

“Fuck yeah I was. God damned ISIS attacked the facility I worked at right before I left.”

Our Jaws dropped. “This guy has brass,” we thought.

With about two hours left in our flight, the rules of proper conduct had all but vanished. We were flirting with the flight attendants, taking back-to-back shots of vodka and singing the songs of the Heart Of Midlothian Football Club. Ian was a fan of the Edinburgh based soccer team and we were just happy to be drunk and rowdy in the front bulkhead with the flight attendants.

We started to lose steam as the sun began to rise on the horizon. Outside of the window I could see land.

“Alright guys, it’s been fun but you have to take your seats. We’re about to land,” one of the flight attendants said. We buckled our seatbelts and anxiously awaited touchdown.

“We made it,” I thought to myself, though I would soon come to find that I wasn’t out of the woods just yet.

The plane pulled up to the gate, parked and we both stood up.

“Holy shit I am really drunk,” I said to Neil who stood beside me calm as a Hindu cow. At first I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t nervous about going through customs as inebriated as we were, but then I remembered that he had dual citizenship in America and Ireland and that his entry into Scotland was of little import to the authorities.

When I got to the customs checkpoint I handed the woman behind the counter my passport.  Neil had already flashed his and walked through security.

“Business or pleasure?” She asked.

“A little bit of both,” I said.

“…What do you mean?”

“Well, I am a reporter coming to Europe for the first time. I figured I’d write a couple of stories while I was here.”

Her look of distrust quickly turned to a look of disdain.

“Well, how long do you plan to be here?”

“Not sure. We are thinking about seeing Scotland for a couple of weeks then going to Ireland and maybe France.”

“Do you know where you’re staying?”

“Kind of.”

“Please take a seat over there,” she said and pointed to the bench behind me.

A word of advice to anyone traveling outside of the country, no matter what purpose you have in a country, always tell them you are there on holiday. I don’t care if it’s true or not. Any other answer just leads to the customs agents asking you more questions. The more questions they ask, the worse your chances are of getting into the country.

I sat for about another 30 minutes while the rest of the plane, pilots and flight attendants included were processed. By this point, Neil had realized something was wrong and came back to sit with me.

Finally, I was called back up to the counter. “I’m going to let you in, but your plans are just way too vague. You need to have more of a plan when you travel.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said and she handed back my passport.

Neil and I walked outside the terminal and had a cigarette to celebrate the success of our second close call, then we jumped in a cab and told the driver to take us to a hotel somewhere on the old side of town.

The driver dropped us off in front of a hotel called The International. We set our bags down on the ground in front of the hotel and both took a huge breath. We had both been up for well over 24-hours and we were running on fumes.

I turned around and looked at our new environment. 200-yards away I saw Edinburgh castle looming over us.

“Hey Neil,” I said. “Fucking castle dude.”

Neil smiled. “Fucking Castle,” he replied.

We had made it.