travel

AIR TRAVEL

AIR TRAVEL

Just back from Malta.

I really didn't want to go. Malta is impossible to reach from LA. It's a small island off the southern coast of Sicily. I met up for business with a few friends from New York. Malta is a wonderful destination, almost unknown to Americans. European tourists were everywhere. The ground is hilly like San Francisco and my runs were slow enough that I didn't want to post them on Strava. But in deviating from the main streets and into the alleys I found character and history I will long remember.

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DISTRACTED

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DISTRACTED

It has been a week, my people.

The moment I realized things were getting under my skin came on Thursday evening, as I tried to park for the Springsteen show at the Forum. I went to the wrong entrance and was instructed to turn around and go back down the street to an entirely different lot. Traffic was coming from both directions. I had no choice but to make a very illegal u-turn.

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LAZY DAY

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LAZY DAY

It's raining.

The good kind of raining where I make a fire, move my laptop to a table by the dining room window so I can watch the storm, and bundle up in cozy clothing. I went to bed adamant that my distance runners would have morning practice, rain or shine. But when I got up at five and saw the dark and wet, that felt a little obsessive. We can make up the miles some other time. I sent out a text canceling the workout and got back into bed, pulled up the comforter, and slept until eight.

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RESEARCH

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RESEARCH

I'm sitting in the cafe at the National Portrait Gallery, just across from St. Martin's in London. Coffee, loud conversation, wooden chairs sliding on a polished floor. Calene is somewhere in the second floor galleries as I sip my sparkling water and protect the seat I saved for her. The fight for tables and chairs is intense in this small public space and I am doing my best to ignore the glances of those in the very long line for sweets and coffee who are currently formulating their seating strategy.

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THE NOTEBOOK

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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.

AIRBNB

AIRBNB

If I were in the Netherlands right now, as I thought I might be this weekend, I would be driving my rental car back to Brussels from a venue known as Megaland in the Netherlands. It's right next to Aachen, the first portal into Germany for the US Army in 1945. My ears would be ringing from a Bruce Springsteen show almost four hours in length. The euphoria would linger.