Killing Batteries

I used to think that I was pretty damn amazing with my skills at direction and orientation. I always knew precisely where I was and the absolute best way to get to where I was going. Of course, this was because I lived in South Minneapolis, an Eden of grid-pattered, consecutively numbered streets where the university gave out masters degrees in navigation if you could pass the following test:

1) Simon says raise your right hand
2) Simon says raise your left hand.
3) Quick! Raise your right hand again!

You needed at least 66.61% to pass. Needless to say, most people get it in less than three tries. And yet, even with this abundance of exquisitely oriented people, there’s never a taxi around when you really need it. Strange place.

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Have you ever had it where you plan your freelance travel writing career in absurd detail, spend weeks fine-tuning a masterful itinerary to hit six destinations in four countries on two continents (four of them being islands) without paying more than a grand total of 300 euros in transport, then you provide friends/family/colleagues/editors on three continents with these arrangements, then smugly blab about the whole deal on your blog, and finally, just as several hundred people have read and internalized your plans and your groupies have sold their refrigerators and acquired VW camper-vans so they can follow you around like a Grateful Dead tour, a vague rumor surfaces and mushrooms into an insane job opportunity over the course of three days, completely changing your life for the next three months?

So, remember that detailed magazine assignment itinerary for Tunis, Florence, Venice, Ibiza (and Majorca and Minorca) and Barcelona and the week-long chillout session in Malta that I laid out in the previous post? Chuck that. New plan:

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So I go to London next week for yet another LP author workshop. I’ve known I was going for a few weeks, but I waited until now to make this information public, so as to not give my groupies and stalkers enough time to coordinate a Beatles-caliber reception rally at the airport. As you may have gathered by now, I like to conduct myself with a certain quiet dignity and maintaining that composure becomes difficult when faced with ear-piercing screams and a hail of bras and panties.

To get from Sardinia to London, I’ll be flying RyanAir for the first time in over three years. The last time I flew with these jackholes, they held one of my bags hostage for 56 euros and I came a whisker away from having Brussels airport security hogpile me. Rumor has it that even while finding new, creative ways to fleece budget travelers (a group of people who generally don’t take well to being fleeced, as Brussels airport security can now confidently attest), RyanAir have supposedly improved their customer service since our last encounter and have actually begun to clearly state their fleecing ways on their web site, rather than making it up on an airport-by-airport basis. So, they’re still shameless, deplorable grifters, but at least you know you’re being grifted before you’re standing there with two choices: pay them 56 euros or kiss you’re suitcase (or in my case, all earthly possessions) goodbye. I still get pissed off when I think about that. And good on them for putting up a bulletproof window at the penalties collection desk, otherwise that conniving woman would have gone home that night with one less eyebrow.

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I know it’s considered bad form to be mentally indulging in future book proposals when I should very well be concentrating on the one that I already have in play, but I can’t help it. My mind is a relentless Perfect Storm of brilliant book ideas, wacky publicity stunts and creative ways to stalk Michelle Hunziker, who you may recall is my girlfriend and soul mate even though her boyfriend and lawyers have fairly strong feelings otherwise.

I’ve been thinking about this proposal since it came to me in a dream (coincidentally, featuring Michelle, or “Bella Shella” as I like to call her) and I’m confident that it’ll sell one copy for every heterosexual, literate man on Earth. But before I serve up this banquet of literary genius, please read the following caveat:

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