(Cyprus, officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. It is geographically in Western Asia, but its cultural ties and geopolitics are overwhelmingly Southeastern European- Wiki. Addendum: this is a trip a couple decades old, when we could still rise and walk without the collective groaning. Vic)

We had quite a tussle yesterday in the Writer’s Section. It was a Thursday, an event that happens fairly regularly, but usually has a certain anticipation that days like this- a Friday- are forthcoming. There is an annual event laid atop a fairly ordinary weekday, though. It was Groundhog Day, exclamation point deleted. You know all about that, but Melissa was adamant that we watch a Hollywood version of the event. So, in addition to the single reality we shared- Splash was counting- there were 36 additional versions of the digital clock flipping from 5:59 to 6:00 with the voice of the late Sonny Bono crooning a once popular tune in the background.

“They say we’re young and we don’t know…” Those words are no longer a plausible excuse for anything, since we are old and know plenty. So by yesterday afternoon, we had been through the equivalent of a month of Thursday mornings. The realization that another six weeks of winter are confronting the crowd was beginning to sink in. If we were younger, we might be tempted to grab a bag, head down to the parking lot at Big Pink, board a vehicle and venture on a trip to someplace warm.

We don’t travel much anymore, which is actually a blessing. Talking about being warm and relaxed had a certain attraction, and the massive cold front that currently envelopes North America made us huddle around the electric heater in the great room, venturing out to the balcony periodically to ignite tobacco products. We each had an assignment to fetch a story, and there were plenty, mostly dealing with things like Marlow’s two-wheel ride across America.

That story is only a few chapters in length so far, and there is more to come. So we decided to recount a trip someplace else that is warm but not American.

It was a while back, when the world was a more welcoming place. The tattered digits at the top of the file indicate it was more than twenty years ago, and a time of government service. Due to the sensitivity surrounding the trip, we were stripped of military identities and cast into the arms of Great Britain’s Royal Air Force.

Normally we traveled low key for safety reasons, but this one required no official cover pretending we were something else. We had no official passport, no military ID cards, no Navy Federal Credit Union IDs. Our wallets and purses were wholly purged. This trip had the wrinkle of secrecy about it, danger, perhaps, since the only images we have of our destination were grainy black and white ones of tanks burning, and daily printed speculation on where the Greeks were going to put the S-300 Surface-to-Air missiles they were buying from the Russians.

That was part of it then and now as you sadly know from the talk about SAMs and Air Defense in Ukraine, not to mention apprehension from our Turkish allies.

To get where we needed to go meant hopping the red-eye out of Dulles at 6:30 PM, which in turn meant being there about 3:30 to orbit around the sprawling lot to find a parking place, check in, get x-rayed, find the smoking lounge, score the duty-free necessities and join the herd headed down the jetway.

We reset our watches as soon as we were wheels in the well. Seven hours later, one brief nap, a crummy movie and several free vodkas later we lurched through immigration as civilians. Now, mind you, we always travel in civilian clothes and never get haircuts before an overseas trip, except for Melissa. For the first time in a quarter century we had nothing to wave around to prove our party was what we claimed it was. Very un-nerving.

But it went without issue. We crossed the narrower of the two large oceans and caught the high-speed train from Heathrow to Paddington, the weather as passable (i.e., it was not monsooning) and were enjoying a cup of coffee at the train stop in twenty minutes. Paddington Station had been under reconstruction through most of that decade, it seems, and we shared dim recollections of a vast dark Victorian hall from first visits that began in the ’60s. For all the construction it remained remarkably the same, only there is no place to put your cigarette end or lockers for your luggage since the IRA bombing campaign began with the Troubles. Remember those?

Loma took up the tale at that point: “I was stuck with my roll-around and brief case- which considerably influenced my decision not to walk around London (third trip in eight months) but to head on. I secured all the round-trip tickets to a grim industrial town called Swindon on the Bristol Great Northern Road and realized I had several hours to kill before we had to meet with some Royal Air Force types at RAF Brize-Norton. Looking at the stations down the line, I saw Bath. I had missed a field trip to the Roman ruins on a summer visit due to business affairs and I said the hell with it and went to the ruins dragging my bags.”

“The excavations under the streets of Victorian Bath were fabulous. The footings of the vast complex were remarkably intact. The frigidarium, tepidarium and cauldarium all perfectly preserved. The elaborate sub-floor heating system, the paving stones of the old temple and its strange Celtic-Roman frieze. From the mineral spring sacred to the Goddess, still bubbling with warmth, came ancient supplications and curses scratched on pottery.”

“May Zeus strike down the cur who stole my blue cloak!” Fascinating to read, a split millennium later…but my bags got bulkier (‘Scuze me! Scuze me!) and heavier and heavier. After touring the baths and wandering the streets for a couple hours (the wheels of my bag going “clickety click, clickety click ” behind me) I decided I was tired enough and conspicuous enough to just go on to the air station. I wasn’t quite sure where it was, except it was tethered to Swindon by a thirty-six pound cab ride. Glastonbery and Stonehenge were only 26 kilometers away, but it just looked like they were going to have to wait.”

We looked at Loma, waiting to see if he was going to rejoin us in this space-time continuum and talk about something tropical and mildly exotic. After some discussion, we decided we may get to that tomorrow. This afternoon there is some discussion about shooting own Chinese reconnaissance balloons. That is going to be a story all its own shortly. We will get to all that stuff presently.

When it gets a little warmer!

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com