“Yea, but when does Mon Mothma actually say that?”
Shit. Not the first time a pile of dead, underachieving Bothans has placed me in an embarrassing social situation. Now the whole SFO-bound crew knows I don’t know my Star Wars canon vis-à-vis the destruction of poorly conceived spheroid mega-weapons. Inauspicious beginnings, young padawan.
Hayden Christiansen is the pits. Separately.
Space nerd trivia notwithstanding, the subsequent Atlantic transition was, in fact, without substantive hitch. Tucked into the nose cone of a wide body boat, the Ruegsegger contingent – augmented by first-time border crosser and son-they-wish-they-had Ryan Gomes – enjoyed a soft eastward cruise to Frankfurt. Did I watch Melissa McCarthy’s possible biopic “The Boss” more than once? Hard to say.
Did Gomes robustly explore the maximum potation-to-square inch ratio the fold-out tables on a 747 would support?
Yes. Absolutely.
With a brief layover – hook me up with a pretzel mit senf and an ice-cold 9 a.m. Becks because what am times is right now – we hopped on the final connector from Frankfurt to Venice. Good news! Storm in the Alps. Get ready to white-knuckle your way across a legendary geological formation! The presence of impenetrable off-white cloud cover will be sure to completely devastate your situational awareness and sanity. At least you’ve got an Italian in cryo-sleep to keep you comfort! Sir, are you alive? Are you alive, sir?? OH MY GOD IS HE DEAD?! IS THIS HOW IT ENDS?!?!
Oh, We've been on the tarmac at Marco Polo for 15 minutes. My bad. And close your mouth, my dude. You're kickin' up enough heat from that mid-flight hummus platter to peel the veneer off the overhead bins.
A rainy entry and a lengthy travel day notwithstanding, the group manage to scramble together an evening effort, including a Rialto-adjacent spritz stop, a waltz to Saint Mark’s Square and a late meal of fish-fried-fish with fish and clams and fish, all loaded into a t-shirt cannon full of additional fish and fired into a wall of fish to which we were nailed. We had the fish. It had fish in it.
After a type and degree of sleep approaching death, the Ruegs/Gomes posse tracked down the Garcia/Jones contingent.
BUONGIORNO! LET’S GET HIP DEEP IN MIRACLE BONES (St. Mark’s) AND GLASS HORSES PEDDLED BY THICK PATCHES OF STERNUM BUSH STUFFED INTO TIGHT ITALIAN SUITS (Murano). WOOOOOOOOOO!
The first reconnect was outstanding, marked by hugs, laughter, fish, spritzes, more fish, spritzes and fish. Great people finally coming together after months of coordination, training, emails and ancillary logistics. The first meal together is enough to remind you why you scorched yourself into a hillside five months prior, trying to stay amped up for a then-distant and seemingly theoretical journey to the Alps. Missed these guys.
Tomorrow: We get drunk and send Alec and Pam’s heretofore idyllic and romantic trip straight to the euro-shitter (hold down the big toilet button).