Disorientation

Meanwhile back in Ithaca, a tree top swan-dived into the roof of our house.

The view from inside the house, I'm told, was pretty disorienting. Krys heard a crash in the dining room, and rushed in to find a 3 feet chunk of the ceiling in the middle of the room. There is no tree sticking through, so nothing to tell her what actually caused the crash. In the rubble is a bunch of dried foam insulation and ...

... a snake skin ??? Gaah! Look, our crawlspace is not a snake AirBnB. If the 7 feet of foam insulation doesn't smother you, you're gonna get kebabed. Why don't you join your brothers and sisters out in the woodpile out front?

Terry rushed back to the house and crawled onto the roof. "Found the problem!" he yelled down to Krys.

We got the call around 10 PM Scotland time. It sounded pretty bad. Amy and I are human. Human beings prefer their story lines linear and sensical - i.e. Star Wars as opposed to Momento. So my first thought was:

That's what you get for running off to Scotland!

Yep, we were being punished. Without getting into who was punishing us - I'm sure you all have differing views on the subject, and I have no way to tell which one is correct - still, it felt like pretty effective punishment. If the intent was to make us question this whole endeavor, get us back on a plane to the states and deal with the insurance company and so on ... well, mission accomplished

We put those thoughts on hold, and called Terry and our next door neighbors to talk it out. Terry is a contractor, a really skilled one, and having extracted the tree and throwing a tarp over the hole, he started assessing what needed to be done. Our neighbors said they would assist wherever they could.

No one ... absolutely no one ... thought it was a good idea for us to hop a plane back to Ithaca.

As unlucky as this was, it started to feel like we lucked out. It could have been much worse. The tree might have fell on its side and took out a bigger chunk of the roof. Terry and Krys might not have been there, and we would've come home to a skewered house full of rain water. Our neighbors may have been totally indifferent. Hell, there might have been two snake skins that fell out of the roof.

Perhaps the universe isn't designed to make all of our dreams run smoothly. But if we're lucky, we have good people to love and care about us. I only hope that when the shoe is on the other foot, I can be the person who helps out too.

But right now, Amy and I are just plain lost. New Town Edinburgh is compact and full of amenities. We pull out our paper map, trace where we are going to go, go over the plan twice, get out the door and immediately get lost.

On Wednesday night we started out for the Tesco, one of the big grocery stores in the UK, shopping bags in hand. It was raining, cold and miserable. Here's our the path we want to take:

And immediately we go the wrong way.

But not just any wrong way. Like 180 degrees the wrong way. Like you couldn't get more wrong.

"I don't think this is right," Amy says. She has said this so many times in our travelling life that I feel my own name is "I Don't Think This is Right."

We turn back, and head the other way. This time we are only 90 degrees off from the right direction.

I guess this is progress. We are still not anywhere near the grocery store. But it israining and miserable and we decide to give up and sit down at an empty resturant Called The Ginger Coo and ate red lentil soup, toast and butter, and a goat cheese and walnut salad. It really hits the spot.

In our defense, there are lots of things working against you as a pedestrian in New Town Edinburgh:

• It's not a grid. That's a given, but the streets are round.
• There are no landmarks that rise above the city like skyscrapers or monuments ... unless you count that eyesore Edinburgh Castle, which is not visible through the rain. (I'll have lots to say about that dump later).
• The crosswalks are not where you think they should be. Since the streets look like the Le Mans 500, you have traffic zipping around blind curves all the time, so they divert pedestrian traffic to straightaways.

The second day, though clear and a bit warmer, was not much more successful.

At this rate, we will end up back in Ithaca purely by accident. We will be walking around, and see a house with a big tree sticking out of the roof. Amy will say, "I don't think this is right."