RP log

On the road again, so to speak. Like Doc Brown said, “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.” Technically, I’m not on the road right now, as I sit in a cabin on a ferry to Finland.

I did it once, and I’ll do it again. I’ll “live blog” this trip so come back, refresh often, and keep those questions and comments coming.

7.10 am.: I remember my first trip on these ferries. It was in 1978, and my hockey team was on its way to Sweden to play. I must have been back a hundred times. Not as much fun anymore, although I did play Sega rally last night. Still got it.

11.30 am: I just saw something I have never seen in Helsinki. A policeman putting the handcuffs on a man. I don’t even know what to call him, a suspect? An alleged suspect? The Man? OK. The Man stood there, in front of the main train station, with his hands behind his back, and glasses on his forehead, leaning on his unibrow, obviously trying to reason with the two cops (and the six Securitas guards in their gray sweaters).

The policemen wore dark blue overalls.

The Man was the coolest of them all, if not for the handcuffs.

15.45 (3.45 pm): We just drove past a tree that Jessica always keeps an eye out on. It’s just a regular pine tree, but the top looks like a huge afro. And it makes jessica smile every time we drive past it. And it made me smile now.
Only 120 miles to go.

17.45 (5.45 pm): When it gets dark in the Finnish countryside, it gets dark, let me tell you. It’s dark.

I just smelled Lappeenranta, so we’re getting close. It’s a huge pulp and paper hub, and you can tell by the smell. The joke around here goes like this:

Stranger: “What’s that smell?”
Local: “Money.”

22.20 (10.20 pm): Take it from me: its not money that smells in that city. A hockey crowd is a pretty good sample, and money wasn’t the first thing that came to my mind.

What possesses a person to wear an XXXXL T-shirt with the text “I’m ugly but fair” on it? I wish it had been ironic, but all signs pointed to no.

But, the game was OK, and the trip there a lot of fun. I think I’m losing my voice, though.

00.15: This is the last post of the day. A long day.
if you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, you may remember the experiment where two groups of people were trying to gather as much info on a person as possible. One group got to interview the person, the other spend half an hour in his room. And yes, people in the room had a better picture of the person.

Sitting here, I can tell that the person living in this apartment has the cutest grandchildren and I draw the conclusion that they’re my kids.

And now: sauna.

4 thoughts on “RP log

  1. And note that my comment is timed exactly 10 minutes before you wrote it. Those time zones are magic.
    It s almost like a short term back to the future.

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