A discussion of the fine art of Adventure, and how to live in an Adventurous Manner, by several Gentlemen who know a (very) little bit about the subject.
There may well be a long-lost chapter of the League of Gentlemen Adventurers in Sweden.
Recently a team of adventurers was diving in the Baltic Sea, off the coast of Sweden, and while exploring a shipwreck, they discovered bottles of champagne that are over 200 years old. By far the oldest ever found, and, according to one estimate, worth almost $70,000 each.
Now, that is certainly an adventure, but it’s not why I believe LGA members may have been present. This is why:
The first thing they did when they got back onto the boat was to pop one open and drink it.
Mr. Ekstrom & co., today I raise my glass to you and say, Quam bene vivas refert, non quam diu. You embody the spirit of Gentleman Adventuring.
And, gentle reader, I ask you: were you on that boat, wouldn’t you have done the same?
It’s around 10pm, and Lee, Greg, and I are looking for a bar. Not just any bar; we’re surrounded by bars, actually, with thumping music and flashing lights, and crowds of people who look and act like they just turned 21, whether they’re in their 20s, 30s, or 40s. We are in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, and we are looking for Prohibition.
We pass a nondescript doorway wedged between two nightclubs. No sign, just an address. Lee squints at it. Is that the one? No. We keep walking, past a group of eight or ten young guys, all wearing polo shirts with the collars turned up, all walking unsteadily and staring off into space with the vacant look of someone so drunk they can’t hold a coherent thought.
Another doorway. It is also flanked by unpleasantly Gaslampy bars. The frosted glass window displays the name of a law firm. This is it, Lee says. We walk past a small gate, ring a doorbell, and wait.
The door opens a crack. Nobody comes out. Lee looks around the corner. There is a man in a suit.
“The pilot is sick,” the Hungarian in front of me said. I’ve always kind of assumed that major airlines had contingencies for what is presumably a common occurrence among jet-flying folk (at least as common as among the rest of us). It turns out they do have a contingency: they cancel the flight. So I got a bonus day in Budapest. Normally, I would consider this a particularly sweet deal, but I had absolutely ruined myself in a forced march around the city the day before. I had only one free day after a work conference and I figured that I’d better see every square foot – err… meter – of Budapest. So I did. No goulash peddler went unseen by my eye. But my carefully laid plans called for a just-short-of-death exhaustion to set in only seconds after finding my seat on the plane. Delta deviously foiled those plans.
After sleeping past my alarm and awaking in the airport hotel, I had two choices: take the long bus and metro ride back to Budapest to take advantage of my few remaining hours in Hungary or join the rest of my canceled plane compadres and enjoy the BBC and complimentary dinner until morning arrived. As you have likely deduced by the fact that I am writing about it, I chose the latter option and ended up at A38. I won.
A cold wind has been blowing across LGA Manor recently. The shadows fall a bit longer across the floor. Noises heard that cannot be explained. Is it the last throes of winter? Perhaps my tinnitus acting up again? Or is it something more sinister? Something… supernatural? It’s time to put these unexplained occurrences, these spectral suppositions to rest my friends. It’s time to announce the LGA’s next adventure. It’s time… for our Return to Ghost Mountain!
I highly recommend the above article, and I also highly recommend that any gentleman (or gentlelady) adventurer with a predilection to tippling give moonshine a try. Ideally, this should be clear spirits of questionable provenance, served out of a mason jar or other recycled container. My first moonshine experience was lao lao – homemade Laotian rice whiskey served from a 7-Up bottle while riding on the roof of a bus from Luang Prabang to Vientiane.
If the homemade stuff that can cause blindness is not available locally where you are, however, you could do worse than trying some of the new brands mentioned in the NYT.
Oh, and while you’re searching, please enjoy this ode to clear spirits by the great George Jones:
