Interlude: Pre-Scotland

Interludes are short segments between regular episodes with no editing but WITH leather creaking. It's a chance to hear a little more about what's going on in my life. I'm getting ready to go to Scotland! This interlude is a little early (to coincide with my trip) ... so might be a little gap before the next full episode--first Friday June.

Transcript

Edge : 0:00

Welcome to full cow, a podcast about leather kink and BDSM. My name is edge My pronouns are he him, and I'm your host. And this is another introduce the episode between episodes offered raw and unedited, but with leather creaking. And I have titled this interlude pre Scotland. But the truth is that when you're listening to it, I will actually be there. I am recording this on April 25. And that's what makes it the pre part. But I am visiting Scotland from May 11 to May 22. This episode will be released on May 12. So if you are subscriber and you're listening to it, when it's released, then I'm actually in Scotland. And if you're in the area, I hope you will come and meet me, the best place to find me will be the leather social in Glasgow, on Sunday, May 14, at

3pm to 6: 0:55

30pm. I'm translating these 24 hour times from 1500 to 1830. At the gallery bar in Glasgow, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the apps or recon or anything like that. But if you go there, I will definitely be there probably for the whole time. And I would love to meet you. I wanted to talk about my experience with international travel in general. This is really relatively new for me. You know, my first big trip internationally was last year to Dublin, Ireland. And I was really, I've been afraid of solo international travel. Because in part I'm such an introvert. I mean, besides all the logistics and working it out and and arranging flights and hotels and currencies and all that. Besides the logistics, I'm such an introvert that I kind of imagined in my head that I would just end up in my hotel room, watching reruns of friends. And I thought that's gonna be my existence. I'm gonna go to another country and stay in my room all the time. But I was driven to go to Ireland because it was a bucket list iron item. And because Irish accents, oh my God, and they make me weak in the knees. So effing sexy. So last year, I went to Dublin. And I was very intentional about it. This is where I really develop some of my intentional skills around different trips. I talked about that as well in the IML interlude. So I knew I had several Irish people that I talked to on social media. And I reached out to them, and I made plans to meet them. And it was an amazing experience. I mean, first of all, Dublin's beautiful city. It's very walkable. And it's old. You know, I live in United States. Nothing here is old, because we're not old. But everything in Dublin just felt like rooted in this history. And this, this history that I just never had access to growing up or moving through my own country. The weather was interesting. It was pretty cold for Floridian but I was there during the massive Heatwave, which then was also interesting because my hotel had no air conditioning. I'm not going to rave about that. The best part about Dublin was really the intentional connections I made with people. And I, you know, I only did one touristy thing, I went to go see the Book of Kells, which was a bit of a disappointment, right? It's a beautifully medieval illuminated manuscript of the Gospels. And so it's supposed to have all these gorgeous illustrations. But it all depends on what page it's open to. And if it's opened at the beginning of a chapter, wow, you're gonna see something amazing. But if it's just open to a random page, it's going to be kind of boring. And it was open to a random page when I went. The upside was it was air conditioned, and I was really grateful for that. But they have to turn the pages every few weeks at the manuscript ages evenly. And so that was sort of like, okay, that was the only touristy thing I did. But what I did was connect with people. And that was amazing, because I got to learn about the country, through people who lived there. And so I discovered things I would never have discovered as a tourist, for example, I know that any Irish person can say one thing for sure in Irish, can I go to the bathroom? And that's because growing up and when you were in school, you had asked the teacher to go to the bathroom in Irish and so everyone remembers that. Even if they don't remember the rest of the Irish, they learned. I learned about red lemonade, which doesn't taste anything at all, like lemonade, which is really far more aromatic. But it's something that people would have grown up drinking, and I would never have discovered it if I was just a tourist during all the tourist things. The other thing that happened while I was in Dublin, is that coincidentally I plan my trip to coincide I had with an oink event. And oink is out in kink. And Dublin doesn't have your leather bar or a leather pub. And so they do these monthly socials where people show up and gear at different bars around the city. That gave me an incredible opportunity to wear gear in another country, and to connect to leather people outside of the US in person, wonderful. In fact, I made some really deep connection through that, including someone that I continue to chat with through text, just about every day. So Ireland was this amazing experience for me, I learned I can travel internationally solo and can love it. I have to have this wonderful maybe once in a lifetime experience of seeing the beautiful country, visiting Galway, and cork and Dublin, and spending time in leather. And meeting really special, kind, generous, open hearted, funny, sexy people. So I made this resolved that I would kind of do one big international trip every year, Scotland was next on my list, because Scottish accent is about as sexy as an Irish accent. I don't think it's a competition, I will take either one, I will tell you that. Knowing that I had gone to a wink, and had an amazing time, I was very intentional in planning this trip to Scotland, I did some research to find out sort of what leathers I can Scotland and they have a leather social every month in Glasgow. So I made sure that I would be there for that social, then that wasn't the only determinant, I had to also coordinate my schedule, work, flights, all of that. But I was really, really pleased to know that I would be there for the leather social, I am hoping that I'm going to have a similar experience to what I had in Ireland. I am being intentional in my connections, I have reached out some people I follow on social media. And I have a couple of people who are gonna give me tours of Edinburgh. And I'm looking forward to that. And then I'm hoping to meet more people as well at this leather social. If you're in Glasgow, please show up and meet me if you want to come to Glasgow, it's a really great chance to meet me, you know, I get out of this country about once a year. And next year, it's going to be maybe more of the United Kingdom maybe like Wales, maybe like Manchester, maybe London, or it's going to be Spain, Madrid and Barcelona. If you want me to get to Berlin, that's two or three years off, right? So I don't I have a lot of opportunity to interact with all these amazing people who follow my media around the world. And this is one opportunity if you wanted to meet me if you're in Glasgow, come to let me check the name again, come to the gallery bar on that Sunday, and hang out with me. And let's just talk talk about weather and talk about Scotland versus the United States. Let's talk about how crazy Florida is whatever you want. Beyond that, I don't have a lot of touristy things planned. I did you know I'm arriving in the morning. I think I get it in about 11. And I don't know where I saw this suggestion. It worked really well for me in Dublin. Because when I arrived in Dublin, I got there at like, eight in the morning or something crazy. There was no way I could check into my hotel. But I had read somewhere or someone had told me what you do is you leave your bags at the hotel, and you just jump on one of those bus tours of the city. And because you're dead tired, you don't really have to pay attention. It's great way to fill up time. And it really gave me such a great sense of Dublin as a city and I got to see a lot of the touristy things all at once. So when I get to Scotland, I'm going to be based in Glasgow. I'm going to dump my bags at the hotel because I think I get in maybe around 11am And then I'm going to hop on a bus tour and see Glasgow. I do have the leather social planned on Sunday. I have a couple of people my tour guides for Edinburgh that I'm going to firm up plans with and then I don't know what I'm gonna do. I know that I want to see the west so I might take a train somewhere West. I'm not sure yet. I know that I want to see the north. So maybe Dundee maybe Aberdeen maybe both maybe Inverness, I will probably absolutely do a bus tour to Loch Ness, just so you know. Maybe I'll see Nessie you never know. And it seems like a bus towards the best option there. Not only do I get to see more of the countryside, but it seems like taking the train and ending up in Loch Ness is very complicated. I love I love that I can hop on a train and be in the north of Scotland in three hours. I love that I can hop on a train and be in Edinburgh in a in an hour. Those things are going to be amazing. And I'm also going to get to sample the different variety I have a Scottish accent. I'm certain there will be times I will struggle. To be fair, when I was in Dublin, I was mostly good with sort of a Dublin accent. But there were people who were sort of from the country. And I had a little trouble understanding them. So I'm certain I'm going to struggle. But I'm going to put on my dopey eyed, innocent American look. And hopefully people will be kind and slowly, slowly speak to me. That's it. My time there is about rest and recharging. I haven't had a real vacation. In some ways since Dublin last summer, it is about sleeping in and it's about eating whatever I want. And then it is about this leather moment that I could have on that Sunday in Glasgow, hopefully making some more connections that people I can have dinner with or lunch with or coffee with or scones with. It's about seeing the cities, but without a clear agenda. So I might just wake up one morning and sailing. I think I'm gonna go to Inverness, Inverness today, and look up the train schedule and go, we don't really have that sort of luxury here in the United States. We're a damn big country, and we'd have shit public transportation, we certainly don't have a very good train system. So the idea that I can just get up and hop on a train and be in another city in the same country and see new sights. I'm really looking forward to that. I love food. So I will certainly explore the cuisine. I don't think you're going to get me to try haggis, but who knows, perhaps, certainly, I would like some shortbread and scones, and probably some salmon. I don't even know what the other Scottish foods are. And this is it. This is the pattern I want to create for my life. I'm really blessed to have the sort of ability to do one big trip a year. And so each summer, sometime between May and August, I want to go to another country. I want to sample their leather culture through a leather social, or a leather pub or bar. And I want to connect with people and spend time getting to know them because that's how I get to know the country I'm in is through these people. If you have a country you want me to visit comm send me an email at what is it Ajit Volkow dot show. Or you can use the Ask edge feature, either the voicemail at SpeakPipe or you can email ask at full calidad show. And I'll print them out or because part of what gets me into these countries is there are people I want to meet. So make me want to come visit you make me want to come visit your country. And I will put it in the hopper after I get home so I can promise you June's interlude will be the post Scotland interlude. But at this point, I'm about two weeks from the trip. Tomorrow will be two weeks from the trip. And I'm starting to really now wrap my head around it, get some little items I want to have with me on my travels, starting to plan some things I'm going to reach out to my contacts, my local contacts and firms and things up with them. And then, hopefully, I'll have this amazing time and I'll have amazing things to report to you. We shall see. I in general have been spending a lot more time on my podcast and I'm grateful for it. I have not felt like doing a lot of the videos on social media as I continue to move between disparate levels of leather connection, disparate levels of libido struggles with where I fit in my own world, essentially, which will make sense to you if you've been listening to any of the interludes. So I'm just starting to get excited about the trip. And that's where I'm at. I hope all of you also have the chance to travel I will say if you get to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I'm always happy to meet someone. Here are the things I need I need sufficient notice you're coming and even understanding that I live here and I'm not on vacation so I can't meet in the middle of the day I'll be at work I can't meet at midnight at work the next day. I need as much notice as you can give me and I need an understanding that we're going to commit to a meeting we're going to meet without expectation. I love spending time with people from around the world because I learned so much more about the world I live in by talking to people who are coming from a different place I hope all of you have that experience traveling internationally whether that is from another country to the United States please visit we like foreigners quite a bit even though our politics don't seem like we do. We we actually do they're hot. Or if you're in the United States, I hope you have the opportunity to travel internationally. And and I hope that when you do, all of your travels are safe. So Wish me luck. And wish me Bon voyage. And I will give you a report weeks from now, but from your perspective, it's only going to be about four weeks. From my perspective. It's like, six, eight. I don't even know how many weeks I can't keep track of my publishing schedule. But I'll give you a report. I'll let you know how it goes. And until then, I hope you remain very, very well.