Scope. Scope mouthwash if the flavor of travel.
At every dentist visit, you get parting gifts. Some of them are modestly useful. Who doesn’t like a new toothbrush? Not my brand, but what the heck. Has that handy phone number on the handle in case I have a dental emergency while brushing.
You mainly get a handful of detritus that sets up home in the bathroom closet, such as a small cartridge of new-fangled dental floss. No thanks, I’m a loyal Reach user. The other bits and bobs take up residence alongside the floss. I’m unsure why I put them there, perhaps to ensure good dental hygiene during the apocalypse.
The one useful item in the gift bag are the travel-sized toothpaste tubes. At my former dentist, the tubes came in two varieties: newly released whitening toothpaste and Scope-flavored Crest. I have too many crowns to use a whitener, but the Crest satisfied TSA guidelines.
For two decades, Scope-flavored Crest has populated my travel kit. As a tech exec I routinely roamed the world, accompanied by the ever-present taste of the 1960s interpretation of mint. But this is about to come to an end.
Two years ago our move to rural New Hampshire prompted a move to a new dentist. They’re a Colgate shop. No longer will I need to tolerate the taste of Scope. This will be a new era of travel. One that I look forward to.
This morning I boarded a Delta flight in Boston. This journey will end in thirty-six hours when I arrive in Haines Junction, Yukon. It’s a slice of Canada that I haven’t seen since I was 14 years old. Forty-six years ago, I had only a passing interest in angling. I caught a small pike in Kluane on a Dardevle spoon.
This time, I’m traveling with forty-nine pounds of fly-fishing gear. I will join good friends, Tony and Chris, at the Dalton Trail Lodge. There we will deploy our considerable angling skills and voluminous gear against Grayling, Rainbow Trout, Lake Trout, and Pike.
This is the travel that I look forward to over the next few decades. Family and friends, in new and familiar places, enjoying the time together, doing the things we love, even if it’s just sitting staring at clouds in the sky. Of course such adventures will be enhanced with cocktails. Occasionally, they’ll have little umbrellas in them.
Fittingly, it looks like my last tube of Crest is nearing its end. Onward to new adventures and new flavors.