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Our Story
by Matt Knight
What you have to understand about me is that I
simply can't sleep when I fly. I am every bit of 6 feet
and 7 inches and 230 lbs. I am not a small creature and
I do not fit comfortably into airplane seats. Try to
imagine putting a gorilla into a child's booster seat
and you will begin to understand how I feel when I fly.
Now, cram that gorilla between other people who touch
him and smell funny. That's it. That's how I feel when I
fly long distances. Apparently Air Dubai has luxurious
extendable beds with Egyptian cotton sheets on their
flights. To my dismay, US Airways doesn't. So, when I
got to London on June 13 after an 8 hour flight from
Charlotte, I was not exactly full of pep and zeal. Blake
and I ended up fighting through our fatigue to see the
London Eye, Buckingham Palace, and a few other typical
London tourist spots. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Flash back 5 months or so to the beginning of 2007. I
was a senior at Davidson College rehabbing from an elbow
surgery from the preceding April and preparing for my
final exams in Economics (my major) and Spanish (my
minor). I was 22 years old and I was staring straight in
the face of the simultaneous ends of my baseball career
and my college career. Looking back at the first 22
years of my life, I saw football, baseball, basketball,
soccer, tennis, wrestling, weight lifting, golf and just
about any other athletic venture you can imagine. The
dominant three of those ventures, football, baseball,
and basketball, required year round training as the only
measurement of success in my community seemed to be the
number of state championships won. The Atlanta Journal
Constitution had my high school's athletic director on
speed dial. If I missed a practice or lifting session,
there was always someone right behind me ready to step
in and try on their state championship ring. I never
went on a spring break in my life. Summer trips were
short and close so I could get back for practice. So, at
age 22, with four years of year-round baseball at DC, I
decided I needed to travel. I had been as far west as
Louisiana (for baseball) and as far north as Washington
D.C.
So I talked to my parents about a trip and they agreed
to send me to Europe as my graduation present. I tried
to recruit my roommates / teammates to go with me and
everybody wussed out except for Blake. Blake is
originally from California (weird) and went to college
in San Diego before transferring to Davidson sophomore
year to play baseball and get a proper education. He
talked funny, ran like a penguin, and used way too much
gel in his hair. We liked him immediately. He became
good friends with me and my 3 roommates and, as I said
before, decided to go with me to Europe. I should
mention here, that he and I wanted to go somewhere "off
the beaten path" because everybody has been to London
and Paris. How many people have been to Zagreb and
Ljubljana? It was a sound theory. Then my mother, in a
typical moment where the parent is prophetic at a level
that the child is not entirely comfortable with, pointed
out that there would be more girls on the trips that go
to the "nicer" cities and stopped by the Mediterranean
beach towns. So our choice came down to interesting
second tier cities full of Eastern Europeans with
questionable hygiene or hanging out in Paris and the
beaches of the Mediterranean with young women from all
over the world. What should two single, 22-year-old men
do? In a lifetime of tough decisions, the good Lord
makes some easy for us. Blake and I chose a 21-day,
12-country trip through Western Europe and the
Mediterranean with an age-limited (18-35 years old)
travel group. Our trip would take us from London to
Brussels to Amsterdam to Rhine Valley (Germany) to Lake
Lucerne (Switzerland) to Munich to Austria to Venice to
Florence to Nice/Monaco to Barcelona to Bordeaux to
Paris and back to London.
So, back to London. Blake and I got off of the plane on
the morning of July 13th and stumbled our way through
half a dozen tourists sights that day. We went to a
pointless "orientation meeting" that our travel agency
put on that evening for us and our guide, Ally, informed
us that we would be taking a 51-person bus on our tour
of 50 people. Splendid. Twelve hours after unfolding
myself from a child's booster seat in the plane, I hear
that we get to cram into a 51-person bus with 50 people
who have been walking all over Europe in the middle of
the summer after consecutive nights of drinking alcohol
into the early morning hours. Splendid. But, what I lack
in international travel I more than made up for in
sports travel. Sport travel taught me that not all bus
seats are created equal. People smell. Buses have wheel
wells. Seats by the bathroom can be torture. And so on.
So I made sure that Blake and I were in a position on
the morning of the 14th to be the first ones on the bus.
We were the first or second ones to be waiting for the
bus that morning. There was another group leaving at the
same time as our tour, so there was some confusion as to
who was a part of our tour. So Blake and I just started
mingling with anybody who spoke the kind of English that
we liked. One thing to remember about Europe vs. America
is that Europe is very old. While that seems obvious and
inconsequential to most people, to me it was a constant
surprise. That's because humans were much smaller in the
early 20th century and certainly were smaller in the
17th and 18th centuries (when much of Europe was built).
Even in that first two days in London I was running into
short doorways and tiny showers and small benches. So,
constantly aware of my own hugeness, I noticed that
there seemed to be two people in my travel group that
were more or less looking me in the eye! This may not
seem very significant to you, but at 6'7" I am not used
to anyone looking me in the eye. More shocking was that
one fella was actually taller than me and one girl was
looking me in the eye! Europe is an odd place.
So, as the two groups separated, Blake and I positioned
ourselves to be first on the bus and we were probably
slightly overwhelmed by the 48 new people around us that
we could make fun of. Since I was the first one entering
the bus, I saw it right away. My seat was staring me in
the face. The bus had two columns of 2 seats: 13 back-to
back sets of 2 seats on the right side of the bus and 12
sets of back-to-back sets of 2 seats on the left side of
the bus. If you are a math nerd like myself, you will
note that that totals only 50 seats. The 51st was mine.
The very last row of the bus, the one set against the
rear wall of the bus, had a connecting seat. That is,
the two seats on the left of the bus were connected to
the two seats on the right by a middle seat. The walkway
up the middle of the bus led directly to the seat. Or,
stated another way, the legs of the person sitting in
that seat, and that seat alone, could stretch the full
length of the bus. If I had 50 feet of legs I would
still be comfortable in that seat. Call me ungentlemanly
if you must, but I took the seat with the leg room. At
that point I was more concerned with having room to
stretch in Europe than I was about having food to eat.
Blake took the seat to my immediate left.
As our group filtered on to the bus, I was happy to see
that the tall people seemed to fill in around me. The
man who was taller than me sat right in front of us on
the left and the fourth tallest person in the group ( I
ranked them. Tall people will eventually rule the world,
so it's important to spot them first in a crowd.) sat in
the far seat on my right. The last one on the bus was
the tall girl who could almost look me in the eye. She
and her travel partner got on last and the tall girl sat
next to Blake while her travel buddy sat two seats in
front of us. I was surrounded by giants and cheeky
accents. As the bus left, our tour guide Ally came on
the speaker system to welcome us all to Contiki's
European Impressions Tour. She talked about what to
expect and what we would be doing. Then she said she
would get off the horn for a little while to let us
mingle. Now if you don't know me, let me fill you in. I
am eternally optimistic about people and you may argue
that I am naive. I always assume people are nice and
they want to talk to other nice people. If I am standing
in a line at the grocery store, I will start talking to
the old woman next to me, just for fun. So, when Ally
gave us free time to go and meet and talk to the 50 new
people on this bus, I was a kid in a candy store. I was
talking in circles. I talked to the nice Canadian girl
to my right. I chatted for a minute with the huge
Australian dude on my far right. Then I met the nice
couple (with the tall man) that sat to my front left. I
also talked to a couple of South African guys that were
sitting to my front right. This seat was amazing! I
could comfortably talk to people all over the place.
Finally I met the girl Blake was talking to. He had been
talking to the tall girl (who sat next to him) the whole
time that my head was on a swivel. I started listening
to them talk to find a way to introduce myself.
Immediately I noticed that she looked pleasant and very
pretty. When you first look at people, you tend to see
the most obvious thing. On first glance, all you can see
are the physical attributes of people. Therefore, by
default, those characteristics end up being your first
impression of that person. So I had noticed this girl's
height first, but once I got a closer look at her I
noticed how pretty she looked and how pleasant and
genuine she came across. Maybe I am alone in this, but I
can usually tell sincere and genuine people by their
smile. Their whole face smiles at you. Their eyes beam a
little when they smile at you. Other people just flash
their teeth at you like they are smiling for a picture
or like they think they are supposed to smile here. This
girl had a genuine smile. She was genuinely happy to be
here talking to people and meeting people. She was
comfortable in her skin and in her conversation. I
noticed a very nice diamond studded cross hanging from
her neck. So this girl was tall, pretty, genuine, and a
Christian (hopefully). I waited until there was a pause
in her conversation with Blake . . . .
"I like that." That was my introduction as I pointed to
the cross around her neck. Apparently I was unclear, but
I thought I made it obvious when I pointed at her cross
that I wanted to tell her I liked the cross. Perhaps it
came across like Japanese because she looked confused
for a brief moment. When I said it she looked at me,
heard what I said, then surveyed herself quickly to see
what I was talking about. In retrospect, I guess I could
have grabbed the cross and began stroking it in
admiration to leave no doubts about what I was admiring,
but that may have been a little too much for a first
impression. After maybe a half second, she realized that
I was talking about her cross and said "Oh, yeah
thanks."
"I'm Matt, by the way."
"Hi. I'm Emily."
For the next 20 days we traveled around Europe together
and became interested in each other beyond friendship.
We had adventures and "dates" in different cities and
countries. But those are stories for another day. This
was how I found my Emily Grace. |
