Trip of Men 2025

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This was our 50th year trip (2025 was the year in which we all entered as 50 year-olds). It also marked the beginning of our 4th cycle of these trips (routhly meaning we’ve completed 18 years or so of these little endeavours). We are all in violent agreement that we’ve got a good thing going, and we don’t take it lightly that we’ve got this “thing” still working for us.

We basically spent a week in Scotland, landing in Glasgow, 2 nights on Loch Lommond, 3 nights in Port Ellen, and back to Glasgow for 2 nights. Shout out to Grant for the use of his sweet aparment in Glasgow. Great fun.

The following is a synopsis written by Ian that I (Ryan) edited a bit to make it appropriate for this site. I thought it described things well…

That was a really good time. Like really good.

My hi-lights include in no particular order: Hitting the first pub getting the first pint and fish and chips of the trip, taking a comprehensive tour of the various grocery stores in Dumbarton, Dumbarton castle, the white knuckling drive up Loch Lomond, Canoe to the pub, Drovers pint Tolton arriving (actually that was meh but I felt I had to say that), haggis at Drovers, Hike up to the falls, driving to the ferry through the rolling hills, Bridgend lunch with the waitress burning me for working, Caol lla, Not me driving, Bunnahabhain – the foggy view down the inlet, Me, Big Jay and Cole all wearing the trip t-shirts unbeknownst to me, Tolton selling Bridgeland to the servers, picking up the three gents on the road, Finnlaggan Castle, 10 lbs of Chinese food – it was actually quite tasty, not the squeaky bunk bed, morning splash in the ocean, skeet shooting despite being very bad at it, the standing stones and labyrinth at the skeet shooting, lunch at Port Charlotte – scallops and chow-da, drive down the coast – scoring on Big Jay at the ocean side soccer field, Kichoma scotch – and express with the cream cake, checking out Bowmore, scallop pizza by the sea, the distillery hike through the country side, the rolling hills and sheep, the different vibes at each of the distilleries, lunch at Ardbeg – meat pie, sticky pudding, Wee Emma, Dunyvaig Castle, seeing Tolton and Big Jay actually struggle to eat something.. the snack platter, golfing by the sea, getting so many golf tees, Kilmarten Glenn – standing stones, cairns, Carnasserie Castle, the whole drive up to Oban, checking out Oban the town, Having a dram of Oban, effing talking to the effing trucker when we had to effing stop on the effing road to wait for the effing construction to effing finish, Grant’s cool flat, Tolton sucking down a sausage outside the Grove, checking out the U of Glasgow cloisters, seeing the very place Adam Smith worked out modern economic theory, the sports store that never ended, rugby match, walk home from the rugby match through the various neighbourhoods, my avocado toast though there was something queer about that restaurant, getting a few bucks back for JT, the severe yet enchanting Iceland Air flight attendant…

Yep. He summed it up well. Also, it turns out, 4 isn’t better than 5…