IT USUALLY TAKES ME AT LEAST A WEEK of traveling with Ed Tower before I'm seized by the tantrum-pitching impulse and can barely resist the urge to punch myself again and again in the face. This time it happened in the parking lot at Baltimore/Washington International as Dad, Dan, and I readied our gear. Though my father had a brand-new rolling suitcase, he was bringing along his ancient, monstrous blue duffel, which smelled strongly of sour milk. Taking it would be akin to having a mute wino in tow.

"We could just leave this old bag," I said.

Over the years, Dad's work has carried him to all sorts of far-flung places—China, Malaysia, Croatia, Sudan. This particular duffel, he recalled, served him well years ago: "When I was in Khartoum, I was glad to have an extra bag to bring back swords and camel-hair rugs for my friends."

I got one of those swords. I was nine at the time, and thrilled to have it, until I noticed the dismaying odor. The leather grip, my father told me cheerily, had been cured in human urine. Strike a single en garde with the thing and all day you'd go around smelling like a Port Authority toilet. The rugs, purchased at something like 40 cents per, looked pretty good but turned out to be infested with a fanged Saharan flea and dyed with an unstable pigment. Every recipient got to celebrate my father's trip to Africa with a full fumigation and a costly visit from the floor refinishers.

Dad stood there with a faraway look in his eyes, visions of further souvenir bargains dancing in his head.

"I'm taking it," he said, then galumphed off for the terminal.

Just after 6 A.M., we touched down at Keflavík, in southwest Iceland, where the morning was crisp under a sky like a sheet of pressed lint.

"Oh, the joy of it," Dad said. "Off to a new adventure with my sons." He grinned a little nervously, giving us a shoulder squeeze.

Troubled as our trips may be, my brother's coming along, Dad knew, compounded the risk of disaster. At 36, Dan's a year and a half my senior. He's a dark-jawed lawyer with a lumberjack's build, and we have the sort of relationship that would make Cain and Abel move to a better neighborhood. Our parents divorced when we were in grade school, and I have no doubt that the strain of our hostilities helped provoke the split. Over the years, we've attacked each other with, among other things, fists, feet, teeth, rocks, bats, knives, bottles, a can opener, a cedar tree, a stick of butter, and a car, and we can still go from amiable to fratricidal in about three seconds.

But things went rather smoothly that morning. It was a full five minutes before we were at each other's throats.