We have finally been on another adventure and I feel just like Bonnie and Clyde.
OK well maybe Hissy and Fit - P got pulled over by the South Carolina police (junior academy). Merrily tootling along the highway we heard the weeoooo weeoooo weeoooo and looked to see a blue flashing light so we pulled over P’s heart visibly pumping through his shirt. We were half expecting a gum chewing, overweight Sheriff P Coltrane but got a very fresh faced “are you old enough to be a policeman” type:
Off Good morning sur, do you know the speed limit alawng here sur?
P Err morning officer (in his best English accent). I am not sure, 60?
Off Well sur you were doin 61 in a 50 mile an hour zone. See we’ve had 10 drivers killed on this virree strayetch.
P I apologise for that (even better bestest English accent, almost verging on the frightfully)
Off Could I see your drarver’s larcense? I hear you come from across the warder, thayt’ll be a farne of 800 hundred dollars.
P What?
Off Naw just kiddin ya. Wayell I aym gonna lit you off with a warnin’ this tarm.
Clearly the accent and the fact that an Englishman handing over a Texas driver’s license in a car with Virginia plates raised the spectre of mountains of paperwork which in the heat of the day and it being a Thursday an all was just too much.
But hey I am starting with almost the end of the trip.
Yep we’ve been quiet for reasons explained in the previous blog which I forgot to e-mail you - but now wi bin to Florida>Georgia>South Carolina>North Carolina.
We started in Jacksonville, Florida because we had booked ourselves on this
Naw Just kiddin ya - we were aiming for St Augustine, the oldest European Settlement in the US settled in 1513 by San Juan Ponce de Leon (I don’t think the last bit of his name was his after hours relaxation).
Strangely there was another eminent settler that was one of P’s predecessor Herbie...the first house we came to was the Wiles’ House, then came Herbie Wiles the attorney and it just went on. Anyway Ponce's council clearly decided that this was the place to be as tourists 600 years on would definitely come to see… Ye olde schoole house
Ye olde water wheelie what they knockedee downee and then thought oopsee daisy
They have never lost their link to Spain/Moors since they have built this
St Augustine also contains what Bill Bryson terms as “astonishingly untalented musicians”. Unfortunately the video wouldn't upload for good reason as I think any noise abatemnt society would have me clapped in irons - suffice to say here was the birth place of caterwalling. Of the two man band one looked like he had just finished a shift with UPS and the second one had just woken up after Dylan's first ever concert..
UPS man had an electric guitar which he had clearly initially mistook for a funky ashtray since he lodged a cigarette in the neck of the guitar and sadly only almost managed set light to his co-star.
Fortunately we got distracted by this
I kid you not it glowed when the wind blew the web. Unfortunately at this point one of the groupies of the band came over to see what we were doing and of course then came the questions about being Australian, Mongolian, Scottish and finally English.
She then announces to the pub in a voice which would make a harpie proud:
- Hey guys these dudes are travelling around taking photographs of spiders and
drinking beer and and and .......................................... stuff.
We get the reverential Wooooooowwwws, Cooooooool then shoot out the side door before we are invited up on stage to sing an alternative of “Will ye no come back agin”.
Is that how David Attenborough got his start?
First night’s dinner was a bit of a disappointment though we saw a red moon rising from the jetty where the restaurant was located. The second night we ate at a place called OC White’s where we were surrounded by good music and the overwhelming smell of jasmine.
The sunset was also gorgeous
On the way back we saw an excellent example of the management of expectation….
But we were already staying in a "tshirt pillowcase" establishment (those of you who know him and are intwigued see Mark Billam for an explanation).
Sandcastles and sunburn acquired we headed for Savannah. Crossing into Georgia on highway 17 we pass the former visitors’ centre which is representative of much of Georgia's rural residential accommodation.
And stopping in Fort George, where we went off the beaten track
I so love the trees and the Spanish moss. But Georgia is the state with the most unsolved disappearances and murders…
On to Savannah where we stayed in former slaves quarters (there;s a surprise) in the historic quarter.
The place is full of beautiful parks and squares.
But it has an edge to it as well especially when it is gloomy and raining - the book and film Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is based in this square
as the very amiable and down on his luck, homeless veteran told us when we got trapped together on the same church steps during the down pour. Inevitably we paid $5for the privilege. How the damaged conquering hero is required to survive when he doesn't emerge from conflict sparkly and confident. The buildings around the squares are gorgeous but so close upon the squares they surround that it is difficult to get good pictures. So I took this drainpipe instead:
It seems to be one place where progress has been controlled except along the river when the big hotel chains got in with as Bill Bryson termed it in "The Lost Continent" the “Fuck you school of architecture”. Bangers and mash in the Sixpence pub, baklava in a coffee shop near the swish Savannah College of Art and Design and onto South Carolina - we are so neapolitan or should that be cosmopolitan.
The scale of the rivers in this part of the world, they are HUGE and this is about the 6th one we passed in less than 150 miles,
Coffee stop and property acquisition in Beaufort ..for minor relatives we thought this
And for us
And of course any self respecting graveyard always has its own
Charleston looms into sight just in time for sherry in the drawing room (don’t build your hopes up Billam).
It felt like Scarborough on a summer’s day, walking along the seafront was bright and breezy. With the odd quirky “Victorian” municipal art work
Contrasting with the modern youth culture
And some stunning houses
Batman and Robin a la Classique
And then finishing off the evening sitting next to a pair of chefs on a busman’s holiday working their way through 4 different courses each and an equal number of bottles of wine resulting a bill of around $350.
Next stop Myrtle Beach taking in some venture capital projects
And a reminder, in part of Georgia’s history, a rice plantation mansion
On a river with mutant ninja…..crabs
and
top notch accommodation for the workers, this is under the big house.
More morning coffee in Georgetown with another giant river, paper mill and a steel mill.
It is years since I have seen such an old fashioned plant…this was taken on the way out, on the way in it had the doors open and there were furnaces blazing. Having read the tourist blurb about the basis of Georgetown wealth the day after we left the papers announced it was shutting the mill.
At coffee we were accompanied by Chicken Fred who comes back to the same spot every year.
Here was near disaster when you could have been spared any more photos or blathering blogs. As I leaned farther and farther over the railing to bring you the best picture possible...the bloody thing snorted air out of his nostrils and camera and I nearly fell in...
Cruisin' into Myrtle Beach..........during annual bikers week
Anyway the Mayor of Myrtle Beach didn’t like it being biker city anymore and issued unfriendly bye laws which were tantamount to saying we don’t want you. Having also hoisted his petard on the WWW network he clearly thought that bikers had just been told in the old fashioned way about the bye laws and, because they had damaged their trailing knuckles, couldn’t operate a computerised social network (Google Myrtle Beach Bikers week and you get 174,000 listings), but then then business folk who had voted him in discovered that all the bikers had boycotted their hotels, restaurants etc. to camp out on either side.
It is not as if they ride into town having drunk their way from Alaska or that there is a partciularly aggressive kind of FRrrrench Canadian biker with an oversized Ooh laa laa Veeeeerrrhhheeeumm smashing up the place.
- The average age is 52
- The bikes are towed in vans along with a moderator i.e. “ she who must be obeyed” and attendant cherished “reasons” why it has taken you to 52 to afford a bloody bike in the first place.
- The most daring they get is a t-shirt stretched over a well worn lifetime hamburger adoring body which reads “If you can read this the BITCH fell off”.
- They offload their scream machines just the right distance to drive to the main hangouts to avoid a sore tush.
- And finally to prove the age thing a local business has set up advertising a “Topless Bike Wash” which ensures a steady flow of fresh octogenarian rebel
rousers corpses to feed the lovebirds perched in a cage above us in the “chapel of rest “ breakfast place shown below.
Note even stained glass windows!
The final straw was when the “Heart” look alikes sat down at the table next to us and I couldn’t help singing the lyric “I hear the ticking of the Clock, I’m lying here the Coffin’s pitch dark”.
So why did we go? I have no idea …well it was P’s idea. He had read about Myrtle beach and it sounded romantic and hip (well it was circa 1962). The only hip now are plastic...
And it is romantic if your idea of romantic is a cross between Blackpool, Benidorm and Bournemouth. (There was a cabaret place in Bridlington when I was a kid called the three Bs)
Another night in a pillowcase hotel amongst all the other less classier establishments which had signs outside saying “We Love Bikers - $29 a night and you can sleep with your bike”.
Now North Carolina here we come. Is that the sign and have we crossed the state line?
Yup ok let’s head back - there are warning signs that this could get worse(you may need to zoom in to see the words
And another thing how many Pirate Jack’s crazy golf courses can you fit into 10 miles of beach promenade…..forty bloody five that’s how many.
You have no idea how disconcerting it is trying to read a map when there is an eyeful of mumsy biker chick type bum reversing out of skeleton’s eyeball during a tricky chip shot into Pirate Jack's Toby Jug. Little did I know it was preparation for the long journey ahead.
Ooh it is a long way and this is the day we get the written warning from Traffic Cop Meadows, and it's hot and so P needs a drink. Excellent lets turn off the I-95 at the petrol station and Jasper County Correctional facility on shift change and visitor's day.
Ok so I had a more basic need as well and call me old fashioned but doesn’t everyone get a little nervous sitting on a petrol station toilet seat with the words “dog sex” lovingly engraved on it and only a cardboard width away from a shelf of chimney pot size fireworks humorously called “Foreign Policy”, next to a house full of felons.
Now what single point of entry roadway is this that we are driving along lemming like anyway and where are we going again? Oh yes Hilton Head Island - a tract of land patronised by Saint Gregory the Great (Golfer I presume) since it is 10 miles by 4 with 14 golf courses. The Vatican has always been in property development but here, appears to have taken it to another level, developing a community with possibly 2 purposes:
a) A home for the seriously bewildered brotherhood who had aspired to the main
man’s post and can be deluded by a ride in one of the surfeit of golf carts mocked up as a pope mobile
b) Providing a discreet plate for the cosa nostra to do business (we had been watching a program about a mafia deal where the boss had brought along a priest as a sort of portable character reference) I say this since 70% of the island is closed unless you pay $5 or own a condo.
And then it all falls into place as we arrive at the junction of Burnt Church Road – clearly they had wiped out the opposition, except for the Scottish Mill shop which has secured the monopoly on hair shirts and ridiculous checked golfing trews.
Our first confirmation that the place is for those reverting back to infant dribbledom
And if you weren’t mad when you first came, click on this to find out the noise that is turned on just as you go to bed
A plague of frogs or what and if that fails they set up tourist information booths which are actually manned by timeshare salesman trying to convince you that as a poor, unblessed person you only have access to 10% of the island and if you “joined” for upward of half a million for half a metre of real estate you would get so much more. Having been trapped with him mercilessly preaching for 15 minutes for the rest of the evening I demand that anyone who approaches me proves they are NOT a timeshare salesman - waitresses, tramps, car park attendants, even the guy in the Red Roof hovel to which we retire. Well if smarmy git thinks I'm going to be excluded from the exclusive scenery ...The next morning...
S Coconut rentals send round your finest metal steeds. $10 for 24
hours!!! Is that all? Have they got two wheels? Are they round ones? Ring us when
you arrive at our hotel to drop them off. Great!
And so to the Gullah café where our breakfast is interrupted by the call that our trusty mounts have arrived. Rounding the corner 10 yards behind P I hear the boom chick a boom chick a boom chick a boom boom radiating from the truck which is shaking as the driver waves his arms and bangs the dashboard in time to the music. He emerges and the truck rises by 6 inches. This is a man of western Samoan proportions. Unaware of me:
WS YU PHIL? MORNING. I HAS YOUR BIKES PHIL
P Morning, thanks very much.
WS espies me bringin up the rear
P - Are you well
WS WOOOOOOOW, I AINT TALKIN TO YU NO MORE. YU THE UGLY MAN. ARM TALKIN TO MA HONEY. OH SHE’S MA HONEY...OH YEAH
(In case you hadn't realised and I can understand why...it is me he is talking about)
P Its $21 yeah, I have to get some more cash
WS NOPE YU THE UGLY MAN I JUST TALKIN TO MA HONEY
P WELL HONEY CAN PAY THEN!!!!
WS HEY YU BRITISH, MY NEIGHBOUR'S BRITISH, HE BLOODY, BLOODY BRITISH.
WS proceeds to adjust my bike for me after telling P he can do his own. He smiles with his one bad tooth at his Honey. We realise that he wants a tip but we don’t have much cash…we had to go for the quarter bag in the van to make up the $21 and I am generally like the queen but between us we did have some loose change which we poured into his hands.
He departs and we look down at the label on the bikes to discover the title Bubba's Bikes.....
And so onto the beach to ride and penetrate the off-limits areas of the island. We are accompanied by dolphins for 6 miles
And lots of stranded these
I pick one of these for our weekends out of the city
We stop off at the one public beach bar the Tiki and here is where we get indisputable evidence that the US private health care system is so much more accountable and value for money....
I go to sit on a stool near the empty volleyball courts and remember Bubba was probably a little short on sight as well as teeth...
Dr Slimeball Hi, are you gonna go out there and give us something to look at?
S Trust me that would be "something" to look at. (In my best put you down voice which actually does stop the conversation there.)
P and I settle to watch the sea beyond the still Sharmanless volleyball court.
Brr Brr ..Dr Slimeball's phone goes off and bearing in mind this is 3 pm on a Thursday afternoon.
Dr Slimeball Oh yeah can't talk now I'm still at the conference in Pittsburgh. Just remove the drip and make sure she gets plenty of fluids and i'll see her after the weekend!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well I am sorry but even that number of exclamation marks doesn't express how cross I was. And humanitarian non-violent means apart .......One cocktail more and he would have been trying to extract a bedpan from where the sun don't shine.
P v diplomatically guides me way beyond his stool (that's a chair not the substance just emitted from his mouth)and decides that the Tiki bar would not be a good idea for me to develop Anglo/American relations. Instead he opts to run the risk of more Madame Outrage by taking me to look at how the other half live and so we pay the $5 to gain “access” to this..Harbourtown. See how cool and collected I look..
Here were boats that made the Bond films vessels look “Trumptonish”. Most of them not a smudge let alone a faithful barnacle but terribly fetching blue “underlighting” around the hull.
Thank goodness for the perspective nature brings..making man's efforts look small and woman's temper pointless
And as I look around at everyone in their $500 deck shoes sitting, listening to a James Taylor aspirant with more smarm than Bob Monkhouse I can't help feeling I have been caught up in a new film..."Sons and Daughters of Cocoon"
Next stop my garden and the Gower peninsula.
xx
