Day 63 - Worst. Detour. Ever

Author – Grant
From – Charleston, South Carolina
To – Savannah, Georgia
Via – The Worst Detour Ever

Today’s Photos – http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157612207365235/

After two blissful nights in Charleston it was back on the road again today, ever chasing the warmer weather down south. For some reason the budget hotels we stay in come with a free copy of USA Today which isn’t exactly the choice of the intelligencia but it does have some nice big colour pictures from which it is easy to piece together the general gist of that day’s major events. For example, a NY Giants player hugging another NY Giants player means that the Giants won. George Bush shaking the hand of someone clearly not from the US shores means that a national embarrassment has probably occurred. You get the picture. Anyway, one of it’s mot useful pages maps the weather across the US and currently the entire country is some shade of blue or white…except the very South East corner which is clinging on to glorious shades of orange. We experienced this first hand with today’s drive as every 10 digits the odometer increased, the temperature gauge added a degree. By the time we hit Savannah, we made it up to a balmy 80 degrees…time to dust off the leopard ski speedo’s me thinks. The other thing these budget hotels provide free of charge is breakfast. It’s the same rather lame and tired looking assortment of Cherios, Raisin Bran, toast and DIY waffles but today Kate cheated the system by bringing her own cereal. The by-product of this, however, is that she looks like a coupon cutting, multiple cat owning crazy lady that probably howls at the moon every lunar month.

I digress. Kate has been doing the majority of the trip research for the past couple of days as I have been writing the blog. As such, on her instructions we took a detour to the unimaginatively names Sea Islands. Apparently St Helena has the best display of Spanish moss (the curly grey stuff that looks like a Geordie’s perm) lined streets. What she neglected to mention was that St Helena also contains the Beaufort Marine Corps Air Station which has the frightening reputation of being the harshest Marine training centre in the land. That’s a bit like being the fattest bloke at the Sumo tournament. As such, we spied a few batches of freshly shaved nutters of the future roaming the streets and set aside any lingering notion we had of staying in this area just in case I accidentally spilled anyone’s pint. Shame as the area contained a Drive-In cinema which is definitely on the list of must-do’s before we’re done here. Not, however, at the expense of my face.

Fortified with Parking Lot Sushi (we probably eat the majority of our meals in the parking lots outside food joints because we are greedy bloaters and because we don’t want to leave Molly in the car for too long), we checked into another La Quinta hotel ($52 a night…that’s a bargain) and dusted off the bikes in preparation for some action. I’m going to digress again here but I feel I need to explain the Americanisms that seem to be making it into my text. I must convey that it feels very unnatural to type “parking lot” rather than my native “car park” but I do this not because I am turning all American…it is simply because if I type the American version then both the American and UK readers will understand it (Brits being the inventors of cleverness and all that) but if I just type the UK version then the simple yanks will get all confused and make a fuss about it. Repeating English phrases in about as convincing an English accent as Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins seems to be a national sport. Anyway, I digress again. Our bike ride took us the five miles into downtown Savannah, around plenty of the city’s 21 serene squares, along it’s cobble-stoned, bar-laden sea-front and back to the hotel for a well earned cold drink. In the midst of lecturing Kate on her riding style, I managed to slip off my pedal whilst dropping off a particularly cliff-like curb and the pedal wedged into my shin drawing a rather manly amount of blood. The resulting would is not quite as gory as I would like but I’m still fairly proud of my free Savannah souvenir.

Continuing to take full advantage of the non sub-zero temperatures, we followed the crowds to an outside pizza joint whose name escapes me and I can’t be bothered looking it up as I’m about to go out and every word I type puts a couple of seconds between me and my first beer…although typing that probably took longer than a google search. Ah well, it’s too late now. Or is it? Yep, it’s too late. The place was buzzing which is no surprise as young nubile lasses served up fine, fresh pizza and cold beer with a big smile and for very little cash. I think a good judge of a person is what they put on their pizza hence Kate (who chose the soggy combo of bell pepper, onion, tomato and hamburger meat…yes, hamburger meat…go USA) is a damp squib whilst I (by choosing Pepperoni, Onions & Jalapeño) am a red hot inspired genius. All this was accompanied by a simple yet beautiful salad comprising spinach leaves, olives, raw onion, bell pepper, tomato and Italian Vinaigrette and a couple of beers. It’s worth noting that Kate broke her “week of no drink for the third night in a row. Admittedly the last two nights have just been a little sip of my beer but tonight she went the whole hog and ordered her own. Still, we’ve informally arranged a nice little bar crawl for tomorrow night (7th Jan) so expect the abstinence to be well and truly buried then.

Without knowing on it, we are in Paula Dean’s home town so tomorrow we’ll experiment with lunch at her restaurant and the rest of the day will be dictated by the weather which is due to be wetter than Kate’s pizza. Hurrumph.