The End of a Road Trip

I was always surprised when I flew from Washington Dulles Airport. This was the capital city of the United States, allegedly one of the most advanced and modern nation in the world. Nonetheless, the airport had almost an antiquated feel to it, very different from all the modern look of London Heathrow or some other European airports.

“Are you still judging the architecture and style of the airport?”

Samuel knew me well, and his teasing made me smile, as always.

“I can’t help it.”

He chuckled as the waitress brought our breakfast; scramble eggs, bacon and grits for me, and a mountain of waffles for him. He wasted no time covering the whole lot with an ocean of maple syrup. We had just over an hour before our flight back home and decided to enjoy a hearty breakfast.

“I think we can consider this adventure a success Lucie, don’t you think?”

It was my turn to chuckle, while picking up the salt and pepper.

“You are only saying this because we hit pretty much every barbecue and waffle joints on the way!”

“Well, there is that. They know how to cook meat in these parts, that’s for sure!”

I shook my head, amused, as he shovelled a huge piece of waffle in his mouth.

We had spent almost a year planning the three weeks road trip in the Southeast of the United States. We had come full circle, landing in Washington and heading south right away to Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and then back up through the coastline of South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia again, to finish in Washington for few days of the usual sightseeing of the White House, the Mall and of course the countless museums.

“What was your favourite part of the trip?” Samuel asked me.

“I have to think about that, we had so much fun and such unexpected encounters.”

Samuel just burst out laughing.

“You can say that again!”

“What about that place in Darien, you know when we were down to Georgia? This cute house with the little pontoon by the river? It was truly a beautiful area.”

“Lucie, you and your obsession with dipping your feet in water. ‘Oh I can’t wait to sit there, feet in the water’ and the owner kindly bringing you back to earth ‘I would not do that if I were you, Fred the gator comes to say hi from time to time, and so do a certain number of snakes’.”

I snorted at the memory. I should have remembered they had all sorts of crazy wildlife in the US. The most dangerous animals for human in the UK are cows (or so google tells you) or orca if you’re looking off-land. Samuel had laughed so hard that day he had to sit down. The owner must have thought we were lunatics. My face had been priceless at the mention of the gator.

“You know, I never saw you more excited than when Vaughan took you on her big John Deere tractor for a ride.”

I smiled fondly at the memory. I had been dreaming of riding a John Deere for months. Country music was filled with mention of John Deere, and strange as it seems, this was a really exotic activity for me. Vaughan had been so kind to take me on a ride around her family farm.

“What can I say Samuel, I like tractors. And that was one big tractor, with the big thingy at the front…”

“The bucket.”

“Yes, that! And the radio and even a second seat for a passenger. This was so much fun.”

“Sweetheart, this is more than that, this is bordering obsession. I would put it up there with goats.”

I sighed.

“You might have a point there.”

He shovelled another piece of maple dripping waffle.

“I think one of the most magical moments was when we found this shell, what was the name?”

“Sand dollar.”

I was lucky he always remembered names, because for the life of me, most of the time I couldn’t.

“Yeah, that one.”

“Your friend was really kind to take us for a walk on the beach of Sullivan Island.”

“Yes, she was. She was happy when we found this Sand Dollar. She had been living in the area for years and had never found one completely intact.”

Samuel swallowed and grinned.

“Your face when we opened the bag in the hotel in the evening. You had put the shell in a small pocket so carefully, making sure it was protected from shock and wouldn’t be crushed, and all we found was dust.”

Now he was just laughing out loud.

“I was devastated!” I gave him my saddest face.

“I already had plan to put it on our shelves back home and wonder about the beauty of nature.”

“I was a little bit sad too. It was a beautiful shell.”

I finished my plate and kept thinking about the highlights of our trips, but Samuel beat me to the next one.

“What about Myrtle Beach? This was a real culture shock!”

“Oh, this is so true. I was feeling uncomfortable when we drove through, surrounded by this bunch of crazy people on their bikes.”

“Well, next time we will enquire about events of the places we drive through a little bit better I think, and maybe avoid places where bike week is taking place.”

“I mean, this was like a scene from Sons of Anarchy. This was really wild.”

“We should maybe get our bike license, and go back next year to participate?”

I just stared at him.

“Oh hell no!” I burst. “It really felt like the wild wild west down there.” I shook my head. “Nope, not doing that. No way.”

I could see a little spark in Samuel’s eyes, and the outline of a smile. This was a very devilish smile. Oh dear god, we were going to be back in Myrtle Beach and participate. He was going to butter me up slowly, and we both knew I would end up saying yes.

Samuel put aside his Machiavellians plan, or more likely kept working on it in the back of his mind, to come back to our conversation.

“I think the most unexpected moment, a real stroke of serendipity, has to be that little farm we went to though.”

“Oh yes, without a doubt. The whole afternoon we spent there was so strange and so special at the same time.”

You might not know this about me, but I am French with a strange obsession for goats, as Samuel already mentioned. I truly believe that going out to feed and pet goats is the most wonderful tool to fight stress and find the meaning of life. So, needless to say, I managed to find a place to go bottle feed baby goats during our peregrinations, to Samuel’s dismay. I found this little family-owned place, Mount Gilead Farm, specialised in everything goat related, which was run by retired professors and two of their children, about 20 minutes West of downtown Asheville, North Carolina.

Anyhow, here I was, minding my own wiggling baby goat in one arm, and holding a bottle with the other, when this bona fide working cowboy (not the dress up type!) approached me and asked me if I was French. I guess this is not surprising, seeing as despite all my best efforts I still have an accent when I speak English. What was surprising however, was the fact that when I acquiesced, he started talking to me in fluent French, at which point, my jaw dropped to the ground (but I hold onto the goat and no goats were hurt in the making of this story!). I swear that cowboy spoke better French than me!

It so happened he was the youngest son of the owners, and he just came back from 18 months in Lyon. Yes, Lyon, the city that no Americans know about and my hometown. By then, Samuel had joined me, I had let go of my first baby goat and picked up another squirming one excited by the sight of the bottle. We just kept discussing as if we were old time friends, about the streets and good places of Lyon. I left the farm feeling like I had just lived through an episode of the Twilight Zone (the proper 60s black and white version!).

Days later, I still giggled and shook my head in disbelief when I thought about that afternoon. What were the odds?

“What about the scariest one Samuel? Which one would that be?”

“Oh, without a doubt the tornado,” he answered immediately, “that was just crazy. And your friend Kevin assuring us ‘there were no such thing as tornadoes in Washington DC’ despite the text alert we all received, while browsing at the museum of American History.”

“He was a little spooked when the alarm in the museum went off, asking everybody to step away from the windows.”

I chuckled at that memory.

“Well I guess, I always wondered what it was like to see a Tornado. But I am a little disappointed,” Samuel said before engulfing the last of his waffles.

“Disappointed? We didn’t see anything and nobody was hurt.”

“Well, yeah. This is the thing you see, we didn’t see anything. We were in the same town as a tornado, and we didn’t see a thing. When will we have an opportunity to see such a natural powerful event? It is not as if we have those in the UK.”

Samuel paused for an instant, making his “I wonder” face.

“Do we even have tornado in the UK?”

Didn’t I tell you?

There he was picking up his phone and googling away. I sometimes wonder how we managed to grow up without google and Wikipedia, seeing as these days you can barely go a day without using one or the other.

“Let me check,” he said mumbling the words ‘are there tornadoes in the UK?’ as he typed.

“Oh!”

“Oh what?”

“Well, according to the Met Office, there are such thing as tornadoes in the UK. Who knew!”

“Really?”

“Yes! ’Around 30 tornadoes a year are reported in the UK. These are typically small and short-lived’.”

He paused, as he kept clicking away.

“Wait, actually the BBC disagrees and states that ‘the UK gets an average of 30-50 tornadoes a year. That’s more tornadoes per land area than anywhere else in the world (except – weirdly – the Netherlands.)’.”

“Wait, what? There are tornadoes in the Netherlands?”

“So, it seems. And wait for it, it seems we live in the UK ’tornado alley’. Listen to that, ‘in 2015, scientists at the University of Manchester mapped the UK’s tornadoes and estimated that the area from Berkshire into London had the highest likelihood of a tornado - one every 17 years.’ This is wild!”

We were still talking about tornadoes and googling more random questions when we boarded our plane shortly after. We were both very easily distracted by “wonderous” questions, and once we started researching a topic, we could spend days going on one tangent after another. We both really enjoyed it, but it drove our friends crazy. One of them told us we were “scattery”. I have no doubt this was a term of endearment.

After an uneventful 7 hours flight, border check which took forever and an hour drive, we were finally back home in Berkshire. I loved every second of our trip, but was I glad to be home!