A Holiday by the Seashore

"There is a point when redneck turns to savage" the silver haired gentleman stated in a genteel, southern drawl, referring to the party that had just left. The bar was dark, though the late afternoon sun blared outdoors. I liked the seediness of it, the sunny beach sitting right outside of the salty, dark little bar. It was filled with old people. Locals. A bike ride gone bad.

"So why doesn't the Obamas visit the Greece? He goes to Polonia! In Greece, we broke!" the older, well, Greek lady ranted as she handed us our food in the cinder block hut next to the highway, which strangely, has really awesome Greek food. In Atlanta, which is not exactly known for Mediterranean delights. I stared at the ripped out, calendar photos of Greece that lined the walls of the waiting area. Mykonos and the rest of the isles seemed completely out of context in the rather dingy, warehouse area where the low rise building sat and had been sitting for as long as I can remember. I stared at her wide eyed, afraid to speak. Not because she scared me, but because I was scaring myself. A new medication I had just starting taking was leaving me in a scared fog, a fog so freaky that I had called my sister and asked her to babysit me, to come get me, come get me now. The second day wasn't so bad, but I was still nervous, so she let me stay by her side again, all day. And eat take out Greek food.

We have been going to the Georgia coast since I was a kid. I loved it at first and then went through a stage where I didn't find it so awesome. I wanted the big, sandy, vegetation free beaches that I had seen pictures of, flanked by neon blue water. Or at least dark blue, Pacific style water. Pretty water that you could see your feet in. Not the strange dunes filled with long brown and green grass, separated by sand from the gray waters of the Atlantic. I've come full circle and love it again. The drive through the marshes to the beach, the vegetation on the dunes, the gray water, the odd, unpopularity of the beach, mainly because it is not Florida, St. Simons or Hilton Head. I find it beautiful and sleepy in a fully southern way. I wasn't sure if I would ever really need to leave the house after viewing our rented, 1920's beach house, but managed to run down the splintery, wooden path to the sea at least once a day. It made me think of the really early days on Great Lakes in Michigan, at the old beach cottages we went to in the days before the big move to the South. I loved the lakes but have never returned. I spent the week riding my bike and jogging, while looking at the pretty old cottages that gave some kind of folks from Atlanta or Savannah a seaside getaway one hundred years ago.

So, it's on. A few days until the adventurous ride to T.J., adventures in Mexico and San Diego and Arizona. You can't see me, but I am crossing myself, Catholic style. I didn't learn it as a kid when I sat in a room with a priest rattling off the sins of a nine year old, or the day I walked down the aisle of a big church wearing a white dress and carrying a tremendous carafe of red wine. I learned it in Mexico, before my many rides wheeled out on the Tijuana roads to take me home from work, crossing their shoulders and heart and kissing their fingers, then putting the car in drive.

It really doesn't seem to hurt.