Beach, please

We hooked up with Sarahstophe and Malcolm in Atlanta en route to Savannah, GA, on Sunday afternoon. Good to see that the parently couple have got their routine down, especially in terms of feeding the little'n wraps. Which he promptly dispersed a healthy portion of onto the Atlanta airport floor. Nice. Malcolm then spent all 34 minutes of the plane ride to Savannah chatting up the ladies in the seat in front of him. It's a little difficult to make out syllables other than "bah" and "nom nom nom," but I'm pretty sure the conversation closely resembled "Ba nom ba nom nom nom hey baby I have a room on the beach ba nom nom what you say you and I get out of here nom." And really, with lines that smoove - not pretty, smoove - who could deny this guy?

We met up with the Ben-Ali at the car rental line in Savannah, and Ali quickly regaled us with a story of how Ben had driven them to the wrong airport that morning - D'OH! Seems big cities like Washington, D.C. have more than one. They (obviously) made it to their flight on time, and after grabbing a Chevy Impala (Holla!) and a Rav4 (Holl... er?), we headed for the beach house about an hour's drive away and across the South Carolina border.

The area = quite beautiful, nice pine and marsh country that, among other things, is home to the Gullah. I'll spare you the decidedly UN-natural history lesson here, but suffice it that they are a deeply-historied group with a different perspective on life and the African-American experience. Fear not, though - parts of their culture have indeed become a tourist trap, and lest you think that racial stereotypes are limited to the American Southwest, trust that some white tourists were overheard saying:

WT: "Excuse me, I'm looking for the Gullah."
Black Gullah: "Well, you found 'em; I'm Gullah."
WT: "Oh. I thought you'd have spears and makeup and stuff."

WOW. Anyhoo, we made it to the cottage with limited trouble (and some nifty navigation from me along the lines of "turn right: back there." And we were in our home sweet for the week home. And were pretty much immediately treated to a gorgeous sunset; here's the view from our porch:

Enter a little time travel music, because before we caught that sunset, we stopped at Publix, the local grocery store. LET ME TELL YOU: nothing quite as fun as grocery shopping with seven (okay, 6.3) people. We ran over the entire store and quite astoundingly managed to nail practically the entire week's worth of groceries - snacks, cereal, wine, lunches, cookies, you name it. And by Friday there was a very minor amount of excess. SO that was miraculous. But the process was rough - trust that the Beaufort Publix will not soon forget the landing of Hurricane BenAliMalSarCHrBeckNyet.

Alright, in deference to our adderall-laden culture, I'll cut short. Just to whet, here's a little piece of artistry I call "Beck on the Beach at Night:"