WOW. It is already January 10th, and I never even wrote a 2024 wrap-up post or one about my drive home from Panama City Beach (Ironman Florida) in November or my vacation in Siesta Key in December! Will get around to those later but for today will just write about the last few days.
I saw this New Yorker cartoon on Instagram today…
Yesterday, I flew from Buffalo to Myrtle Beach (via BWI on Southwest) and drove 30 miles south to Pawley’s Island, where I will be for the next few weeks. I need to tune out the world and get into my Zen.
It has been awful: the fires in L.A. (my aunt and uncle were almost evacuated but got to stay safely at their home in Calabasas), the winter storm paralyzing Nashville and Atlanta, Trump getting no punishment for his 34 felony convictions (why couldn’t they have at least fined him $1M for each?), I was very sick for over a week at the end of December, Jimmy Carter is dead, my divorce is very stressful; international news is just as bad, and Muskhole and Fuckerberg are on a disinformation frenzy. I am done with the news for a few weeks. I’ll train for the Tokyo Marathon (March 2nd), read books on my Kindle, and watch some movies and series (definitely Shogun, The Substance, Megalopolis, I’m Still Here, and White Lotus; any other recommendations are welcome). Quiet walks on the beach with audiobooks or music will also help me relax. I am learning Japanese via Pimsleur and Duolingo, which I really enjoy and luckily I have a swimming friend who is conveniently a Japanese translator, I’ll call her occasionally to practice.
I am currently reading a very well-written and NOT boring history of the Middle Ages.
It really explains in easy-to-understand but great detail the fall of the Roman Empire and then fills in all the history that is so poorly taught in school about Charles Martel, The spread of Islam, Charlemagne, the Vikings, how monks and knights got started and affected the world, El Cid, the Crusades, Byzantium, and Genghis Khan, etc. And I am only halfway through the book! Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure really left out a lot! Genghis Khan’s empire stretched from Poland to South Korea! Although an atheist, I am always intrigued by the history of religions. I read this great book before visiting there many years ago. I made sure to visit the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as well as the Jewish sites.
I just finished a fast paced, weird Sci-Fi audiobook about the near future, when AI, bioengineering, and robotics produce hybrid animal/AI soldiers. Of course, they become sentient at some point.
I posted this to Instagram today as I watched the weather channel.
It is about 20 degrees colder than normal here in SC, but still 30 degrees warmer than Buffalo so I will not complain. And no wildfires or hurricanes, either!
Travel recap:
My friend Mark picked me up at 5 am and drove me to the Buffalo airport. I have Clear now so I was able to skip the already long TSA pre-check queue.
I was glad and lucky to be traveling between the two big winter storms and not have any delays as I only had an hour layover in BWI, there are no direct flights from Buffalo to Myrtle Beach this time of year as it is off season.
It was less than an hour in the air to Baltimore. It was so strange to see all the snow there. In the four years I lived there during my time at Johns Hopkins, we had one 10 inch snow storm but otherwise just a dusting here and there.
And only 5 degrees warmer in Baltimore than Buffalo! Remember, global climate change creates overall warming but also greater extremes of everything. Ironically the warmer air at the North Pole in the winters allows for arctic blasts to travel further south than historically normal.
I spent the whole layover walking the airport’s terminals. Got in 1.2 miles. I saw the yellow lab service dog 2 more times but knew I couldn’t pet him as he was working.
It was reassuring to see that my luggage was on the plane to Myrtle Beach with me thanks to my apple airtags. Looking out the airport window at the snow covered ground I felt like I was in Minnesota, not Maryland!
It was another quick, smooth flight to Myrtle Beach. This plane was quite empty and we were told to spread out so as to distribute our weight! “Only 2 people per row, move to the back…”. Of course as it was Southwest I still only received a small paper cup of diet coke, JetBlue gives you a WHOLE can 😉
When I first saw no snow on the ground I checked google maps and we were almost in NC!
The beach and airport were quite deserted. I quickly got my luggage and rental car and as it was not even noon yet (and I couldn’t access my VRBO until 4pm) I drove the 10 minutes from the airport to the beach.
It was 40 but very windy! The beachside Myrtle Beach tourist strip was so empty and quiet it felt like I was in a post-apocalyptic movie and a zombie would appear from an alley. Wasn’t there a ferris wheel scene in “Zombieland”…. , great movie and cast and AMAZING they got them all to come back for Z2. And these are FUN zombie movies, not depressing like “the walking dead”, I highly recommend them.
The only other time I had been to Myrtle Beach was in December 2005 when we went there to visit my Dad who was living at the time in Marion, SC (about an hour inland). We stayed at an oceanfront hotel at dirt cheap off season prices and had a HUGE indoor water park to ourselves! Alex was 3 1/2!
This was in the years before I became a cold water, open water swimmer so I hadn’t thought about bringing a wetsuit and swimming in the 60 degree ocean.
My dad’s house had gorgeous Spanish moss on the Live Oaks.
It was “cold” for the locals but shorts weather for me. We did some fun touristy activities.
Despite the “cold” and me being the only one there, about half the shops and attractions were still open. I had googled for a coffee shop and picked a local one “Lo-Fi Coffee” rather than Starbucks. There were three young women working there despite me being the only customer for the 30 minutes I sipped my Caramel Macchiato. The coffee shop was a “retro” theme and had “Back to the Future” playing on a small TV. I was a little spooked by seeing a second PacMan console in just 2 weeks (for some inexplicable reason there was one in the lobby of the Urgent Care center I went to for my cold at the end of December).
I had thought I would find a place to eat lunch outdoors and watch the waves but it seemed like most of the restaurants were closed or had their outdoor patios shut down. I drove south the 30 miles to Pawley’s Island and then a little further south to a parking lot with both ocean and creek access. The beach was beautiful with lots of pelicans and gulls in the air, I found a cool shell, it was not fully intact but very nice.
It was very windy so I only walked for about 20 minutes, I saw one other bundled up walker. Back at the parking lot the wind was much less strong so I decided to walk some more on the marsh side of the parking area. It was low tide and the sand was nice and firm. I saw a huge (one foot wide) blob that after poking and flipping with the tip of my shoe I realized was a BIG jelly fish. I “helped” it back in the water but it was sadly deceased. Probably cold shock. I ran the photo through my iNaturalist app (free, get it!) and got my answer. I had never even heard of it before.
I looked for alligators as I walked but didn’t see any. I don’t know if they head further south in the winter (I know they have them here in the summer) or if they were all in semi-hibernation with the cold spell. I saw several nice birds, lots of vultures and gulls.
I was actually cold enough that when I drove back into town I chose a Chinese restaurant for lunch and had some Wonton soup and noodles. I grabbed some groceries and headed to my VRBO. It had a perfect view of the Atlantic to the east and also the sunset over the marsh to the west.
It had been a long day and I went to sleep early. There was a gorgeous sunrise. It was only 32 degrees but compared to the several sub 20 degree runs I’ve done recently at home it was very nice! And barely any wind despite a storm on the way.
I explored the Litchfield by the Sea community and then ran on the amazingly firm low tide sand (my pace was the same as on pavement but much less jarring). I saw a few walkers and one nice yellow lab. And some more pelicans including several diving in for fish.
To the north, after the houses end, is Huntington State Park which I plan to use for my longer runs, it also has a zoo and some other things that I’ll check out once the weather is back in the 50s.
A VERY relaxing, VERY enjoyable run. I had originally (almost a year ago) booked this vacation as a chance to see if I might want to buy a condominium here. I know a couple I went to medical school with who have a place down here. It is a wonderful spot, I like that it is not insanely busy like Myrtle Beach or South Florida. But after my recent trips to Panama City Beach and Siesta Key (Sarasota) I have realized that I’ll just be wintering in various locales during the winter months. If I can be somewhere warm for a week or two every month between November and February that will be good enough for me. Florida, Arizona, Costa Rica, etc. And it will be sooooo much cheaper to do that than buy an oceanfront place that I then have to worry about being hit by a Hurricaine, rising insurance costs, etc. etc. etc.
This meme describes where I feel I am right now.
As difficult and confrontational as my divorce has become (despite ALL my earlier efforts to seek counseling or mediation) it will be over eventually and then I can move onto the next phase of my life. I don’t want to re-marry or live with someone but am hoping to find someone that I can spend time with exercising, hiking, kayaking, camping and traveling to the many places I still want to visit. I am settled into my rented house with Fifa and look forward to Alex being with us for the summer while they work in Buffalo.
Thanks for reading. Be sure to subscribe (free, easiest if you download the FREE Jetpack for WordPress app), comment, share. I enjoy writing, I find it cathartic and if nothing else am leaving a journal for Alex to have in the future. I read a lot of stuff now on Substack, Medium and WordPress both by famous authors and thinkers but also by “casual” writers. I am not at the point of some of these people who fully disclose their innermost emotions and thoughts but I am slowly doing better I think at not JUST writing about travel.