Suebob's Red Stapler

Myrtle Beach is a summer paradise. It’s a fun town. There are about a dozen mini-golf courses, waterparks and amusement parks. There are many, many giant 2-story stores unlike anything I have ever seen in California selling summer supplies (t-shirts, beach towels, beach chairs, floaties). And of course, there is the long and perfect strand of beach itself.

The road next to the beach is lined with hotels and condos large and small. Some are 20 stories, others shabby 2-story family-run motels built in the 1960s. In winter, they are practically empty. Signs advertise seaview rooms for $35 per night; $225  per week.

My Terror

Here’s a weird fact about me: I have a terror of empty swimming pools. The sight of a waterless pool – or worse, one partly filled with dark and dirty water – causes my stomach to drop and my head to spin. Yeah, I don’t know why either.

You know where there are a lot of empty swimming pools? A beach town in winter. Everywhere I look. I have been practicing exposure therapy, forcing myself to at least glance sideways at the terrifying concrete pits while clinging to fences to keep from fainting. I’m not quite cured yet.

Even with that, I love to walk down the street with all the hotels. It’s quiet and a little eerie.

Walking and Talking

A Friendly’s restaurant is one of the few places still open on the strip. One night, a mom walked out of Friendly’s with her little boy. I was playing Pokémon Go on the opposite side of the street from them, and the boy was scampering around and exploring every cranny, so we were both making slow progress, walking parallel.

At one point, I got ahead and crossed the street. A little while later, the boy said behind me “Hey, you’re playing Pokemon Go!”

I turned. “Yes, I am! Do you play?”

“No,” he said. “My cousin does. How long have you been playing?”

“Three years, which is probably about half your life.”

“Mmm almost. I’m 7. I’m James, and I’m good at math!”

“That’s great!” I said. James was a skinny, shorts-wearing boy with big eyes and long gorgeous eyelashes that curved up on the ends.

“Yes, my teacher always says I am so good at it. I love math! I love to do math problems. I know my times tables, almost anyway. 3 times 7 is 21. 3 times 8 is…24.”

His mother had barely looked up at us. She was just dragging along. I realized that she was exhausted and that she probably worked in one of the hotels.

To give her a break, I kept walking with James. We chatted for the next few blocks. I learned that James was going to be a scientist and study the ocean, but also an engineer and build robots that would do everything for people.

“I want to build a robot so my mom doesn’t have to do so much,” he said. “I want her to say ‘Vacuum the floor’ and the robot will vacuum so she can sit down sometimes.”

His mother finally smiled. “That would be nice, son.”

We parted ways and walked on through the empty streets of a summer town in winter.

I’m not quite retired, but I have already achieved the gold standard of old-personhood: I have my own golf cart.

Not permanently – just for the next few months. I have settled into a community near the beach in South Carolina (the actual beach is 3 blocks away) in a tiny bungalow, the rental of which comes with a zippy little black and red golf cart.

I just needed a break after a year spent largely on the road. I need to see a dentist and get some physical therapy on my ouchie arm and take real showers in my own shower. And I wanted to spend the long, dark nights of winter somewhere other than an RV park.

I liked Myrtle beach, and when I found that rent here is about 25% of what it is in Ventura, I started looking around and after only about 6 hours on the phone (this is the South, y’all. Dang, people like to chat.), I found myself a little place with a porch as big as the actual home. I can sit in a porch swing or porch Adirondack chairs or porch rockers or the porch picnic table.

I can zip down to the rec center or to the onsite restaurants or to the Walmart across the way in the golf cart. I can even go to church on the golf cart!

I thought the golf cart would be hard to drive – I have to park it with extreme care in a tiny shay-ed (I mean shed), but it turns out driving a very large vehicle makes driving a tiny one incredibly easy.

So grab your windbreaker and hop on. We’re going for a ride.

I went to Target after church, as one does. Because I have Gladis, I took a short break on the couch before I went inside. I could hear this lovely violin music that was surprisingly loud.

I couldn’t imagine someone blasting that music from their car, so I thought it was probably one of those “Play classical music to keep kids from congregating in front of the store” ploys I have heard about.

When I walked up to the store, I realized I was wrong. There was a man with a violin and an amp out in front of Target. He was playing music from all kinds of genres. He had a sign that said “I have no work permit. Please help.”

I walked up to leave a few dollars in his case. As I dropped my money, I looked up and saw his face. He didn’t look like someone who had spent his life inside playing violin. He looked like a campesino, his skin tanned dark and deeply lined.

He also had an expression filled with sorrow and stress. This wasn’t someone who was playing for fun. He was playing for his life, and probably the lives of his loved ones.

I was happy to see so many people contribute to him. Parents gave their little kids money to go drop into his case. An elderly couple stopped their car and opened their windows to listen for a while.

He brought forth beauty from darkness. I hope he is well.

Sue: Oh, your dog is so cute. What’s his name?

Lady: Vayennie

Sue: Vienna?

Lady: VAH-ennie

Sue: Vah-ennie

Lady: V-I-N-N-I-E

_______________________

Sue: Is the shed supposed to be locked?

Landlord: What?

Sue: The shed, is it supposed to be locked because…

Landlord: Oh! The SHAY-ed.

_______________________

I walk up to a deli counter. Two men stop talking to look at me. One Middle Easterner behind the counter and one Black man in front of it.

“We were talking about coaches,” the customer explained.

“Like football coaches?” I asked.

“Football, whatever, all kinds of coaches. But people try to take your coaches away, you know? You come with coaches and they don’t appreciate those coaches.”

“Um…yeah?”

He looked kind of annoyed.

“Yeah, they do. They do.”

In the car, about half an hour later, I yelled, “OH! CULTURES!”

The spreading gold fields of Delaware

Destination Unknown

This trip has taught me to love many places and things that I didn’t know I loved before.

The California desert, with its scorched mystery and deep starry skies and rivers of Painted Lady butterflies. During wildflower season – which lasts about 3 weeks – the air at sunset smells like a perfume made of purple, tangerine and yellow.

The deep green forests of Louisiana, so tangled that they seem to suck you in like a dizzying whirlpool of verdure, steamy and alive.

The rustling cornfields of the midwest and east, always hinting at something alive and peeping out just beyond those first rows by the road.

The wind-swept rocky canyons and mesas of New Mexico with ever-changing bands of light made by clouds spilling over the red rocks.

Wells, Maine gave me some spectacular sunsets.

Take Me Down to the Sea

It is a grand and beautiful country, but my people, there is no place for me like a coast. When I saw Cape Cod, I burst into tears and then felt a weight lifting off of me, but I wasn’t home. It wasn’t until I walked on the beach at Wells, Maine, that a ribbon unfurled in my heart, tied all the way back to the mouth of Ventura Harbor, 3112 miles away.

The horseshoe crabs at Bethany Beach, Delaware were spectacular and a little frightening.

After that, I wanted to cling to the coast. I took the inconvenient path south through Delaware and Maryland, both of which I fell in love with.

I took a lovely hike out to this estuary in Delaware.

With the Ponies

I spent a week on Chincoteague Island, Virginia, re-reading the horse story of Misty of Chincoteague from my childhood. (Synposis: every year, wild ponies from Assateague Island are swum across a narrow channel to be auctioned on Chincoteague so their numbers don’t grow too big. A boy and girl living on a farm with their grandparents save money to buy a pony and her foal. They train the horses, race the mother and eventually return her to the wild, keeping the foal).

Heading south, I gloried in the sunrise over Chesapeake Bay on the Chesapeake Bay Bridges and survived the interspersed tunnels (barely – two narrow lanes facing one another, speed limit 55 mph, giant trucks coming straight at you and appearing to scrape the roof of the tunnel as they fly).

Virginia Beach was tougher because they certainly know how to keep the beach from people driving an RV (day-use parking was $15 in the sole lot that could accommodate RVs).

Roanoke Island VA, home of the lost colony, retains a certain mystery.

The Wright Brothers National Memorial, Kitty Hawk, NC

Take to the Air

But the Outer Banks of North Carolina – now there’s a place I could live. So homey, like a really flat Malibu. I stopped at Kitty Hawk and learned all about the Wright Brothers and thought about how far aviation has come, just having spent a week under the flight path of F-18s from Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach having my windows rattled every few minutes.

And now, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. There are skyscrapers along the beach, which is flat and white and beautiful and seems to stretch on forever. There is a state beach park where the trees arch over the roads, dripping Spanish moss. It is warm and steamy and largely deserted for winter. I’m thinking about staying a while.

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Myrtle Beach State Beach Park

Sunrise over the Upper West Side

I’m going to backtrack because I forgot to write this down.

Staying in upstate New York with my old housemate Robina Bobina, she invited me to come to New York City with her and her boyfriend.

I said no, of course. I’m not my mother’s daughter just so I can leap into things all willy-nilly when invited. It’s the anti-pleasure principle. But Robin was persuasive. Her boyfriend, Michael, would drive, and his family owned a pied-a-terre across from Zabar’s and we would have a grand time.

Zabars – my final resting place

Coincidentally, before she ever mentioned this, I had told Robin I wanted my ashes to be put in a cookie tin and placed on a high shelf at Zabar’s so I could rest in peace in my happy place.

(Zabar’s is a grocery store/deli like no other. It has a cheese section that brings could take months to properly explore if you didn’t want to risk lactose overdose).

So then I said yes. I got to meet Michael, a super cute dermatologist with a super zippy Audi. He and Robin are goofy about one another in the sweetest possible way.

We got to Manhattan on the Friday night of Labor Day weekend and it was perfect. The weather was just softly warm and lovely and the city was deserted and not at all noisy or overwhelming – NYC at it’s most poetic. You could almost hear Rhapsody in Blue swelling in the background.

We ate Indian food and strolled up to Magnolia Bakery to finish stuffing ourselves with Banana Pudding (Robin and Michael) and Lemon Bars (me). This was pretty much the whole weekend – eating and walking, walking and eating.

Instagramming our Barney Greengrass

On Saturday, we breakfasted at Barney Greengrass and parted ways – Robin and Michael to go walk through her old Riverside neighborhood and go shopping, me to get a haircut and see my friend Suzanne, whom I have known since the days when she used to publish a blog called “CUSS and other rants.”

Suzanne and I of course ate out. She had run 13 miles that morning. Hey, I got a haircut, so that’s pretty much the same thing, right? We had Druze food. Good golly, Miss Molly, I love New York and its cornucopia of world cuisine. We walked around and hung out at her place, which is conveniently only about 6 blocks from Michael’s family’s apartment.

I spent the afternoon – guess what – walking around, taking photos, gaping at the Nobel Monument like a tourist, and playing Pokemon Go. A perfect afternoon. I stopped at Milk Bar to get a highly overrated slice of Milk Bar Pie and to watch other tourists take photos of their ice cream.

That night Suzanne, her husband and I went out to eat (of course) – New York pizza this time – and walked around and then we just sat around their kitchen table and drank water and laughed our heads off because of stuff like Justin buying these as a subtle protest of his new open-plan office where he has to share a table with his boss and others.

The next day, a long-awaited pilgrimage to the Noguchi museum in Queens, where we met up with another old blogging friend, Neil Kramer. Isamu Noguchi is my favorite modern sculptor, with work that is solid and light at the same time. One of Noguchi’s works just stopped me in my tracks at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art years ago, and I had always wanted to see his former workshop and museum. We drove Neil back to Manhattan so he could eat Thai food with us and then go to a movie.

Isamu Noguchi, supergenius

That night, we strolled around Central Park and down to the East Side and watched Brazilian drummers and dancers in the park, celebrating after the Brazilian Day parade. In the morning, we made the trip out to Queens to see Michael’s grandmother, the fabulous matriarch of a sprawling, funny Jewish family whose members keep several different levels of kosher and can talk at length about whether Zabar’s rugelach are the safe for one of the cousins. They told family stories around the kitchen table, reminiscing about vacations and summer camp and who played what musical instrument, just a beautiful family time.

Amd then back to upstate. It was a weekend as full and interesting as NYC itself. I didn’t do many of the typical tourist things (desserts excepted) but it was perfect. Labor Day Weekend in New York City – highly recommended.

Central Park at night, with those weird skinny buildings everyone hates

I know almost instantly. I see a group of people of varying ages standing in a circle, looking at their phones. They are in a park or in front of a store or on the steps of a government building. And I start to hustle toward them.

“Is there a raid?” I ask.

Nods.

“Are you in?”

Nods. They look me up and down.

“93 seconds,” someone says. “Hurry up.”

What kind of weirdo questions and answers are these? I have to admit, my friends. I still play Pokémon Go, and so do lots of other people everywhere.

Pokémon Go took the world by storm 3 years ago. It’s a video game that is based on a map overlay of actual geography – there are Pokémon everywhere and there are spots where you need to perform certain tasks in the game everywhere, too. More in urban areas, fewer in rural areas, but you can open your game app anywhere and see the map of where you are and start hunting.

So last night, I was playing as I took a walk in a park when I happened on a raid group and played with them. We instantly fell into the language of the game, a language completely impermeable to those who do not play. We can talk for hours like this.

And last week, in Chincoteague, I met a group of townies – mostly little kids, young guys, and a couple parents – raiding one night. Then I went out the next night, figuring they would be meeting up again – and found them out and we walked around town together, playing the game, even though it was cold and a wicked wind was blowing.

Mortals, look upon my Shiny Giratina and weep.

The other thing about the game is that it is a way to keep in touch with friends all over. I collect “gifts” as I go about the game, and every day I send them to friends, who also send me gifts. Each gift is like a little postcard with a photo of where I found it, so my friends can see where I have been recently.

It’s a stupid game. You end up doing the same thing over and over. Only rarely does something interesting happen. But being part of a secret society and instant friends makes it all worthwhile.

Wells, Maine

Lobsta, Anyone?

My brain full of vague Jack and Jackie Kennedy memories from my childhood, I headed out to the Cape. I even spent my first night in Hyannis, at a funky Elks lodge that had been built from a converted health club.

Cape Cod was beautiful and maddening. Beautiful because there is ocean hugging every side, which made it smell salty like home. A purple-blue sky expanded overhead. Pines and oaks stunted by the wind closed in around all the roads.

Maddening because these TINY twee little roads. I know the place is historic, but give a girl a lane more than 8 feet wide, people!

I can hear the residents saying “Nope. We’re from Massachusetts and you will deal with our wicked dinky roads or you can go back to Lala Land.”

Anyway, it wasn’t good for my anxiety. I felt like an elephant trying to balance on a popsicle stick going down those roads. And ducking from the branches overhead. It’s a good thing you’re cute, Cape Cod.

Country Roads, Take Me Home

It wasn’t just Cape Cod, though. It was all of New England, pretty much. Tiny winding roads, overhanging trees, me jumping out of my skin – alternating with gasping at some lovely brick building dripping with history.

After Cape Cod, I spent a lovely evening with my old blogging friend Jessica’s family in Rhode Island. I loved Rhode Island and I loved Jessica and her family. Our smallest state is a wacky puzzle, with ocean at every turn. It’s also adorable in that historic New England seaport-y kind of way. Jessica drove me around and showed me the sights, from the huge historic estates and the wareshouses crowded by the water to the funky part of town by a back bay.

Wells, Maine

I headed north, passing a pleasant evening at the Elks in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a lodge located right at a river mouth by the ocean. They even offer kayak storage for their members to go for a paddle.

The Maine Thing

Maine was next, since New Hampshire only has about 12 miles of shoreline. The southern part of Maine was a shock to my imagination. I had thought of it being a rough and rustic coast, and instead it was rough and touristy. Crowded. Even in mid-September, packed with people storing up the last few weeks of warm weather. Hundreds of houses line the shore, cheek by jowl, interrupted by towns full of tchockhe shops and lobster shacks.

Ogunquit Museum of American Art

I stayed in Wells, near the highway, where I could walk a mile to the beach and then stop at a brewpub on the way back to drink some IPAs and chat up my fellow travelers, since locals seemed to be huddling down and waiting for the invasion to be over.

My favorite thing in the area was the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, a small museum surrounded by colorful gardens and facing a rocky cove. Dear rich people: please endow more museums.

Bar Harbor, Maine

Bah Haaabaaaa

I wasn’t going to go further north, but some of my brewpub pals talked me into going. “It would be a shame if you came all this way and didn’t go up there,” they said, and I couldn’t argue with that logic, so I drove the 4 hours up to Bar Harbor.

What a visually stunning place. Acadia National Park tops some tall hills over a large bay. Bar Harbor sits at the foot of the hills right on the water, with many waterfront restaurants where people can enjoy the sun and eat some lobster.

I made the terrible mistake of trying to drive Gladis in Bar Harbor. It was an even smaller and more crowded New England town than all the towns before, and they brag in their brochure “There’s nowhere to park.” I circled fruitlessly, using all my hard-won driving skills to avoid sideswiping other cars or killing people wandering out in the road with lobster rolls in their hands.

A Spot of Trouble

I finally spied a sign that said “Beach Park.” Great, I thought. I can park there, maybe. I ventured down a narrow road* that soon became even narrower. I could see cars ahead of me at the beach. Then I dropped down about a foot…onto sand.

Me and Gladis were sitting on a rocky outcropping above a beach, a spot about 30 feet wide and 12 feet deep. One one side, a rocky ridge with a 3-foot drop behind it. On the other side, a wall. In front of me, rapidly deepening sand, dotted with cars…all four-wheel drive cars.

About 60 onlookers gaped and laughed. How was this crazy California bitch going to get out of this?

With grim determination and a 72-point turn, six inches at a time, I decided. I just had to DO IT. The last thing I wanted was to have Gladis towed out of there.

Back and forth I began inching around, a spirograph pattern in action. Forward. Reverse. Tiny progress.

Then my savior showed up in the form of a friendly man from Texas. “Oh hun, I got a 35-footer. I’ll help ya out.”

And he did. He directed me back and forth, back and forth, yelling “Come on, come on” and “STOP” and “You got this” and “Just be patient, you’ll be fine.” And with help, I was. It took about 10 minutes and some sweaty moments, but Gladis and I finally emerged safely to the rutted path back to civilization.

I told this story to my friend Robin and she said “And at that moment, you said ‘Fuck Bar Harbor,’ and I started laughing because she knows me too well.

I went out to the mosquito-riddled KOA and took the shuttle back into Bar Harbor, but there was no love there from me. I took off in the morning, glad to be gone.

Franconia NH

I drove Route 2 across Maine and New Hampshire for almost 7 hours. It’s a little two-lane highway that slows to 30 mph for every little burg that dots its length, but it was such a scenic and pleasant drive that I didn’t mind a bit. Finally, a road wide enough to drive on.

*I thought I must have been mistaken and that the road was some kind of hiking path. But nope, it is clearly marked as a road in Google maps.

Gladis on Cape Cod

As of today, I have been on the road six months continuously. My first trip was October 11 last year, but I went home for a few weeks twice with trips in between. Since I began the journey, I have put 12,000 miles on Gladis and have been through 18 states. I have slept somewhere other than Gladis eight nights.

When I got to Cape Cod National Seashore today and saw the sign that said it was 3625 miles from the West Coast, I shed a little tear. I felt like I should buy Gladis some cake.

Any Regrets?

Not seeing more friends on the first half of the journey. Not buying linen sheets sooner (so COOL!).

What do you miss most?

Church (and I’m not just saying that because I think God will love me more if I say that).

What was your favorite person you visited?

HA! You think I’m going to answer that?

What’s your gas mileage?

Right around 10 mpg

What’s your new favorite state?

New York

How much time have you spent at Elks Lodges?

54 days, I think

What’s next?

Up or down the east coast. Maybe Vermont. Oh, I don’t know!

Warmer water, coarser sand, no waves

Where Marconi sent the first wireless message from in 1905.

The Finger Lakes Region

One of the craziest things about this trip is that I haven’t had to have any travel plans. It feels rather odd. I don’t need to be anywhere at any particular time, so if I am going right and decide to turn left instead, no one needs to know but me. I just…go. Sometimes I have one plan and then someone I meet will tell me I have to see something, and my plans change on the spot.

After seeing Mike and his friends at the Rock in River Stoneskipping Festival in Franklin, Pennsylvania, I wanted to see my friend in upstate New York. I examined the map and found a perfect halfway point…Corning, New York, home to the Corning Museum of Glass. I was aware of the museum because they collected some of my old friend Frank Zika’s works.

Keuka Lake

Cold in the Bones

Corning is in the Finger Lakes region, which is exactly what it sounds like – 11 long, skinny lakes in deep glacial valleys. I stayed at a KOA in Hammondsport/Bath, which was in the middle of a corn field outside of Bath, quite lovely and quiet, with only a hint of manure smell from the nearby dairy farms.

In the Midwest, summer is so hot and sweaty that it feels like it will always be summer. You can’t even imagine it being cool. But the Finger Lakes, even in August, have the feeling that winter is just waiting an inch under the surface to reemerge and rule the land. Even when it is hot, you know the cold is there.

When I was there, the weather was perfect, with just a hint of fall in the air. I got to swim each afternoon looking out into the cornfield and watching the cloud-shadows play across the trees.

The Corning Museum of Glass

The Corning Glass Museum is ok. And by ok, I mean jaw-dropping. Stunning. Crazy. Lots of my photos of the artwork here and here. People do things with glass that leave you shaking your head and walking around in circles muttering “How do they DO that?’

In addition to a large collection of the newest modern art glass, they have a historic collecting stretching back 35 centuries, a contemporary gallery, an area focusing on industry and science, and a hot shop where artists demonstrate creating a work from start to finish in under an hour.

YOU MUST GO THERE. That is all. It’s worth the trip.

The Corning Museum Hot Shop

If you saw the Netflix Show “Blown Away,” you’ll recognize this whimsical sausage-fest by winner Deborah Czeresko.