August 10th – August 12th, 2007
Getting there…
The bus ride to Wilmington was entertaining in light of our fellow riders. First of all, Charles had given us eggs so we could hard boil them, and we ended up sitting on our boxes at 7 a.m. waiting for the bus and eating our hardboiled eggs. I can’t eat eggs without salt, and we had no salt to be found. Having seen one of the ticket guys chowing down on food while I bought our tickets a few minutes earlier, I hot-footed it back in and asked to borrow some salt. Much to my delight and amazement, the guy produced a baggie and a huge salt container, and started pouring. Not only did we have salt to our heart’s content for our hardboiled eggs, we used that baggie of salt for the next 6 weeks. Abundance comes in strange places…
The bus was virtually empty except for perhaps 10 others, five of whom were just released from prison – 4 women and 1 man. Chelsea was very enlightened by their conversations – it’s not what she’s used to hearing. The gist of it all was along the lines of having their children taken away, what prison conditions were like, and the unfairness of life. She was struck by how commonplace it all was to them: “Oh yeah? How long did you serve?” “What were you in for?” “What was the food like where you were?” Several of them blamed the judge for “being blind”.
In Wilmington we got a taxi easily and headed off to the bike shop, Two Wheeler Dealer, where our bikes awaited us. We got the trailers out of the boxes and stuffed them into the taxi, along with our two bikes boxes and all our other gear – it was a tight fit, and the taxi guy sat there watching us with the meter running the whole while, increasing our stress level. We headed off through Wilmington to Wrightsville Beach off to find Charles’s relatives’ home.
The Warschauer clan…
I hopped out of the taxi to do the advance scouting when we arrived at the correct address (Charles had given us the wrong address), and I’m not sure I’ve been so embarrassed in a long time. It turns out that they weren’t really sure who was coming, and they thought we were extended family. When we clearly weren’t, the question was “Oh, are you friends of Charles?” It seemed impertinent to reply “Actually we just met him two days ago”…or, “Well, we are now!”, so I bit back both those responses and merely said yes. Of course we were invited in, but they certainly had no idea what to do with us.
We came to find out that the entire extended clan had been meeting at the beach house, holding a house party, for the last several weeks, with 50-75 people at a time. There were currently at least two families in residence, with several more families expected that night. They were looking at having up to 20-25 people there for meals, hanging out and sleeping, and now they had two perfect strangers expecting to stay for 2 days, along with their bikes, trailers, and gear!
The family is the Warschauer family, and we have to give them an unqualified Hero of the Day for very graciously accepting us in, feeding us, and finding bed space for us for two nights. I’m from a big family (5 kids with related spouses and children and grandchildren), and Chelsea has attended our family gatherings for years, so we both felt right at home. There were people everywhere – studying, reading, working on computers, heading out for and returning from the beach, riding bikes, going grocery shopping, going out to eat, sitting around talking, making something to eat, and a whole lot else.
The first afternoon we felt really awkward, so we headed downstairs to put our bikes and trailers together and get them cleaned up. The heat was around 109, with massive humidity, and the record-breaking heat was on everyone’s mind. Even though we had shade, and a place to get water, and we could run upstairs a few minutes at a time to sit in the air conditioning, it was still brutal having to work in that heat. We were SO glad when we finished! One nice side note is that one of the brothers was a bike mechanic in a former life, and extended his help and advice to us, and another brother was so kind as to take the ungainly bike boxes away to recycling for us.
Favorite memories…
We have a couple of really wonderful memories of our time there. One is the really beautiful house – it felt like being at a resort, only better. The community was very nice, the house was literally a 3-minute walk from a gorgeous beach, and it had that wonderful laid-back island atmosphere. Another memory is the absolutely wonderful and intelligent conversations we had with others. What a bunch of individualists they were! Each one of them has an interesting job, and has great stories to tell, and each one of them was highly articulate. Time passed really quickly when the families were around, and dinnertimes were just wonderful. We got a few email addresses, and we really hope to stay in touch with them.
And the last favorite memory is about the weather – the heat was absolutely stifling, and everyone was talking about it. We knew that a storm was headed in, but who knew what it would bring – serious relief or would it just fizzle? The house had an unbelievable covered back porch – really large, with rockers and porch swings and chairs and tables, and still had room for plenty of people to hang out. Around 9 p.m. we were all hanging out inside talking after dinner when the most amazing lightning and thunder hit us. We ran for the doors, and maybe 15 of us were standing on the porch, hooting and hollering, ooohing and aaahing, watching the most unbelievable display of thunder, lightning, and rain. The rain just poured down! And best of all, the temperature dropped about 20 degrees inside of ten minutes. We will never forget that awesome display of nature, and sharing with the others who were just as excited as we were. As a footnote, we found out later that that same storm had hit the coast for many miles, and had caused really severe damage. We were SO grateful to have been where we were!