My ride or die arrived around 5:30 a.m this morning for a much needed beach sunrise day. Our zeal was the same as it was when we were 16 and headed out to a cheap weathered rental on Folly Beach, although we do require coffee rather than teen spirit to get there now.
We go way back, Thelma and I, like 2 score and 10 years, (which sounds better than half a century) and have brought home many a grain of sand together.
Our beach attire is a little different now, we aren't wearing teeny weeny bikinis hidden under cut off short/short jeans. Today we look more like mall walkers with Baptist shorts on (2 inches over the knee.)
We won’t lug coolers and an antennaed radio down to the water like we did in the past, nor will we slather ourselves with Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil. Instead we will drink bottled water and paint our faces white with 70% zinc sunblock.
Years ago we dubbed ourselves Thelma and Louise, from the 90's movie of the same name. Our planned adventures have been quite hilarious, our unplanned life adventures make them pale in comparison. Unlike Thelma and Louise, we have never driven off a cliff, but we've fallen off them just the same, at least that was — until this morning.
Okay, so it wasn't a cliff, but there was a slightly airborne moment when we left asphalt and landed onto a sandy road covered with flooding rain water. We never saw a "pavement ends" sign, don't think there was one.
The fact that GPS sent us down this desolate road in the dark, after a horrific lightning and rainstorm, wasn't questioned by either of us, even though I knew we had never traveled a dirt road on our way to the beach, especially one that is 8.9 miles long. If GPS says so, then it must be right. We really didn't feel like making decisions anyway. Talk, just talk.
The dirt road got a little dicey at times, but we plowed straight through. At one point we did think about turning around and I noticed that the only turn around we had seen was located near the ruins of a haunted church and that was a big fat no. There wasn’t a single home on this road, nothing but pines and fields. We just talked and laughed and bounced and uttered a few WTF’s as we avoided muddy waters, and obstacles, the best we could.
A couple of years ago I picked Thelma up for an adventure and we talked 4 hours straight, right to the Georgia/Alabama state line.
Her husband called, she paused, looked at me, and asked, "Where are we going?
"We're going to Alabama Thelma," You didn't even know where we were going for 2 days?
"Nope, didn't care. " she answered.
Neither did we today. A few miles down we had a huge Red Tailed Hawk fly right into our lights and swerve in the nick of time. Thank God, I don't know how our friendship would survive Thelma killing my spirit animal. Another swerve for a large chunk of a fallen tree, a teeny armadillo, but not a single vehicle.
Between the storms, the dirt road and the obstacle courses, we missed the sunrise by a few minutes. We wouldn't have seen it anyway in the cloud cover, but it peeked out right after we crested the sandy path to the ocean. We plopped our chairs in the wet sand and raised our hands in the air at the beauty of it all, and talked. .
Life is better than being punctual. Sometimes we have to get off the beaten path.
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