Through the monsoon

Woke up, finished Haruhi, said goodbye to Alex -- who I hope very much to see again soon -- and left Charlotte for Savannah at about noon today. The drive was uneventful. I could not have guessed what was going to happen that evening.

I checked in at Savannah just after four and went exploring. I wanted to know how this town became famous for its beauty. I quickly found my own answer: it's the proliferation of Spanish moss hanging from every tree like Christmas streamers. Driving down a main boulevard is like taking a walk in the woods. After a stop at a used bookstore, I continued my sojourns with a trip east on US-80. You see, all this time I've been telling a fib. I've been calling this a coast-to-coast journey, and since I started on the Gulf Coast that is technically true, but that's not what people usually mean when they say "coast-to-coast." To really earn that title I had to see the Atlantic Ocean. I resolved that Savannah would be the place, and I chose right. To find the ocean I took the highway all the way out to Tybee Island, across bridges spanning the less solid parts of the swamp. Looking out over the railings of those bridges, I saw dark clouds gathering, and in the stormwrought half-twilight the bright grass and dark water clashed joyously. My heart beat faster.

My visit to the Tybee Island beach was quick and professional. I took pictures of the seagulls swarming a woman who was feeding them bread, then strode to the water to sample it. I can report that the Atlantic at Savannah is less salty than the Pacific at San Francisco and much less salty than the Great Salt Lake, and has a thinner consistency than either. These tasks done, my journey had spanned all the coasts. I turned around to go back to town...

...and ran smack into some Weather. In the hour I'd been gone, Savannah had begun taking what might loosely be called an urban bath, if you drop hairdryers into the bathtub a lot. I've driven through slightly worse rain on the interstates, but never through flash floods, and never through a storm so vicious and full of crackling electricity. The lightning was nonstop and deafening even from inside the car. One bolt struck a transformer on the opposite side of the road, which exploded like a shotgun and spat sparks into the air. My emergency flashers flaring a few feet into the evening, plumes of water overwhelming my tires and windshield, lightning crashing for moments on end into some unlucky tree not very far away, I thought: This is going to make a fantastic blog post.

If I asked you to guess what sort of restaurant I went to, you would be unable to match the truth for aptness. My eatery was the Pirates' House, a tavern which grew up around a shack built by James Oglethorpe's men in 1734 when Georgia was first colonized; by 1753 it was a functioning seafarers' inn. What I'm trying to say here is that this restaurant comes by its piracy motif legitimately, and that I am not the first to seek shelter from a storm within its walls. I chatted with the waitress (no, this is not usual weather for Savannah; yes, the cornbread is fantastic) and asked for the house specialty, fried chicken. The fried chicken was not only tender and delicious, but also -- bear with me, guys -- covered with a thick sauce of honey and pecans. I ate half a chicken as the thunder rattled the walls and nearby couples complained about the roof leaking.

By the time I had finished the storm had abated some, and the night had gone from invisible to pearly and luminous. Marveling at the astonishing light, I fought the storm one more time on my way back to the hotel. I believe I came all this way to be blinded by the sun's reflection in the Savannah pavement as it conquered the clouds, its inverse twin casting my shadow on the dashboard. And fuck me if, pulling into the Microtel at the end of this brief but eventful evening, I didn't see a double rainbow -- for the second time in my life, and the second time in the last two months -- arcing across the opalescent clouds, from one pot of gold to another.