South Carolina... a southern state with South in its name.

Thursday evening I went home and picked up my brother, then started heading south. We hit the tail end of rush hour but since we were driving like 600 miles it didn't wind up making a huge impact on our trip. The drive down to S.C. wasn't that bad, once you get past the fact that you're driving longer than the typical work day. We mostly listened to music and watched with childlike amazement as the odometer hit 100 miles, 200 miles, 300... you get the picture. We got to the house at around 2AM, which wasn't that bad when you consider that we had planned on leaving later and driving through 'til morning. The house we were staying at was nice. It was right on the tidal basin and they had kayaks. It was maybe a 10 minute walk to the beach, but the waves stank so there wasn't much incentive to go there anyway. Unlike Duck, N.C., however, there was also nothing to do in town. Actually, there really wasn't a town. I spent most of my time kayaking around the tidal basin, reading The Traveler, sleeping, and eating. A couple times I managed to kayak down to the inlet where the tidal basin meets the ocean. That was a fairly long trip to do on a kayak, and getting into the ocean wasn't easy. It reminded me of a canoe trip I took in Maine the summer after 9th grade. One day we had to canoe across a lake against a strong headwind that was kicking up waves. Kayaking against medium sized waves wasn't impossible, but it did throw me around a little. Did I mention that there were dolphins? They'd tail me when I was kayaking some of the time, but never get too close. Also, there was a shark a couple feet from me at one point. Probably a sand shark or something, not huge but probably big enough to hurt me if it really wanted to. Good thing I had those dolphins to protect me. One night I played poker with Jeremy, my dad, and this guy Cliff who along with his wife is a friend of my parents. Jeremy went out, but I couldn't take all the chips before my dad and Cliff decided it was getting late. Still, I could have taken them out. I wonder if this was one of those situations my dad always worried about. It was obvious growing up that I wasn't going to beat him at sports any time soon. For some reason I keep getting full houses when I play. Probably luck, or cheating, or some third thing.

Sunday morning I kayaked down to the ocean one last time and pulled the kayak onto the shore. Well, it wasn't exactly the shore, or a sandbar. On the northern side of the inlet, at low tide, the ocean floor became half exposed for maybe 100 meters out from the normal shoreline. Since the ocean floor isn't smooth, but is choppy like rough water or an english muffin, all the nooks and crannies were filled with water, and the ridges jutted above the water. Combine that with a low sun, and it's a pretty amazing sight. I wandered around there for a while, then walked out into the water. For another 200 meters or so the water wasn't even ankle deep. I started to think that maybe people on the shore would think that I was walking on water, like Jesus, and thought it might be cool to be mistaken for the messiah. Then I remembered how that story ends and ran back to the kayak. The trip back to the house was tiring. I was hot, my muscles were starting to get sore, and I kept laying back on the kayak and letting the tide carry me back. Unfortunately the tide couldn't have been moving much faster than a quarter mile an hour or so, so I had to keep paddling. I got back, had breakfast, and then Jeremy and I left to come back north. It's funny. I consider Maryland to be, in most respects, a southern state. Cite the Mason-Dixon line, that mess with the state senate during the civil war, or the fact that Maryland is more than just the DC-Baltimore corridor. Coming up from South Carolina, however, I feel like I'm entering Canada by the time I cross the Potomac.

So anyway, I'm back. I came into work this morning and debugged a RAID array and NFS locking issues, and now I feel like I could use another vacation.