By another ripple of fortune, akin to Nikki checking Craigslist when she did, shortly after that my friend TFS announced she had a job in Wilmington, NC for a bunch of months, at least until the end of the year, with a paid-for 2-bedroom beach house on Carolina Beach, NC .

In between now and then all I need to do is Get There, Be There, and Get Back.

There are two routes: 1. I-85 arcs northeast toward Durham, NC (2.5 hours), then splits southward onto I-40 bypassing Raleigh-Durham, NC to Wilmington (2.5 hours), or 2. I-74 in a straight line through not a lot of population (4 hours). I took the former mostly out of ignorance of the latter, but it was probably good to stay near people and services as a newbie.

My digital British friend guided me out of Charlotte onto I-85 and it was all following signs from there, with most of the trip in daylight. I had eaten at the NASCAR Hall of Fame, so once on the road it was just more Interstate driving - a little contruction just outside Charlotte, and then 10-15 over the speed limit (55, 65, or 70) from there, stopping to refuel at one of the very nice roadside stops maintained as part of the highway system. I hit Raleigh-Durham at rush-hour, and got slowed to a crawl and a stop by commuters backing up for a few exits, but that cleared and I was zooming again.

As on the drive to Bristol, there wasn't much on the radio until I got a good NPR station out of Fayetteville playing some jazz, as darkness fell. There was a brief bit of rain, nothing to get the wipers on high-speed even, and it just added to the increasing humidity as I approached the coast.

		The area is interlaced with intracoastal waterways, which means a lot		of water, and water- related activities, and bridges. I am headed to the other side of them all.				Carolina Beach is the middle of three beaches, and seems to be the best-serviced and most touristy. It's considered the "redneck" beach, in contrast to the other two: Kure Beach to the south, and Wrightsville Beach to the north. Being from "redneck Alberta" I think I can get by. :)
								My target Home for the next week (actually the smaller yellow building to the north), one of a long stretch of walk-up apartments and a few motels lining this beach.		Spooky how much detail Google Maps shows. These are from early spring before any vegetation has started greening up.

I make my last rest-area stop about 100 miles north, and then it's on to my awaiting hostess, right through the heart of Wilmington down a long parkway lined with the usual consumer and fast-food places, around an accident blocking an intersection I need to get through, and a quick stop in a parking lot to consult my digital British friend to talk me through to TFS's door.

My digital British friend is what I started calling the voice of the GPS on my Note . Type in an address, and he'll figure out where you are, where you want to go, and a route between them, talking you through turns and lane-changes, even if you get off-track. All with a slightly British accent, firm but friendly. Wonderful invention. Should have consulted him more, but I was concerned about data charges and battery use (he's rather hungry for it) and trusted my wits and lack of any pressure to be anywhere to eventually get me somewhere.

Greeted by an amusement park 3 blocks away

Could be some

fun here!

Carolina Beach is its own municipal body, as are the other 2 beaches. There are about 4 square blocks of touristy things like shops and eateries and places to rent anything you might need for a day at the beach - even pails. It has the feeling of tourist places I'm used to like Banff or Jasper back home, even driving in at night. Difference is, I've gone downward to sea-level, and people are wearing a lot less clothing.

A left off Harper Avenue (easy to remember for Canadians) and down a lane to my stop, wherein my digital British friend (hereafter DBF) announces I have arrived, with a Google StreetView picture of what should be my destination view. He's not perfect though: he says my destination is on the left, inland, whereas I know for sure it's on my right, beach-side. And it's rather dark to read building numbers through windows spotted from rain, so I'm not sure which one is my intended box-along-a-lane. I call TFS, and from the lane balcony (the beach house has 2 balconies), she guides me down the lane, but I have to stop the car and get out to see exactly where she is in the darkness and we see each other in person, though still at a distance, for the very first time. She points to where to go, and I squeeze the car into a very tight 4-car-deep lane around the side of the building. Landed!

For the very first time... TFS and I have known each other for a few years, meeting and staying in touch online, in bursts mostly, as she moved around for work I think. On her last stretch back home we started chatting more again, and somewhere along the way: 1. I started entertaining thoughts of a trip to Bristol, and 2. She got a gig working here. Good things in my life seem to happen from some sort of synchronicity wherein I get interested in and do bunch of things, and without trying specifically, Good Things Just Happen. In fact if I do try specifically, like it used to be trying to buy shirts, not so good as not trying, and just being a curious and inquisitive and open person I guess.

I collect my things from the car, the two bags I landed with in Charlotte, NC , and two badly-packed bags of acquisitions since. I'm hot, and sweaty, disoriented in the way that one gets after driving about 8 hours, in total, from somewhere you've just barely been, to somewhere you never been, all by yourself. Around under the building, up the stairs, and to her door, which she cracks enough to tell me to close my eyes before she'll let me in.

Now I didn't hear the click of any kind of firearm, and I've heard some, courtesy of my friend PM, as early as the week before I left, so I'm pretty freshly not ignorant of the sound of a rifle or handgun being manipulated, even through a crack in a door. Standing in a dimly-lit stairwell/hall thousands of miles away, no one knowing my exact whereabouts (except forensically) except me, and her.

So I did, and she led me, a heretofore physical stranger, both of us in a little box on the edge of Geographic Nowhere, into her home, and closed the door.

Now I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday, and I can see things pretty quickly with just a quick scan, and my quick scan showed me all was safe, but there was some carpet to traverse and my shoe-bottoms were probably dirting from the road and sand and such, so I really ought to take my shoes off to not track anything in. Is that Considerate Guest Beahaviour or what? I took my shoes off before she guided me gently forward, she told me to open my eyes (I did honour her wishes to keep them closed but for what I saw through the partly-opened door) and there was the beach through the door to the front balcony.

No firearms! Or harm of any sort.

Just the beach, in its dark roaring glory. Dark and cloudy, so I didn't even try to take any pictures, but light caught the white break of the surf and drew growing and shrinking white lines northward along the unseen beach. I, and you, will have to wait until tomorrow for a decent view.

TFS and I had a martini (or was it -s?) on the deck, to begin a theme that would run throughout the week, evenings mostly, and met. Years of mostly typing and a few hours-long phone calls in the last few months got us to finally sitting on the deck of her Seaside Sojourn, martinis in hand, enthralled by the ocean and how very comfortably warm and lovely it was.

Midnight-ish though, and time to see the local area a bit, and try to get some food. It was a bit late for much choice, but the bartender at one place directed us to another, the Shuckin' Shack, a few blocks away in the center of town. So to speak - this is a little place. There we had oysters and shrimp and I had a few British beers (the first I'd seen so far) and we enjoyed the ambience of a largely-quiet late-night little oyster bar in a beach-resort town.

We wandered around a bit more after - there wasn't much going on, being late in the tourist season and a Tuesday night - so we settled on the deck for more ocean and martinis, whereupon much to our surprise it was 5:30 am and poor TFS had to squeeze in a couple hours sleep before being the responsible one and going to work for about 12 hours.