Southport, SC

0 nm
Wind: SW 20 knots, gusting to 25, rain

The money plan is not going well. We’ve been sucked into another town, yet again, the one thing we resolved not to do, after looking at the atrocity that was December’s budget. But we had the excuse of rain this morning, and then were visited by a neighbor from a cruising boat, Immrama. Other cruising boats are dangerous, too. They want you to come over and hang out late until the night, which keeps you from waking up early the next morning, or they’re all going out to eat, so you want to too, or they tell you about some really great deal in town that you just have to stay an extra day for.

Not that we want to be antisocial. It’s great meeting other people, and you can learn a ton from them. And this boat, Immrama, was the one that helped Lise and Marcel out of a jam, when they’re engine broke down right in the middle of the Alligator River, so it was great to finally meet them. So we might go over and spend some time with them this evening.

But we’ve already been sucked into doing our laundry, buying ice, and going out to eat, when we spent way more than we had intended. We kept trying to talk ourselves out of it, and then I would think about how I hadn’t gotten to go out on my birthday, and there was a really cool little local place on the water, and we eventually just waited around long enough to let ourselves do it. Very frustrating. There’s nothing for it but to keep trying, I suppose.

The most fun part of the day was my walk to the Laundromat. I had my trail pack on, stuffed full of laundry, a Wheaton College sweatshirt on, my Vietnamese shoulder bag over one shoulder, and my laptop case in my hand. I was, of course, walking through the sketchier part of town, where Laundromats normally are found. People were absolutely bewildered to see me. They had no context in which to put a solitary girl walking, with a full hiking backpack and a computer. I made absolutely no sense to them. I had a couple of people ask me if I was going hiking, others ask me if I was traveling. People in their cars or on their porches practically did double takes. It’s just bizarre. When did it become weird for people to walk places in our society? Walking with our groceries, yesterday, people switched sides of the road rather than pass us. We’re like aliens from another planet. But that’s my favorite thing to do. Defy people’s expectations.