I’m back on the road, finishing this journey. It was three months ago yesterday when I left Miami on my 50cc Scooter.
I left Ocean Isle Beach in North Carolina yesterday morning. 210 miles and 11 hours later, and I landed in Beaufort, South Carolina. They shot a bit of Forrest Gump here. I’m tempted to go find the house since he and I have so much in common. Unlike Forrest, though, I’m not doing this more than twice. Driving once across the country on a scooter was plenty. Twice was just insane. And I’m probably the only person in the world that’s done it twice. If not, there can’t be but a handful of others.
There is still so much to write about the trip. Most recently, though, when I first got back into the southeast, I really wasn’t enjoying the drive at all. It was countryside I knew and I just wanted to reach my destination. However, when I left Charlotte, NC and drove to the beach, I got to do something I haven’t done in a while: visit one of my childhood homes.
When I was a kid in Saudi Arabia, the schools ran on a trimester system. During the breaks, my parents would sometimes return on vacation to South Carolina to visit family. I think I was the only kid in Saudi who actually went to school while he was on vacation (thanks, mom and pops). Then I managed to spend my sophomore year in Dillon, living with my grandmother, returning home to Saudi that year during the breaks (had the company had a high school, I’m sure the ‘rents would’ve put me in then, too! I kid, you two. But I know you would have.)
Anyway, I drove through that town. That year I spent there was, unquestionably, one of my worst as a kid. Man, I hated that place. It’s just a small town in South Carolina, seven miles from South of the Border, and nothing about it that’s different than really any other rural hamlet across the land. But I’ve always been left with such a distaste in my mouth from that place, that I had a hard time even tagging the photos I took with the name of the town. I don’t want to be associated with it. I feel like I am by photographing it. By tagging it.
Still, it played a part in my life. I think the biggest part it played was sealing up the fact that I could never, ever live there.
Since leaving Dillon, I’ve been to two other places I’ve called home: Ocean Isle Beach and Charleston. I have much better memories there, OIB always feeling like home in the states to me. Well, up until I moved to South Beach. Now, no place feels more like home to me.
