“I saw a crooked man crawling along the white dust of the roadside...”

“Look, a meth deal!” I really said this. In the car with my wife and children. In Williamsburg, Virginia. It just came out. Perhaps you know that words just tend to pour out of my mouth without my brain filtering them. (Have you ever read “The Word Birds of  Davey McFifer”? A solid read, according to my memory as a seven-year-old. Great pictures of birds crawling out of a boy’s mouth.) It’s probably not something I would have said if my brain got into the act, but fortunately my children are pretty oblivious to the seedy underbelly of the world, so to them I might as well have said, “Look, a mess reel!” Plus they don’t really listen to me, so I could talk Klingon all day long and be no worse off.

It all started when we checked into our campsite across the James River from Williamsburg. Looked like a really nice state park, and the campsite was impeccable, but...it was raining, and the tent was still wet from the night before, and none of us wanted to sleep in the tent in the rain, and I had no compunction this time about wimping out, so we took the ferry across the river and drove into Williamsburg to find us a nice hotel. 

But first, CVS for diapers! Not far from William & Mary and Colonial Williamsburg was a CVS, according to TomTom. So we buzzed over,  and I was in and out in no time. We saw a Super 8 across the road, and while I wouldn’t put it in the category of “nice hotel,” it was likely in our price range and would be a good benchmark for how pricey a hotel would be here. As we waited to pull out into the road, I noticed a person standing on the grass looking down the road. For a bus, I guessed, but something didn’t seem right about the way the person was looking around. Also, I couldn’t tell if this was a man or a woman. Then we turned into the street and I got into the left turn lane and stopped at the red light...at which point I noticed a man standing on the opposite corner from the first person. A car pulled up to the red light next to him and the window came down. The man walked to the car, leaned over, stuck his hand in, and pulled it out, returning to the corner as he glanced up and down the road. 

And that’s when it all came together. Like Shawn Spencer, I had an instant flashback to all the evidence my brain had filed away: meth dealers! Working in tandem on their corners! “Look, a meth deal!” I said as we turned, actually pointing at the man on the corner, and I thought to myself, if not for  Breaking Bad, I’d never have noticed that! But it gets better.

We pulled into the Super 8 parking lot, and in a span of point-five seconds, both Stefie and I noticed a woman in jaguar print short-shorts and high heels walking to a car and a man with no shoes sitting on the outdoor staircase with his head leaning on the railing. We both said something to the effect of, “I don’t think we’ll stay here tonight,” and I pulled right out of the other exit without slowing down. Again, it was like a set piece from Breaking Bad, minus the stunning desert landscape. Fortunately, my inner Clark Griswold stayed asleep and did not suggest that this would be a fine place to stay.

We found the Fife and Drum, an awesome inn down the street from a great coffeehouse and a greater ice cream and hot dog joint, and I called. The nicest man, the owner, answered the phone and told me in about the most polite way possible that our family was a bit young for his establishment--they didn’t accept guests under ten, since it was such a small inn, and the sound would carry...he did have two unattached suites in the yard that would fit our family in a few years...he had four kids, too, and he understood.... I wanted to be all grumpy about it, but he was just too nice. He pointed us to the Williamsburg Woodlands Hotel, a family-oriented place next to the Colonial Williamsburg visitor center. It was the right choice for us. In addition to being designed very smartly for families, it was actually a nice room. Not spectacular, but nice.

Williamsburg was a great place, and we could have easily spent more than two nights there, but now we get back to the whole thing about bring an 18-month-old along to places like this, and it can be summed up like this: either Stef or I walked around with a manic Freddy while the remaining four toured the buildings. I did get to see (Freddy let me stand and watch) some workers putting up a new building. They were working on the rafters. It really hasn’t changed much in 250 years--we just have much bigger tools to cut faster and lift higher. Makes me think I should be able to build a silly little shed or carport....

Which is a nice segue to next time.

“The perspiration poured down my face and splashed on the blotter as I leaned forward.”

You may recall that, on the way down to Florida, a hard rain forced us to stop at a hotel in North Carolina instead of pushing on to a late evening arrival at Little Pee Dee State Park in South Carolina. I was bound and determined not to let that happen on the way north. So we drove and drove from central Florida up and up, through Georgia, and into South Carolina, and time was ticking away, and the clouds were growing heavier, much like Freddy’s diaper in the kiddie pool.... 

Stef took over driving after dinner. Two hours to go until our campground at Santee State Park. Cloudbursts here and there dumped water on the highway. I really didn’t want to set up in the dark and rain, let alone spend a hot, rainy night in a stuffy and probably leaky tent, but all I did was beat around the bush, muttering my worries and implying that it “might be a better move” to check into a hotel.

Looking back, I can face up to the fact that I, a lifelong camper, a Boy Scout, an AT thru-hiker, a backpacker who has slept in the desert mountains of New Mexico and the rain-and-sheep-poop-covered glens of Scotland, was wimping out from a little rain. But I wasn’t going to be the one who chickened out this time. Mind you, if Stef had said we needed a hotel, I’d have been all for it. I was guilty of some majorly passive-aggressive behavior--”It sure looks like rain...might be a long night...that hotel is only $59 a night...”--but when, as we exited the Interstate for the campground, Stef asked if I wanted to stay in a hotel, I manned up and said no, we better just camp. Manned up? No, that’s not right. A man would have been smiling at the prospect of the night ahead. A man would have been singing songs about the rain. A man would have stopped to buy firewood, lighter fluid, and a six of Schaefer. Me, I just grumbled, passively, and let Stef drive us to the campground.

Around 8:00, we rolled into the campground and found our spot. The ground was damp, the air was humid, and the sky was a darkling plain (thank you, Matthew Arnold), but so far no rain here yet. I had let my baditude take over, however, and I went about setting up camp with a silent mental scowl. Dropcloth down. Set up the tent. Dive into the car top carrier with one broken hinge to retrieve sleeping bags and pads. Discover my sleeping pad is still in Florida. Mental scowl deepens. Here we have the perfect example of an expression my parents often used to describe my moods--”cutting off my nose to spite my face.” It goes something like this: I decided to camp, knowing it was dark and rain was impending, so I’ll show me how stupid I am by adopting a foul attitude about it. Ha! Who’s happy now? Not me! Who made the poor decision? Me! The rain began, a drizzle, mostly.

Meanwhile, Stef had the kids organized, setting up the inside of the tent as I tossed things willy-nilly inside. She took the kids to the bathrooms to wash and brush, Freddy in her arms the whole time. We set up the port-a-crib, hoping he might be over the manic behavior from his first night in a tent but suspecting that he wasn’t. He wasn’t. Stef moved his mattress to the tent floor. We settled in for a long night. I had no mat, but at least it was sweltering in the tent so that I could sleep on top of my sleeping bag.

A man would have behaved differently. A man would have anticipated the storm a-coming and set up the Amazing Blue Tarp to protect his family. A man would have stood guard outside the tent, felt the rain wash through his beard, and shouted at Thor and Odin making their noise up on the Trembling Path to keep it down...perhaps I’m drifting a bit. My point is that I didn’t set up the Amazing Blue Tarp because I was hot and tired and didn’t want to get rained on and I left my mat in Florida and my pillow was terrible and I missed my teddy. Whoops. Still drifting.

Short showers rolled through, but the tent didn’t leak that night. I did have to close all the windows all the way, something I’ve never had to do in any other tent, ever. I said the tent didn’t leak that night, defining night as the period from dusk to pre-dawn, that eerie blue time between starlight and sunrise. Around 4:00, the real rain started, and the water began to drip down from the tent ceiling. One of the more serious design flaws of this tent is its ability to hold giant pools of water on its roof, and then magic takes over and the pools of water begin to seep through the very fabric of the tent itself, as if the fabric were not totally waterproof! Unbelievable, I know, that a tent that is sold without a rainfly could possibly leak! If it weren’t totally waterproof, wouldn’t the company include a rainfly? (The company, by the way, begins with a Cole and ends with a man.) So it must have been magic. Dark magic.

A whole bunch of water also pooled in one corner of the tent, soaking our clothes from the day before, but that might have been because before our trip I set up the tent on asphalt and then dragged it over stones onto grass, making little holes in the floor, some of which I did not see to patch. Probably not dark magic. Just idiocy. Let’s not dwell on that.

One bright side: we were all so miserable through the night that we were up and packing by six AM, in the car by 7:15, so we made great time to Williamsburg. Ate breakfast at Perkins on our way out of Santee. The worst breakfast I’ve ever had--why, oh why, did I order the buffet? We should have gone to Waffle House. A good breakfast would have undone the whole night’s discomfort. Really, though, it faded away very quickly--we were all so glad to be leaving that night behind. And partly due to that lousy night, we ended up staying in the very nice Williamsburg Woodlands Hotel, which made it easy to tour the village. So we had that going for us.

Next time, I’ll answer the question on everyone’s mind: what do Williamsburg and Breaking Bad have in common?