Anyway, after one of those and one or so of the $2 pints of Pilsner, Tyler and I felt confident enough to challenge Charlotte two on one:
Then we dropped Mickey off, had one last look at his fantastic book collection,
and went back to Charlotte's, crawled into our toques and sleeping bags and went to bed cold and satisfied.
So, on the 30th, I woke up in this little island house for the last time and headed out for breakfast. Of course, we had grits, as always, with Texas Pete:
But this time there was an extra special treat: Watkins Grill's own home-made banana pudding pie:
Then we set out to the farmer's market, where we saw a bean-shucking machine with fascinating properties, an eccentric honey-making family, and some seasonal crops:
When we went inside, we found lots of farmer's markety things that were too expensive to buy, food that I couldn't fit in my grits-filled stomach, and Cheerwine, a red North-Carolina only soda. I bought one for a buck, tax included. I couldn't get anyone to tell me what it is exactly, but when I was leaving I saw a sign telling me exactly what it is:
Then I got on a plane and went to Waterloo.
You saw how well that turned out. I miss Carolina already.
Thanks to Andrew for bringing it back! And thanks to my K.K. for giving me this rather extreme way to prevent it from getting lost again.
I'm going to date all the posts with these photos as Dec. 14th until I retrieve my lost my cell-phone, and with it the pictures I've been taking for the last two weeks (sigh).
Oh, well, I guess this one could use some explaining - see, that giant bush thing is actually a grass. Tyler said "man, if you had a whole lawn of those you could hide your house behind them!" and I EXPLODED WITH HILARITY. The image in my mind was so absurd. That is what I like. It is my sense of humour.
After going to a gallery opening of paintings of a friend of Charlotte and Tyler's, at which _another_ friend of Charlotte and Tyler's was playing guitar, and a _third_ friend was doing the sweet catering, they decided to show me that Raleigh isn't all sweetness and light and artists and musicians and funky repurposed tobacco warehouses by taking me down this wide-street strip-mall car-dependent paradise:
They had another good reason to take me down that street though: their (or at least Tyler's) favourite Thai-Viet restaurant. Guess which of these menu items I ordered:
Yum. Evil.
How is something that prevents me from drinking supposed to make me feel better?
Then to Durham, where we saw an auction at an anti-mall, drove by a real haunted house:
And checked out the Duke campus:
I kid you not, this picture is from the half of campus that Charlotte and Tyler thought was less pretty. Too castley everywhere, they said, you get tired of it. Castley. I think that's half of why they think NCSU counts as ugly. The other half is that they've never been to my home town.
Those are actual rose petals in that popsicle. Damn. Mine was Chocolate and Cinnamon, which should be made illegal it was so addictive.
Alas, they didn't have The Three Amigos, but I'll still have to agree with the News Observer:
Watched Tyler save Walt's life:
Lunch:
Took turns flying remote-controlled Helicopter around Walt's Office:
You know, the usual.
Me and Charlotte and Tyler and Walt had so much good times at LSA that I took their invitation to Raleigh seriously. The first thing we did when I got there was to go and get some grits and biscuits at Finch's. Don't believe this building isn't abandoned? Check their webcam.
Awesome.
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