Home Again

Whew. What a week it's been. 4000+KM in 8 days. I'm beat!

I had to cut my trip short because I got an email informing me that I've been selected for an interview in Winnipeg this coming Friday. Flights won't be cheap, so I chomped two days off my trip. That said, I save a ton of money in an unexpected category while on this trip: gas. In my city, gas averages out to about 1.15$/L these days, making a full tank cost about 46CDN (OUCH). In the US, I was encountering gas prices that averaged out to 3.15$/G, making a full tank cost about 33$CDN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Every time I tanked up, I had an extra 13$ to do something fun. I haven't finished crunching the numbers yet, but it looks like my gas expenses came in close to 200$ UNDER budget. Wow!

The main reason of my trip was to spend a day in Savannah, Georgia.

I'm glad I booked just one day, with a second spent exploring the environs (Bonaventure Cemetery, Fort Pulaski, Tybee Island). One day in Savannah was plenty. Maybe even too much. The following will make it seem like I had an awful trip, regret my holiday, had no business going to Savannah, etc., but that's not true!

Savannah is touted as being the US's most beautiful city. My eyebrows continue to raise at that. Its historic district is quite beautiful, but, overall, Savannah is no more beautiful than San Francisco or Chicago. So, right off the bat, I didn't succumb to this city's façade.

There was something else going on, though, something that not very many people understand. Those who know me well take this as being a fact about me, an integral part of me the same as my having grey eyes and a love for grilled cheese sandwiches cut into triangles--I am very 'psychic.' Not in the sense that I see the future (although I do have the odd premonition dream), but that I can feel 'vibes' around me, and, yes, I sometimes see dead people.

Savannah's vibes were really bad. I knew from the second I set foot in the historic district that this was a place where horrible things had happened, where the current beauty had come at a price paid with innocent suffering.

My last night in the city, I took a ghost tour. I'm not so gullible as to say that I took everything I was told at face value. But the guide did explain a lot of things to me about Savannah's history, things I've been able to corroborate with other sources, and the vibes the city gives off make a lot more sense now.

During my full day in the city, I noticed a house that bothered me. 432 Abercorn if you want to Google it. This house turned out to be the last stop on the ghost tour. The guide had stories about this house that completely freaked me out, but I'm pretty sure these stories were 99.9999% fiction. That said, there is still something horribly wrong with that house. Perhaps the problem lies with the ground the house is built on.

Edinburgh, Scotland, is another city with bad vibes (so bad, in fact, that I cut a four day stay there down to a day and a half!). I think that it's important for me to show respect when I go to this sort of city. I need to understand the history and pay my respects to those souls that have stayed behind, but once I understand what I'm feeling, I need to move on. It would simply be disrespectful to have a merry time in a place that is begging me to notice its suffering.

I'm glad I went to Savannah, but I'm not convinced that I'd go back.

My favourite part of the trip was definitely the excursion to Tybee Island on Wednesday. The day was gorgeous, temps in the high 20s (C!), the ocean plenty warm enough to swim. I couldn't believe that I was a mere three days driving time from winter. My skin was shocked by this sudden exposure to the sun and burned right through my two layers of sunblock, with my back being the worst, but I can't regret to decision to spend the day out in the full sun in skimpy clothes because it charged my thoroughly depleted batteries. It was the kind of afternoon that defines 'vacation.'

What this trip did best, though, was prove to me that the bus idea is a very good one. I could have stayed on the road forever, but would have been much happier to be able to sleep in my own bed at night with my cats.