Visiting Raleigh: Devoured Knuckles

“I have no trouble pacing myself on my endless journeys. But matching the pace of others is a place I could probably improve.” – Old Sean

Basic Steering

For the past few days, I’ve been hanging out in Atlanta, visiting my younger brother and his girlfriend. And while the visit has been lovely, I’m reminded that I’m a fair bit more…wanderish than most people.

Upon visiting Atlanta, I had a broad list of activities I wanted to do. But it wasn’t fair to ask my brother and his girlfriend to embark on all of them, in addition to their normal daily responsibilities.

Eventually, I had my brother drive me downtown to pick up my rental car with the intent of visiting my extended family in the Carolinas. I took the opportunity to make a slight detour to check off another couple of points-of-interest within Atlanta. Once I had bidden farewell to my brother, I lounged back at a classic American-style diner, the Silver Skillet. I get a huge kick out of eating at genuine American diners where coffee is served in overly-thick mugs. It soothes me fundamentally. One of the real treats was bacon, since I’d been on a no-pork diet during my nine months in Saudi Arabia. But once breakfast was done, it was time to wander onwards.

The first portion of my mini-road trip through the city in the odd corners of town, driving out to Krog Street Tunnel, a graffiti-art tunnel which is tucked on a rail track, serving as a thru-traffic road. I spent a fair bit of time walking up and down the sidewalk, browsing the  range of urban artworks in the area. But then rush hour was starting to pick up, and I opted to get on the road before gridlocks started to form.

Roadman Roving

Back on the road, I cruised along in a state of thoughtful bliss. I generally love driving in the US, but the vast majority of my road trips are in the Midwest, Rockies and West. The cities in these areas are frustrating to navigate since traffic tends to overwhelm them. But the spaces between cities are divine to drive across. Great stretches of open road fly out in all directions, enhancing the American-road-trip fantasy.

The East Coast is… different. There’s a constant low-level of traffic everywhere, from city to city. There aren’t really any open stretches of highway, just a steady stream of traffic moving at an amicable pace.

I had a couple of unique features to play with while driving since my rental car was one of the newer 2023 models. There was a cruise control which tracked cars in front of me, making sure I kept perfect pace with all other vehicles. Warning systems let me know about vehicles in my blind spots and beeped when it was time for a road-trip coffee-break. There was also a feature which provided “auto-driving” where the car twitched the wheel autonomously, keeping me within the lanes.

While I appreciate the intention behind the technology, it’s definitely no substitute for the reactions of a human driver. The feature has one profound danger above all others; namely, it puts the driver into a swift state of highway-hypnosis. I found myself constantly dozing even while only using the feature for four or six minutes.

In the end, I disabled it entirely.

Most of my drive was quite soothing. I stopped at Waffle House in the spirits of Hobbits, enjoying a nice second breakfast. I also had a fun time peering at the Peachoid (a water tower painted as an enormous peach) as I cruised by Gaffney.

Highway oddities are good for the soul.

A Rest at Grandma’s House

Finally, I reached my intended destination in North Carolina, cruising up to my grandmother’s home. She had generously offered me a place to stay for the evening, giving me a much-needed break from my expansive road trip.

Our evening was lovely, filled with chatter, conversations about corners of the world and the ongoing events in her life. She treated me to a dinner accented with plenty of sweets. After she went to bed, I took a mosquito-filled walk around the nearby golf course and lakes, listening to podcasts and humming tunelessly.

There are a fair number of people who send ire my way for this, but mosquitos don’t often bother me. I get bitten once in a while, but my blood isn’t apparently very appetizing. More often than not, I stride through swarms unscathed.

I returned home to sleep and woke up the following morning to join grandma for breakfast. Afterwards, it was back to solo-zooming the distant roads.

Hitchhike Hermosa

My next day of driving was a calm event. I didn’t have nearly as far to go, so I had plenty of time to veer around, stopping at parks for short breaks.

Eventually, I made it to my sister’s apartment, who would be joining me for the next portion of my road trip. We spent time hanging around her apartment, admiring the life she’d built for herself. There were plenty of books, plushies, decorations, paintings, artworks, sculptures, collectable and countertop creatures. The apartment was finely oriented but it was only barely large enough to accommodate everything.

The greatest feature was her refrigerator which was positively crammed with magnets. There were images of state park logos, video game characters, Pokémon and countless other logos. My sister, in her infinite wisdom, had laminated all of her sticker collection and applied thin magnetic strips to the back. Now her home was could accommodate a full swath of her personality without losing stickers whenever she potentially switches refrigerators.

Daring Dairy

My sister and I soon started the next leg of our road trip, driving out to where my cousin lives. There, in the middle of true nowhere, we stopped for plenty of snacks. Among these was a bubble-tea place owned by some truly friendly country-folk. It was clear that the bubble-tea craze had just reached that patch of nowhere, because we were first asked if we knew what bubble-tea was. Once we confirmed that we had passing knowledge, a friendly list of recommendations came out and my sister and I lounged for a bit, sipping away.

We next sought out my cousin’s newly purchased home, but overshot our turn by miles. This turned out to be a lucky event, as it took us past an excellent ice cream shop known as Celtic Creamery. Since Celtic features are near and dear to my heart, we stopped inside. At which point my sister bought a strange bag of futuristic-looking crisp treats which turned out to be freeze-dried gummy worms.

I tried one. They…tasted? Mostly, the crunchy gel got stuck to my teeth. It wasn’t unpleasant, just highly unusual.

Afterwards, we finally reached my cousin’s house, where we chatted with him and his wife (mine own cousin-in-law). Then the star of the show appeared. My cousin has a new, infant daughter with gorgeous eyes and plenty of baby burbling. I held her for a minute, to which she promptly started crying. My sister took over, much to the wee one’s perfect contentment.

The rest of my visit was spent coaxing her with funny sounds, dramatic head bobs and sacrificing my fingers to be gummed into oblivion. It worked and I had plenty of time for cuddling as well as a shirt positively layered in drool at the end of the hour.

Soon it was time for my new niece to sleep and my sister and I said our farewells. Then we piled back into my rental car and zoomed off once more.

Raleigh Ways

After getting back into the car, I drove us back towards Raleigh. There, my aunts, uncles and one of my other cousins had gathered to greet me. It had been months since I had been sighted stateside, so my return was a wonderfully warm welcome. There was a hearty dinner, an unwise amount of ice cream and plenty of questions about my time in the Middle East.

The funny thing about the Middle East is the numerous interpretations surrounding it. The cultures of that region are somewhat notoriously private and don’t showcase themselves nearly as prominently in media. Chinese dramas, India’s Bollywood, Hollywood, Russian Cinema, Japanese Anime, Central-and-South American Telenovelas, Euro-culture, Korean K-pop, and even African social media and Nollywood have exported their cultures to a large degree. To some level, people around the world know what those cultures are about.

But Middle Eastern nations are generally only showcased in an Islamic light, with perhaps the notable exception of Dubai. So explaining an experience in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia isn’t something that is readily described. There’s a huge amount of context that needs to be filled in so that people fully understand how things operate and why it’s so removed from the rest of the world.

So for my visit, I waxed poetic about Bedouin tribes, an outsider’s Islam perspective, ancient Thamudic rock carvings, the variations of deserts like plateaus, rocky formations, mountain-bracers, coastal sands, Rub’ al Khali (The Empty Quarter), An Nafud or the Great Nafud of the reddish sands and Ad Dahna’ is a narrow strip of sandy terrain.

In the same breath, I described the mass use of migrant labor forces and foreign consultants in the cultures, along with the infrastructure investments, massive healthcare programs, the social aspects of masjids and mosques, the gender-segregated Majlis sitting rooms, and the cultural attire like abayas, niqāb, hijab, burqa, thobe, Keffiyeh and shemagh.

I had to speak of the economic diversification goals of Vision 2030, the immense reliance on oil revenue, the strange customs that eluded me, traditional meals of dates and kabsa, the celebrations found in the month of Ramadan, the diversity of green mountains, old mud-structures, rebuilt heritage sites, massive tourism and guest infrastructure for Hajj, a lackluster work-culture, unyielding generosity and quirks of language.

And, of course, I had to touch on the audacious building projects that had defined the region for two decades now. The supercity of Kuwait, the canals among islands of Bahrain, the Burj Khalifa towering over Dubai, the legendary Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque of Abu Dhabi, the megastructures of Qatar, the seastone city of Al Balad in Jeddah, the pilgrimage sites of Madinah, the unique structures of Abha, the packed mud buildings of Najran, the cultivated oases, the reclaimed coral shoals, the hidden mountain refineries, and the absolute outpouring of projects in Riyadh: The Wonder Gardens, Boulevard World, Heritage Reclamation Sites, Diriyah, Winter Souqs, Al Masmak Palace Fortress, Boulavard City and endless new projects.

It was strange, reliving a lot of those experiences. My time in the Middle East was oddly disconnected from the rest of the world. Retelling it felt like a fantasy being recalled from a soul or a dream.

But alas, there are only so many hours in a day. It wasn’t long before the night stretched on long. I said my goodbyes and piled into my rental car with my sister once more, steering into the night.

Midnight Moves

I drove my sister back to her apartment and got back on the road, now pressing the upper limits of my wakefulness. Instead of driving straight back to Atlanta, I promised a friend that I would meet her in Charlotte. We hadn’t seen one another in some years and I offered her a ride to the airport at 5:00 AM, since she was leaving again for a long-term meditation retreat in the Rocky Mountains.

I took a bit of a nap at her house and we got a coffee-infused breakfast before the sun rose. Once I dropped her off, I made the sleepy-slog back to Atlanta.

Back in Atlanta, I returned my rental car and spent another couple of days with my younger brother, checking out the last few things around town and enjoying a couple more movies. But once more, time marched onwards.

The next leg of my trip is far, far north. I’m Chicago-bound to see yet another old friend in Illinois.

I think one of the best features of travel is to experience something new. But the most restorative methods of travel comes from returning to the places where you’re thought of and loved.

Chicago means a lot to me. It’s where I got my teaching certification that took me abroad. And it’s where some of my oldest, truest friends live.

So back to restoring my soul.

Best regards and excellent trails,

Old Sean

Written May 24th, 2024

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