10 May 2014
Jekyll Island, GA
If Terri and I are to believe possible paramedic but definitely Talking-Nonstop-Guy from the elevator, there are more creatures that can kill us in the shallow waters of Jekyll Island than in all of Australia. First off, there is Katharine, the 14-foot Great White shark, who’s been trawling the beaches looking for lunch. Then there are the stingrays waiting to barb a hole clear through your ankle, the pain from which you may never recover. And if that’s not enough, throw in a few Portuguese Man of War stings and you’ll be well on your way to the emergency room where you’ll meet Talking-Nonstop-Guy from the elevator and believe me, that’s painful enough.
The only good news associated with this conversation is that we didn’t have it until after coming back from our day-long bike ride around the island that included Gina dipping beneath the brown waves a few times to cool off. An overheated Gina vs. Katherine the Great White? I’ll take the latter odds – I think they’re more in my favor.
But before such worries entered our heads, we were more concerned about whether or not we’d get caught stealing the hotel bicycles. Technically, though, I’d argue that it wasn’t stealing, because no thief worth his salt would bother taking one of those rusted-out bicycles. Rusty chains, rusty handlebars, rusty seat posts – it’s a wonder the wheels turned at all. So in our interpretation of the hotel’s bicycle corral, lacking any locks or “Rent Me” signs, the bikes were free for the taking. So take them we did, all of the way around the island, stopping at beaches and hotels and historical signs, taking it all in and checking it all out.
Our final concern of the day came when Gina and Terri were served this:
No, we weren’t at the local rest home, where dining with your teeth in is optional. Instead, we were at one of the few island restaurants still open since the recession and fewer still that had been recommended. Granted, we were told to dine there partly because of the food and mostly, I’m guessing (since the gals who told us were a little tipsy at the time), because of the $10 bottles of wine. In fairness, Terri and Gina said that those wild Georgia shrimp and grits tasted much better than they looked, but how they could even manage to dig a fork into there I’ll never know. But the biggest surprise was not that the food turned out to be edible but that the restaurant owner was such an engaging and entertaining man, stopping by mid-grits to educate us on the history of Jekyll Island and to patiently answer all of our questions about this odd little place with brown water. Given his hospitality, I’d say we’d best order up a slice of humble pie.
