Perspectives

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

It was only this morning that I actually went out and rode my bike at sunrise and s the orange disk of the sun come up into a cerulean sky. It is amazing what a few hours and a few hundred miles can do to change one’s view of the world. I am now in the number four travel destination in North America. It doesn’t normally look like this. A view out the window reveals a blank rectangle of featureless lead gray.

I recently read one of Nicholas Spark’s novels set in Rodanthe, North Carolina during a hurricane. He effectively described the gray misery that comes from being hunkered down inside, waiting for the storm to spend its fury. The last time I got near a hurricane was in 1998 when a category 4 storm chased me around the Caribbean for several weeks. This time the circulation of an ocean storm merely has me cooped up in a hotel while the beach sands rearrange themselves under the detergent action of the agitated surf. The weather is just moving in and sustained winds of 40-50 MPH and driving rain increase my respect for those that go to sea for a living. The weather channel is calling it a ‘disturbance’. I can simply stay on terra firma and wait it out, knowing I really do not have control of things in life. Two days from now it is supposed to be 80 degrees and sunny. I know I am absolutely safe and the worst thing that will happen is I see more of a hotel room that I had planned for.

This gray drear reminds me of how fortunate I was to have seventeen days of pristine clear climate in Canada sans rain and wind. I think I will go get some dinner and be thankful for a tasty meal with good friends, and remember that on the top side of these dense clouds it is still sunny.