Turtle Trip, Day 8 (Saturday): Savannah

We released the last batch of stragglers at dawn, and got some pictures of Platymoose with hatchlings.  Then we went back to have breakfast and pack up camp.  Since it was the last week of volunteers at the project, everything needed to be cleaned and packed up to be brought down to the dock and loaded into boats to get back to shore.

Waiting for the boat to bring us to shore.

When we were approaching shore, the rain started, and when we got there, the ramp had been taken off the dock and we had to pass stuff over the water gap and then jump over ourselves in the downpour.  It was a pretty unceremonious goodbye as everyone scurried to put stuff into cars and get out of the rain.

You can see the hurricane coming as we ride the boat to the mainland.

The marina on the mainland in a brief respite from the rain while we waited for our car.

We waited over an hour for Enterprise to pick us up because apparently nobody has any clue over there.  Now we have less time to hang out and do touristy stuff before our flight.  I’m a little annoyed.  We did meet a really cute dog on the docks while we were waiting though, and the marina people are mostly really nice.

One thing that really annoyed me, however, was that I got a really bad muscle tear because one of them was a low-level misogynist.  Let me explain.  As I mentioned above, there was a gap between the boat and the dock, and Bobby had already been relegated to helping haul equipment elsewhere, so one of the dock hands was trying to be helpful and asked if I needed a hand getting over the gap to shore.  Now, normally, I probably would have been able to handle it on my own, but several factors were working against me:  I was only two months out of surgery at that point and had limited use of my left arm, it was raining, I was too short to reach the railing on the deck, and the boat wasn't really tied to anything and so there was an uneven gap over the water.  So I explicitly told the guy holding out his hand, "Just let me hold on and pull myself up."  He responded, "I can lift you onto the dock, real easy."  Me, "No, just hold me steady, I can do the rest myself."  You can kind of guess where this is going.

The guy did not just let me pull myself up, but instead as soon as he had a grip on my good arm yanked and literally lifted me up to the dock.  The problem with this is that I was not ready, I was not expecting this, and he didn't bother to actually look at me and see if I was in a good position to be yanked onto the dock against my will.  What wound up happening is my left leg was still inside of the boat while my right was on the dock, and the guy lifted more forward than up, forcing my leg into a lateral split against the side of the boat.  Well, I have never been able to do splits in my entire life, even when I was warmed up and stretching every day for silks class.  So I certainly wasn't going to be able to do one here after months of no athletic activity, no warm-up, while it's cold and raining, and I've been sitting in a boat for an hour.  I felt and I swear I could almost hear the muscle in my inner thigh tearing.

Fast forward 8 months and I've gone through countless hours of physical therapy and exercises, which the fucking deck hand isn't paying for even though he's the one who injured me, and while I've gotten maybe 80% of my strength and mobility back and they've discharged me, I'm never going to be fully healed there.  All because some fucking misogynist southern bumpkin didn't listen to a woman and couldn't possibly believe she could know what she's talking about and be capable of what she says she is.  And even though I loudly said, "Ow!" when he yanked me up, and told him that my leg hurt, he didn't seem concerned or feel bad that his not listening to me hurt me.  I bet he went home that day all fucking proud of how he helped a lady out.  God fucking damn it.  I hate him and I hate all men in the south like him who don't understand that women are people to be listened to.

The name on the street sign is what I think about that.

We finally got our car and by then were hungry so we looked up the best BBQ in Savannah and wound up at a hole in the wall place with really good ribs and pulled pork.  It only had outdoor seating, and it was raining, so the proprietor of the barbecue place said that the bar next door would let us wait out the rain and even eat there, and he’d bring us our food in there.

Platymoose made a friend!

Oh, his friend is a tip jar.  Still cute.

Literal hole in the wall restaurant, but really good food.

So, we go to the bar next door and repeat what the guy said to us, and we take a seat by the bar to wait.  It was only about noon, and there were two middle-aged ladies tending bar, both of them smoking (which I guess is still legal in Georgia), and chatting with the five old men inhabiting the bar at such an hour, talking about mutual acquaintances that they hate.  There was a sign posted above the bar that read, “Don’t talk about yourself...we’ll do it for you after you leave.”  I 100% believe they will.

The bar was really dimly lit, obviously smelled like smoke, and had some interesting choices for décor.  The drop-down ceiling tiles were decorated, presumably by regulars, with a variety of...unique...artwork; some of it was actually pretty cool and had a biker-tattoo vibe to it or incorporated shells or other fun objects, some of it was just people’s names, but some of it was crudely drawn pictures of naked women, to complement the naked ladies from 1970s porn magazines who also adorned some of the walls, alongside confederate flags.

Up until this point, I hadn’t really felt like Georgia was all that different from New England, and even afterward when we were strolling through downtown and spotting some of the confederacy soldier monuments around town, I didn’t really feel like I was out of place.  On the island, the other volunteers were mostly local or from other southern states, like Alabama and North Carolina, and for the most part seemed like-minded.  I left thinking that maybe the south isn’t as full of conservative crackpots as we’d always been told.  But then you see confederate flags and “The south will rise again.” and you go, “Nope, this is normal here; I’m out.”  When the guy gave us our food, we took it to the car and got away from that place as quickly as we could to go eat in a parking lot somewhere, even though by then the rain had stopped and we could have eaten at the tables outside.

The food itself was really, really good.  The meat fell right off the ribs, the bbq sauce in the pulled pork sandwich was just right, and even the sides were delicious.   Apparently you can deep fry bits of creamed corn and it’s way better than you would expect.

I forget what they called them, but they were delicious.

After eating, we went downtown to market square and walked by all the little shops and touristy places, stepped into some cute little art galleries, and sampled gourmet candies and cookies from a few of the shops.  We visited the park where Forrest Gump was filmed sitting on a bench, saw a neat water fountain, and then had to get ourselves to the airport.

The little baby cookies at this place were amazing.

Sweets factory.

Decisions, decisions.

Cool place to jump if it weren't so rainy.  Also fun name.

Fun-looking plant in one of the parks.  Don't know what it is.

Click to zoom in to see text.  It's a monument to black revolutionary war soldiers.  The south can keep their civil war monuments if they put up more like this right next to them.

One of the monuments in Savannah.  Bobby has more pictures of stuff from that day because my phone was dying by then.

Click to zoom in.  This monument is to Nathanael Greene, from Rhode Island, who fought in the revolutionary war in Georgia alongside Washington and other famous patriots.  I had to include this because of my RI roots.

Before these guys took it over, we played with this big xylophone-like instrument/public art piece.  'Twas fun.

The connecting flight to Charlotte was short and uneventful, minus the fact that the speakers were too loud and I got a headache from the announcements, even with plugging my ears.

Our flight to Bradley got delayed, though, so now we have a four hour layover.  Not really enough time to go and do anything, but way too long to just sit in an airport.  Plus that means we’ll be getting home really late, which is super annoying.  I just want to see my dog and sleep in a bed with no sand and take a shower with hot water and no mosquitoes in it.

We did get home super late at night, and Akasho was thrilled to see us.  The next morning, he wouldn't let us out of his sight.  Adorable.