Yesterday, I almost ran over an alligator with my bicycle.

Picture time!  Yesterday, my brothers, my dad, and I went on a bike ride around St. Marks Wildlife Refuge.  We biked for a long time on what, I am assuming, were dikes.  At one point, I was two feet away from running over a small alligator.  It thrashed its tail, snapped, and then disappeared into the marsh.  The rest of the ride was me going THIS IS SO COOL I CANT BELIEVE I RAN OVER AN ALLIGATOR WELL ALMOST WE BETTER LEAVE HERE BEFORE IT GETS DARK THIS IS AWESOME WOW I HOPE WE DONT RUN INTO ANYMORE ALLIGATORS.  We stopped for a while to fish in the salt water; I caught a flounder, but it was an inch or so too small to keep.  We had to rush back to get to the car before dark; at one point, one of the largest alligators I have ever seen crossed the path up ahead of us.

The best part of the whole ride was when two or three very large deer were leaping around through the dikes / marsh.  It was like being in a fantasy film, just the four of us following after some sort of a dream.  I've never seen deer so close to the ocean before; there was sort of a wild beauty about it all. 

Here are pictures:

My brothers and me (sorry for the jpeg quality).  You can see some of my backyard!  And the ol' basketball hoop...

Us with my dad.  Front yard.

  

 Siblings biking along the dikes.  I am straggling along in the back.

Can you see the deer running ahead of us?!  To the left.  It has a white tail.

 This is what I think of when I remember the GOOD part of Florida.

  

No cars, no streets, no buildings, no people...  (except maybe for the ones I love)

Pulling my hair back?

Setting our bikes aside to fish for thirty minutes.  We had to race the night on the way back! 

Other weekend highlights include:  eating tempura ice cream, watching Blade Runner, dining at the SHELL OYSTER SHACK and playing STAR OCEAN (second story)

I heard that DTGS went off without any major disasters.  Hooray!

My brother and I agree that you should listen to this song on FULL VOLUME:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J7UPSh2Xxw

Today, my brothers coerced me to go on a bike ride.  It took them 45 minutes to do so.  We went all over Tallahassee and I said OH MY GOD LOOK AT THE HILL THIS IS TERRIBLE and they said CLAIRE STOP USING YOUR BREAKS SO MUCH and I said BUT WERE GOING SO FASTTTT and they said CLAIRE JUST COAST DOWN THE HILL and I said NEVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR and they said CLAIRE JUST LET GO OF THEM and I said BUT ITS SO FAST I REFUSE I REFUSE THIS IS DUMB and we repeated that conversation for two hours of hills.  It was fun!

Last night, I saw a billboard that said WHO IS JOHN GALT?

Greetings from Savannah, GA

Motel/hotel parking lots = very reliable place to find free wi-fi at night. 

Good drive thus far!  I am getting tired, though--may not drive the whole way to Florida.  We'll see. 

I am burning a CD with Joanna Newsom on it so that I can just listen to Sadie on repeat for at least 30 minutes.  

Onward, onward, onward into the unknown!

REBELLION

It is 12:15 and I am blogging instead of packing!!!

I'm going to London, but first I'm going back to Florida.

Wow.  3:19 AM already.  Everyone in the Hall is in bed right now--probably asleep.  Peter is crashing on the couch, and Nikki is curled up on bench pads in the Library.  I have set up my temporary residence in the Cave Oven, and it is a peaceful place to fall asleep.  It is strange how sweet and sad the Hall can be late at night in those rare moments when I'm the only one awake and moving about in the house.  It is very quiet, and sometimes I think about how other people before me have probably shared this same feeling--this sweet, sad, quiet feeling when the house and the people in it are still.  I guess there's some sort of a bond, there, even though I am here alone; there is a bond in that shared experience of solitude.

I have to drive nine and a half hours soon.  I know I'm not going to get out of here until much later than I would prefer to leave.  I've already said all of my good byes, pretty much, so I feel like I should just go ahead and slip out of here to make it less awkward and painful.  There is a part of me that knows I'm not leaving for very long, but there's another part of me that is being reminded now of just how important my Chapel Hill family is to me.  I'm realizing that, while I may carry you all in my heart forever, there will still be times ahead when I am physically separated from you; that, while my love for you will always be there, our relationships may change, and life and distance will in some ways push us apart.

That being said, I think I've been making the best of my time here this summer.  I'm sure I will reflect on all of the fond memories some more in the future--I bet no one listens to the VENGA boys station at 3 AM in London!--but, right now, I just want to sink into how grateful I feel.  I've enjoyed living at the Hall, and I like all of the silliness I've been a part of, and I also appreciate some of the struggles this summer that challenged me and the way that I look at things.

I am so vague and sleepy right now, and I think I may fall asleep, feeling a strange mix of sad and happy and grateful and full of love.