The Accidental Archaeologist
The official on-the-go adventure blog
It may come as a surprise to some of y’all to see a new series of blog posts after such a long silence from the Accidental Archaeologist. It came as a surprise to me, too, when I looked up how long it had been since my last post. This is obviously a situation that needs fixing, and I have the perfect excuse…my next adventure has begun in the form of a three-week expedition back to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
Yesterday, I dragged my weary self out of bed in my little English flat at 03.15 to get ready for an unbelievably long day of traveling. An hour later, braced with multiple cups of coffee and lugging a heavy duffel bag, I climbed into a taxi driven by an ancient and remarkably unintelligible driver to head for my 04.45 train to London. When I got to London Paddington, I found myself swept up in the tidal wave of morning commuters with suits and coffee cups and briefcases. Since I had plenty of time before my flight out of Heathrow, I decided to go cheap and take the Underground out there instead of spending the staggering sum of £18 for the luxury of the Heathrow Express (comfy train with free wifi). The first leg was fine on the District Line, but the Piccadilly Line out to Heathrow was absolutely packed with morning commuters, and I found myself for most of the ride standing over a young teacher, who was carefully ignoring the fact that I was practically in her lap and grimly marking a shockingly poorly-written essay on JFK. It was a relief to fight my way out of car at Heathrow and join the stream of folks heading for check-in.
My flight wasn’t until 11.30, so I found myself at the Virgin Atlantic check-in desk about four hours early. They didn’t seem to mind, though, and very cheerfully pointed me towards a self-service kiosk. Of course, my passport wouldn’t read in the scanner (it never does), so I was eventually helped by a ticket agent at a nearby computer station. I could see the screen, and I was amused to see that they still have to work in endless meaningless streams of code exactly the same as the “Deltamatic” system we used fifteen years ago when I worked (briefly) for Comair. She asked what kind of seat I wanted, and, when I asked for a window seat, she shook her head and looked grim. I looked over her shoulder and realised the only seats open were the dreaded middle seats in between the aisles. “But,” she said, “there are plenty of window seats still open in the extra legroom section. It’s an extra £30.” Having been briefed a couple of weeks ago by my twin on exactly how much legroom they’ve shaved out of the ordinary seats (essentially, it’s comfortable if you’re under 4’5”), I opted to splash out the extra money on not having my knees around my ears for 8+ hours.
Boy, was I glad I did that! I made it to the plane just in time after playing the usual Heathrow game of guess-the-gate. The screen didn’t announce which gate to go to until the flight was ready to start boarding, so we all did a mad dash down the terminal, went through another passport and boarding pass check, and arrived sweaty and panting on board. I was in the “purple seats,” and was pleasantly surprised to find that I had no seatmate. What a difference that makes on a transatlantic flight. I could stretch out across the seats with two blankets and two pillows. I could get up four times to go to the toilet without having to clamber over people. And best of all, I didn’t have to hold up my end of an inevitably wearing conversation with an overly chatty seatmate. The only downside to the flight was that it appeared to be Babypalooza. I counted no less than eight infants just in my part of the plane, and the two screamers were right across the aisle from me. But, if there’s one thing I’ve taken away from this trip across the Atlantic, if you’re flying Virgin Atlantic…pay for the purple seat!
Arriving in Dulles meant the now familiar series of lurching shuttles and shuffling lines. I got a friendly immigration officer (shock!) who was curious about what archaeology I was doing. I waited a small eternity at the bag belt for my duffel, and then finally dragged myself down to the shuttle bus for the rental car lot. Luckily, I’m a frequent customer with the car company, so I got to go straight to my car, a shiny black Chevy Malibu, and found the keys and paperwork waiting on the dashboard. I carefully and slowly made my way from the parking lot and came to the realisation that driving a US car with an automatic transmission is a dangerous move after weeks of driving lessons and test prep in the UK. I had a constant monologue going as I made my way from the airport into DC rush hour: “OK, stay on the right…no, that’s not the clutch, that’s the brake…the mirror’s on the other side…the fact that that guy is two inches from your bumper means he’s happy to see you…” It was a scary drive, but I finally made it to Alexandria, and gladly abandoned the car on the curb. IronT and I had a great dinner at a pub down the street called Bilbo Baggins and she amused me after we got back with episodes of a series I hadn’t yet started watching called Raising Hope. That lasted until about 21.30, when I suddenly hit the wall of jet lag and passed out on the living room sofa. She was kind enough to tiptoe away and let me have a long night’s sleep.
This morning, I hit the road for Charleston, South Carolina. It was a very boring and uneventful drive. The one highlight was a quick stop for lunch at a Waffle House in North Carolina. I haven’t been to a Waffle House since I moved to England, and it was good to see that nothing’s changed. I arrived at my parents’ house in Charleston well before dinner and ran up the steps to encounter a locked door and no response to my insistent banging. Too bad the dog is mostly deaf and didn’t rouse them with her barking. With a heavy sigh and some dark grumbling, I left my bags on the steps, trudged around the side yard, let myself in the back gate, and almost gave my mum a heart attack by bursting in the kitchen door complaining loudly about being locked out. It’s good to be back. Sadly, I’m only here for the briefest of stopovers to observe my mum’s birthday tomorrow, but then it’s off to the Outer Banks once more for another round of digging in this season’s major excavations. That will be the majority of this blog for the rest of this trip. I have a bunch of students from Bristol and, yes, my supervisor Mark Horton all joining me next weekend for two weeks of sandy glory. I will do my best to keep y’all updated via this blog. In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy a small breather and a (hopefully) sunny stay in Charleston.
