please take a long hard look through your textbook, 'cause i'm history

[okay, so basically the entire owl city song "cave in" describes my trip to wales, with extraordinary precision. i couldn't choose just one line to make my title, so i have inserted several 'titles' throughout the post.]

i’ll ride the range and hide all my loose change in my bedroll

The first day after I got back from Oxford was Sunday, and I was glad that their church starts late so we didn’t have to leave very early. On the way we picked up Becky, a lady who is a friend of Jan’s from work, and is wanting to explore Christianity. She had come to their church once before and liked it.

I got to sit on the end of the row this time, and it did make a lot of difference. I was far less self conscious, and it felt so good to be at church and singing.

Their pastor is a good preacher. You know how Pastor Louie preaches 30-40 minutes of solidness, and most pastors preach 20 minutes of fluff to make a point that Louie would have made in three minutes? Well, their pastor preaches 20 minutes of solidness. Which is quite good enough for me. Also, he said emphatically that the idea that if you were following God, then life would be good, and that if life wasn’t good it meant you were out of God’s will, was “total rubbish!” which of course delighted me with both its good theology and its Englishness.

We went home and had lentils and stir-fry vegetables for lunch. I hadn’t had lentils before but I like them.

Then, in the middle of lunch, Jan was checking her facebook and found that there was a message from my friend April who is at the military base in Lakenheath (about 40 minutes from Wisbech), who I had been thinking of going on a trip to Wales with. I had lost track of dates and didn’t realize that this was the day we were going to go!

So I called her phone, and left her a facebook message and an e-mail with Jan’s number, and finally she called back and we worked out how to meet up, she and I and two of her friends from the base.

Goodness gracious.

At 3:10 they told us she April told me they’d be leaving in about 20 minutes, and that she’d call when they were.

I thought it was very possible they wouldn’t manage to leave by then, but Jack was determined to leave at 3:30 even though they hadn’t called.

With the result that, as they left at 4:15, and got stuck in traffic besides, we waited in a parking lot for about two hours.

Jack bought me a McFlurry, though.

And I sat at an outside table and wrote.

‘cause riding a dirtbike down the turnpike really takes its toll on me

Then they arrived, and I said goodbye to Jack, and thanked him for driving me out to the meeting point, and then we were hungry so we went to McDonalds.

I wasn’t overly thrilled with this, but then it turned out that they have a special where every day a different one of their deli subs is £1.99, and the one for today was chicken and bacon, so I got that.

I was quickly established as navigator, because I had an atlas Jack loaned me for the trip, and besides that none of them had any sense of maps or navigation whatever. (This was obvious from our conversations with them while they were trying to get to us.)

So, at about 7:15, I think, we set off for Wales. It was a long drive in the dark and the traffic was pretty heavy. I was doing well with interchanges until we were supposed to get on M6 and I couldn’t figure out how to get on it the correct way because there was a smaller road that connected with it farther north and I had taken that instead of continuing on until it actually met the motorway we were on. In the middle of that we came to a Premier Inn and they wanted to just stay there – it was about 10pm, I think. Fortunately for my peace of mind – who wants to end a day lost? – it was too expensive for us to want to stay there. So we continued on, and I figured out where I’d gone wrong, and we got back on the right road.

i’ve had about enough of quote “diamonds in the rough” / 'cause my backbone is paper thin / get me out of this cavern or i’ll cave in

When we were well into Wales, we found a different Premier Inn and stayed there for the night.

I’d rather not go into detail about the getting of the room. Suffice it to say that I will never be a con artist (well, unless it was for a very good cause and I’d done lots of advance planning…). Lying to a hotel lady – why on earth didn’t I just tell April to come in if she wanted us to use her credit card? – sent me into an anxiety attack that resulted in me sitting on the ground outside the car and declaring that I would NOT be going back into that hotel and talking to her; they could figure it out.

I think that after that April’s friends decided that they didn’t like me that much. Since I’ll probably never see them again, it doesn’t really matter, but it was still unfortunate.

At least after that one of them went in and did the talking for me.

And at least the price was actually the same no matter how many were in the room, so I was only (pointlessly) a liar, and not a thief.

i’ll soak up the sound and sleep on the wet ground / i’ll get ten minutes give or take / cause i just don’t foresee myself getting drowsy / when cold integrity keeps me wide awake

Between the anxiety attack and the night spent shivering under a damp towel because there weren’t enough blankets, I think I did my penance.

That hotel lady was not very bright, but she was very chatty. I went to get a water from the vending machine for one of the girls and she started asking me a bunch of questions about the military. (April’s in the air force, she’s at the military base at Lakenheath which is why she’s in England.) Which, of course, I knew none of the answers to, and just made things up.

Ugh.

My theatre experience makes it so I’m able to make up stuff to a person without breaking, and be reasonable convincing, and even if my heart is pounding in my throat I don’t show it.

I just go to pieces afterward.

i’ll keep my helmet on in case my head caves in / ‘cause if my thoughts collapse or my brainwork snaps it’ll make a mess / like you wouldn’t believe

Anyway… the next morning we got up at about nine, packed up reasonably quickly, and set off again. Thankfully the night lady’s shift had ended…

For breakfast, we went to an American themed diner. There were five things I was looking for in a breakfast place: inexpensive, filling, delicious, Welsh, and non-argument-causing. I settled for four out of five. Even if it seemed completely ridiculous.

The pancakes were really good, though.

So we drove and drove, and then things improved greatly, because of course it was daylight now, and the north coast of Wales is very, very beautiful. We saw a castle, so we got off the exit and found it. Unfortunately there were signs all over saying “closed to day visitors,” but we got close enough to take pictures anyway.

We later saw another huge castle, so we got off to find it, too.

We couldn’t get close to it, but the road we drove on had a stone wall all along it which was presumably the old outer wall of the fortress. Awesome.

We found a pretty little piece of ruin, with a path going under and out of it. I would have liked to walk on down the path, but they said, “there’s nothing here.”

We also found a cemetery, which was pretty, and had tombstones in Welsh.

A young man at the diner had recommended Llandudno as a good place to see, so we were going to go there and then take the same road the opposite way to get to Betws-y-coed, which we had heard was beautiful.

Oh, a lovely drive along the coast… rain and welsh mountains and wistful country music…

And when we got to Llandudno, there was a pier going out into the water, and they said, “Let’s walk down the pier,” and I was glad.

I let them go on ahead, stopping to talk to a lady and her dog. She wasn’t from Wales, but told me about different places she had lived in England.

Then I went on, and caught up with them in an arcade.

After that I discovered that there is a difference between those who mean by that phrase, “go all the way down to the end of it and breathe in the sea,” and those who mean “browse through all the chintzy shops along it.” And nearly all the chintzy stores were closed, it not being summer yet, so the two girls walked back in the opposite direction.

But April said, “You can go if you want,” in a voice that did mean it, even if the other two wouldn’t have. But she said it, and I did want, so I went.

I wish I could put it into words, but I find I can’t, really, so you’ll just have to look at the pictures.

It amused me that they declared themselves polite.

On the way back toward the car, I stopped where a cement ramp with stairs on both sides went down into the sea, and I went to the side and sat on the step, and took off my shoes and socks, and put my feet down onto the rocks, and let the waves wash up and over my ankles.

I had forgotten how good real water is.

if the bombs go off, the sun will still be shining / ‘cause i’ve heard it said every mushroom cloud has a silver lining

Then I went on back toward the car, and then there they were. We walked among the shops, looking for souvenirs.

And we were hungry, so we looked for lunch. I found a café with meat pies and pasties, which is what I wanted, but they did not care for that, so we went on. We stopped at a fish and chips restaurant but no one was particularly enthusiastic about the menu options so we left again. the Italian place was closed. Then we found a restaurant with reasonable prices and food that looked pretty good, so we chose there. But I looked at the menu and there was nothing there that I wanted more than one of those pies from the other shop, so I went back to it while they ordered. They had miniature steak-and-kidney pies, so I got one.

I came and sat down with it with them, because the place wasn’t fancy, and I would rather be slightly rude to the restaurant people than be avoiding my companions. A restaurant lady brought me a little plate for my pie, and so I bought apple juice from them, to pay for my seat.

And I am pleased to announce that steak-and-kidney pie is extremely delicious.

One of the girls had lots of vegetables that she didn’t want, so she offered them to us and I ate some. So I had plenty to eat.

After that, they started saying that they just wanted to buy a souvenir and go home, and not go to Betws-y-coed. This was very distressing. We were to continue south and see more. But one of the girls had to work at 4am the next day, which I didn’t know until then, and I didn’t know they wanted to go back so early or I would have been speedier at the pier and such.

I stopped to look at postcards. Found one of “the fairy glen, Betws-y-coed”, and then I had to cry which was not what I wanted.

April asked if I was okay. How do you answer that?

They agreed – albeit somewhat reluctantly – that we could go since it wasn’t that far out of our way.

But then as we left the souvenir shop, it started to rain, and rained harder and harder. After we got in the car it started pouring. I said that if it hadn’t cleared up by the time we got to the turn off toward home instead of to Betws-y-coed, we would just go on home.

It didn’t stop, so we didn’t go. But it was easier that it was pouring anyhow. They really didn’t want to go.

People can want such different things out of a trip.

After we’d driven a few miles out of the town April tried to stop for gas, but took the wrong turn at the roundabout and ended up going back the way we came. We had to go all the way back to turn around at the town’s exit.

But as we were going back the right way, the sun came out through a gap in the clouds, though it was still raining, and then…

The rainbow went all the way from where it went into the sea in a bright splash,

up high into the sky in a great semicircle and down again to where it touched down into the spray thrown up by the car ahead of us.

I checked the hood of the car for the golden key when we stopped for gas back at the station, but it wasn’t there.

swallow a drop of gravel and blacktop / ‘cause the road tastes like wintergreen / the wind and the rain smell of oil and octane / mixed with stale gasoline

And we went back along the coast, and it gradually got dark, and we got rather lost in Leichester, and I convinced them to please take me back to Gorefield and not take me to Lakenheath even if it was making a longer drive – that was one advantage of not having gone to Betws-y-coed – and fortunately we had a GPS because I’m not sure I could have gotten us back to Gorefield in the dark without it.

I felt like I never would get back to Gorefield, that we would be lost for always or get into an accident and die on the dark wet winding roads that seemed too narrow and curvy for their 70mph speed limits.

The first sign saying how many miles to Wisbech was a great relief to my heart. Forever was now reduced to 42 miles.

The GPS took us a ridiculous way into Gorefield, because it took the shortest way in distance, which happened to be along the most ridiculously winding roads in the area, and we all got rather carsick, besides me being in an agony of anxiety because there are deep ditches on both sides of most of the roads. Besides being embarrassed because it was my directions (courtesy of the GPS) and my needed to get home that were putting us on this road in the first place.

tie my handlebars to the stars so i stay on track / and if my intentions stray i’ll wrench them away / then i’ll take my leave and i won’t even look back

I cannot really convey the level of relief and happiness that flooded my heart and mind when the GOREFIELD sign came into view.

They went past the house by one, but wouldn’t go back, nor would they come in. Passive-aggressive or just exhausted, I didn’t really care, because there was the house, and then I was going inside, and then there was stirfry and lentils and bread and butter, and bed.

The trip was not exactly the most wonderful experience of my life. But I am glad that I went. I found, as we crossed back into England, that I had left part of my heart in Wales. And though I don’t know when or how, someday I will go back to Betws-y-coed.