Wadmalaw is South Carolinian for "heart attack".

COLUMBIA, SC

One of my favorite things about travel is the way an arbitrary dot on the map takes on an identity once you get there. There is no going back, either. Once you see and touch its landmarks, eat its food, and talk to its people, it takes on a dimension of permanent familiarity and will never, ever feel as distant again.

The choice of Columbia was pure logistics, the last stopping point before Durham. Originally I'd planned to spend the previous night in Meridian, MS, which is about 500 miles from Columbia. When Joshua agreed to host me at his home near Jackson, I failed to note that it was 90 minutes west of Meridian, so an 8-hour drive I budgeted for the penultimate leg of my trip turned into 10+ hours, including with three major stoppages for road construction along the way.

The rain continued from Mississippi pretty much nonstop through Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. It was POURING as I approached my accommodation for the evening, a family home on a forested semi-rural route a couple miles outside the city. If Kelly and her husband hadn't come so highly recommended on the CS community, I might have found the setting and atmosphere daunting; raindrops the size of golf balls hammered Sebastian's windshield as buildings and streetlights became fewer and further in between. I passed a number of modest country churches and an ornate LDS temple that seemed to levitate out of the dark trees in its own glow. I finally reached my destination, a postcard scene of Southern charm: a yellow two-story home with friendly dormers and an inviting front porch with white balustrades.

There was warm light inside, and Kelly practically dragged me in the front door out of the rain while I muttered something about mud on my shoes. While I sat and talked with her son, she brought me a bowl of her homemade corn chowder with thick bacon crumbled on top with a glass of tea and a dish of peach cobbler. It was truly one of the best meals I've ever had on the road (maybe ever?). Her warmth and openness to others reminded me a lot of my own mom. She prepared the pullout sofa in the family room for me where I was joined later by Luna the Weimaraner.

The next morning I had a toasted croissant with homemade jam and scrambled eggs fresh from the chickens. Kelly told me more about her adventures with hosting couchsurfers. Many of them are family members of Army recruits graduating from boot camp at Ft. Jackson nearby - and a recent guest was from my hometown.

When I told her I was stopping to visit my cousin in St. Louis on my return trip west, she lit up. Having lived in St. Louis for three years, she had a lot of inside knowledge to share. She admitted that she dreaded living in the Midwest at first, and that initially lowered expectations might have at least partly contributed to her eventual enthusiastic admiration of the city. She recommended the City Museum (curated by a friend of hers), the Cahokia Mounds, and of course the Arch while I'm there.

I departed around eleven for the Five Points district in Columbia and Pawley's Front Porch, another of Kelly's recommendations. Pawley's was featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and really doesn't fuck around when it comes to their burgers.

I sat at the bar and ordered a pale ale recommended by the bartender from a Charlotte brewery whose name I can't remember. I then sampled an essay in the same craft from Conquest, a local Columbia brewery that was drinkable if a little uneven. It was while I was sitting there, chatting with the awesomely bearded bartender and luxuriating in having plenty of time to take in my surroundings, that I was approached out of left field by a Southern beauty who left me all but speechless...

Introducing: the Wadmalaw.

Eating it was all a blur, really. A whirlwind of chipotle and bacon and cheese and something that might have been fried pickles? Between bites I struck up conversation with an attractive girl beside me who I noticed was tapping away in frustration at a broken iPhone screen. I asked her what happened and she nonchalantly said she threw it out the window of a car.

She threw it... out of the window... of a moving vehicle. 

It was an impulsive action and, she conceded, an ultimately futile gesture against technology. If nothing else, I admired the symbolism and the balls it took to go through with it.

We spent over three hours talking. Light stuff, heavy stuff. Some really heavy stuff. It made the world feel ten times smaller (and a little tipsier). She ordered me a breakfast shot, Jameson's and Buttershots chased by OJ. It tasted just like a pancake. A friend of hers came by on his lunch break and the three of us talked for another hour. It was one of most rewarding afternoons I've ever spent in a bar. Day drinking rules.