Adventuring to Bridlington

Good day, before I tell you about the latest adventure that I had, I need to explain a few things. First, for the last three years whenever I had a free weekend with my cohorts the first thing we would do would be to leave our small town of Morenci and go to the big city, whether that was Phoenix, Albuquerque or Tucson, sometimes with as little as a few hours notice. This was just the way it was, Morenci really didn’t have much to do and it was nice to get away from the mine and the constant reminder of work. Second, I just sold off my truck, a nice big six seat Silverado that I had named Isabelle, or Izzy for short. With those two pieces of information, I think we can start.

                About three weeks ago, Rebecca and her friends Stephanie, Laura and Carla decided that since in early March, Laura and Carla are moving to Paris and Dubai respectively, we should do something before they leave. It’s decided that we are going to go to Bridlington in Yorkshire; at this point the only thing I can tell you about the place is that it’s on the sea, which sea? I haven’t a clue, but I’m told that I don’t have to plan anything other then what to pack and that if I made cookies they would be delighted. Time goes on and no mention of the trip is made to me again, I think the girls were discussing and planning but to me everything is going smoothly until the day we were going to leave.

                Friday comes around and I get told that I need to pack my bag, a small one, and be ready by 6:30pm, which coming to know the lawyers of Clifford Chance like I do really means that they will hopefully be ready by 7:30pm. To be fair it’s usually not their fault as they usually are getting stuck at work, but nonetheless it’s still the reality. To my surprise they came to pick me up early at 6:50, well early by the standards I set and told me to hop into the car. What they should have said was hop into shoebox. Apparently, we were going to drive for four hours in a Ford KA. Now for those of you that are North American and don’t have the KA I’ve included a photo below. It’s a little smaller then a mini. And there were five of us. Oh Izzy, I have never missed you as much as I did that very second. I mean, I have been in some bad car rides before: 10 hours to Vegas in a full corolla, St. Andrews to Edinburg with 5 a focus and enough luggage to clothe a nation, and 30 hours to Vancouver going through the blasted lands of Idaho (you might remember that from earlier), but I will never complain about any of those trips ever again.

Figure 1 - The KA

Upon arrival in Bridlington, I swore that we had somehow made a wrong turn and ended up in Nevada. Unbeknown to me, the English seaside towns consist only of candy stores, fish and chip stores and amusement centers that look exactly like the small casinos that you find in Nevada. The whole place is flashing and blinking, the only thing that was different was that instead of real gambling and slot machines it was full of arcade and fair games. Additionally, you had the seaside. Since it is the winter the place was pretty quiet but apparently it becomes so packed that you can’t move in the summer.

Figure 2 - Playing the games inside one of the arcades (Laura, Carla, Stephanie, Rebecca and Me)

The other thing that we got because of the winter was a very angry sea. On more than one occasion you would be walking on the seawall, which was about ten to twelve feet over where the water was and a big wave would come in and splash up at you. Naturally, this meant there was only one thing to do. Try and walk all the way down the sea wall and back without getting wet like a game.

Figure 3 - The Raging Sea

Unfortunately for Stephanie, she most definitely lost the game and was hit full force by one of the waves. I had a few close calls but all in all I would have to say that it was a victory.

Figure 4 - My narrow avoidance of the waves.

After getting Steph home and dried off we then went out to dinner at one of the nicer restaurants in the town and had some good ol’ British cuisine. Side note, you have no idea how hard it is to get a photo that four girls agree is a nice one. I will say that this photo was the umpteenth one after we had to discount many because: “My smile looks stupid”, “My boobs look lopsided”, and “What are you looking at?” I say it was quite a production. But after I ruined the all the others, the girls decided that this one was ok and that my smile, boobs, and facial expressions was okay. :-P

Figure 5 - Dinner out on the town.

Finally, the next day, since I have now been to the UK on three visits and have now lived here for two months and until this trip I had never had fish and chips here. So, we decided that since it was my first time we would all pack into the KA again and drive to the shop that had just won the UK’s award for best fish and chips in the country. (Even thought it won best in the UK, it really made me doubt if I wanted to go if it meant that I had to get back into the KA). However, to my pleasure it was most certainly worth the inability to breathe for the duration of the trip.

Figure 6 - Laura, Carla, Rebecca and Stephanie at the fish and chip shop

All in all, it was an interesting trip. Almost the complete antithesis of what I was used to however. Instead of a group of boys and Rebecca going from the small town to the big city to go do some event and drink whilst forgetting dinner, it was a group of girls and Sean going from the big city to a small town to do nothing but eat dinner. Life is always full of odd twists of fate, but in the end it has and always will be an adventure.