Sometimes people wander into your lives without notice as you’re taken out of your comfort zone by a Hoquiam, WA campground that will not let you have fires at your campsite. 😒 Since the fire police dashed all my hopes of continuing to live a perfectly introverted life, I was forced to a community fire ring. Roxy was thrilled at the prospect of speaking to anyone but me after our trek halfway across the country. I can’t imagine why.🤔 As she blazed a trail of dust to the ring as fast as she could, I had my chair and drink in tow arriving late to the party as usual. (You really didn’t think I could do that without booze did you?) With each new arrival to the fire ring, Roxy was the official greeter, checked everyone for snacks and got ear scratches in return. One passerby stopped to give her a little love and that’s how it all began.
Everyone, meet Gaylord and Chloé. (For the record, his name jokes were funnier than mine. I can’t compete.)
For the next few days, we ate, we drank, we shared stories of our lives and our futures. We spent time getting to know about their culture, their beliefs, and their families, it was truly a great friendship in the making.
After Washington decided to dump gallon after gallon (I’m not kidding) of rain on us, we were shut in every morning for 3 days. Drying out, laying out, mopping up…all the fun stuff, I looked out the window and our friends were having the same time of it. Only they were bailing out, bailing out and bailing out. Bailing water out of their TENT. I guess I should tell you our new French friends are traveling the world for the next 2 years. On their bikes.😬 Clarification, BICYCLES. 😳 That may very well have been the look on my face when they first told us that. I have no idea, I was forced to be drunk at a community fire ring. Who knows what I was doing.
Anyway, my point is, we were all waterlogged and wanted to get south of it, and fast. So we hatched a plan. We stowed the Frenchie’s bicycles in the jeep and stowed the Frenchie’s in the camper for the ride down the Pacific Coast Highway and into Oregon. Brave little souls. I can only imagine writing home to my family saying, “Oh yes, we found this lovely couple that wants to put us in their camper and travel south to God only knows where. And by the way we have no cell signal.” My mom and sisters would have shit their pants at that email.
On our way to better weather, we were discussing the terms of our new found partnership and decided our guests could repay us by cooking all this wonderful food they had been telling us about. A quick stop at the store before we found a great campground to dry out in for a few days and it was settled.
First dish up…Feta. A little olive oil in a dish, feta covered with more olive oil, some fresh herbs and freshly sliced garlic, into the oven and bam! Delicious! Serve with bread and wine, of course the wine.
I was sitting outside to give the Frenchie’s room in my tiny kitchen to work and Chloé settled in to the picnic table across from me after her chores were done. We were talking about food and wine and I had a few questions about the cheese we were getting ready to eat. Now Chloé’s English is good, a little broken, but good. She knows enough to not get herself murdered, if there’s a scale of 1 to murder of some kind. English 101, a class to not get murdered in America. I suggest an A+ and retake it until you get it. Or don’t get in some strangers camper. Or don’t decide to ride your bicycle across the planet. Any of those would do as well.
I keep getting sidetracked. Back to it.
I was asking her about the feta. I’m more familiar with the crumbles, I have seen the block but I use the crumbles more often than the other. As we were talking and I was getting a feel for how far I could go with this conversation, an unsuspecting Chloé was getting ever so entangled in my web…as I asked her for more information about the feta in block form. Now in the container from the store it was 1 solid block, and in our baking dish its was miraculously 2 separate pieces. So, I asked her to explain step by step the process of which we were about to dine on these 2 separate pieces of cheese and how it came to be. Inside I was giggling like every 12 year old boy snaring their unsuspecting prey into a fart joke trap. On the outside I was studying every syllable of our conversation to lead her up to the Holy Grail, getting this French girl to utter those 3 little words…And then, there it was “…cut the cheese…”
My work here is done.
Food. It brings people together like community fire pits. And makes for great stories, across any language barrier. Can’t wait to see those 2 faces and make more memories in Florida.❤️
