our little walk & jerry

I got back from Charlotte about 16:00 and gobbled up some long overdue lunch. After going to visit some neighbors my roommate Erica and I set out on a little walk... or so we thought. We went the way I've begun to run, which is a few miles long and decided to take Neptune Road to see if it was a shortcut home. We walked and, as were were deep in conversation, we continued to walk. and to walk and to walk. We were talking about our homes overseas, life there, students, people's openness to the gospel, life and lo que sea.

After awhile and at least an hour and a half later Erica asked me if I thought this road was going to hit highway 192 and take us home or not. It also occurred to us that neither one of us had a phone nor money with us, just my keys (including car keys, which at this point were completely useless). We talked about just cross-countrying it, but due to the many nice man-eating fauna of florida and the many marsh lakes filled with water moccasins and supposed gators (or so we've been told), we opted out of swimming the swamps or trekking cross-country. We walked a bit more passed MANY dead end roads and two roads we were sure would veer to the right, but to our chagrin actually went left.

At this point Erica asked what I thought about going up to a random house and asking for directions (and hoping they might actually give us a ride home). So we approached a house and then saw some nearby people in their yard and headed over there. We didn't make it to the people that we had seen (they disappeared in the time it took us to get there), but we did find a guy (jerry) who was helping his great aunt out of the car. So we asked for directions and he said it was at least three miles to highway 192 (not to mention the trek from there). So we took off and walked a ways. Granted we were tired, but his 2-3 miles seemed much farther than that. We asked a random guy on a bike, who was not totally there and gave us directions to some major highways that went in the opposite directions and would take us north instead of south. About the time we were going to say goodbye to him, a truck pulled up, honked and parked a little ways up from us. He asked if it was a friend and I thought (I sure hope so).

We walked up and sure enough it was Jerry, our newfound friend from Mexico City. He offered us a ride home and we jumped into his truck. It was definitely at least 5-7 miles back and he told us that if we want a good time to give him a call. :-) He offered to buy us a drink or dinner, but we got him to just take us close to where we're staying. But we do now know a bit more of Kissimmee, Florida, where we will be for the next few weeks. Fun times.