Instant Friends

Sunday, 19 January
Gulf Waters RV Resort (GWRVR) — Port Aransas, Texas
Temps: LO 50F (10C) / Hi 64F (18C)

Haven’t done much more than walks on the beach this past week.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t have something to write about.  I do.  Something that I had been looking forward to for a while now.

The blogosphere is a small one.  I’ve said that before, haven’t I? 

You run across a blog, you read a bit, you exchange a comment or two.  Sometimes you’re like bloggers passing in the night; nothing comes of the virtual encounter.  At other times, however, a friendship develops.  Sometimes the friendship is instantaneous; sometimes it takes a bit of of time to develop.

Abby makes herself right at home at Gulf Waters RV Resort.                                  

Don’t ask me how I found Sue’s blog — The Moho and Other Traveling Tales.  I have no idea.  I may have clicked on a comment she left on another blog, or another blogger may have linked me to her.  It doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that we clicked instantly.

When Sue and I realized that we would both be in Texas, we knew we’d have to make a meet-up between Phaeton Journey’s and MoHo Travels a reality.  In the short time they were in Corpus Christi this week, we made a get together happen twice.

Mui and I had appointments to visit the ophthalmologist for annual check-ups in Corpus Christi on Thursday, so I suggested to Sue that we have lunch at one of the restaurants near NAS CCAD where they were staying.  And that’s how we ended up at Rudy’s BBQ for our first meeting.

Mo (left) and Sue filling up their lunch ‘basket’ at Rudy’s.

I couldn’t say whether the BBQ was good — I’m not an aficionado.  I know what tastes good to me, and the food here did.  I can say that the friendship that germinated on the net, fledged quickly during the meal, and grew to include Mo, the non-blogger of the pair.  Mo might be the quiet one, but she has a sense of humor that became quickly apparent as we all laughed and talked through lunch.

Left: our food Basket.
Right: Sue brings us a couple of ‘plates’.  Did I say that Rudy’s is a rustic place?

After lunch, we followed them back to NAS Corpus Christi where I visited with Sue and Mo at their home on wheels, and met Abby and Jeremy, the fur kids.  While I was with them, Mui took the opportunity to pick up a few more fixings from the commissary for Sunday’s lunch at GWRVR — our second planned meet-up with the MoHo gals.  All too soon, it was time for us to bid a temporary farewell to Sue and Mo, and return to our own home on wheels.

Sunday dawned with sunshine, but even as we were putting the finishing touches on lunch, the breeze cooled down the temperature just enough to make eating on the patio too uncomfortable :-(  When Sue and Mo, accompanied by the well-mannered Miss Abby, arrived shortly after noon, we sat outside long enough to enjoy our adult beverages and hummus, served with pita chips.

That’s not a new hairstyle; that’s the breeze making my hair stand-on-end.

I was really, really bad about taking photos … but because Sue shared some of the ones she took, and gave me permission to use them in this post, I have more than words to describe our day.  Unfortunately, that also means that the photos are of Mui and me, instead of Sue and Mo.  I really do need to get over my shyness over photographing people.  Thanks, Sue; you saved my bacon.

Mui gets ready to put the köfte on the grill.

Initially, we were going to do burgers for lunch.  But then I remembered the many comments Sue had made about how much she enjoyed the Turkish food she ate when she and Mo were in Turkey in 2008.  So, Mui switched the menu around and made some Turkish dishes instead.  The menu included köfte (Turkish ground beef patties [more commonly made with ground lamb in Turkey]); domatesli pilav (rice made with tomatoes); cacık (cold yogurt soup with chopped cucumbers); piyaz (white bean salad); and zeytinyağlı taze fasulye (green beans cooked in olive oil).  Dessert was not homemade — Mui ran out of time; so we had vanilla ice cream and warm chocolate chip cookies.

Too cool to eat on the patio, so we move lunch inside the Phaeton.

I’m cheating; these are the leftovers we had [on Monday] …
same lunch menu that we served Sue and Mo.

We had made tentative plans to go to the birding center after lunch.  In the end, though, we decided to go for a walk on the beach so that Miss Abby could join us as well.  Talking the entire time, we didn’t realize the passage of time and walked farther than we had planned.  Well, we all needed to walk off our lunch, so it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing that our walk ended up being longer than anticipated ;-)

Abby decided to play the ‘shy card’ when I clicked the shutter for this photo of Mo and Sue.

Thanks for a great afternoon, ladies.

Sue and Mo are moving on tomorrow.  Since we’ve extended our stay in Port Aransas until April, who knows, our paths may cross again this spring when they head west again.  If not, we’ll meet again someday … somewhere.

UPDATE:

Sue's side of the story is here.