Tonight's Belgian Drama: Mousse and Missing Person!

So Bennie, Eric and the kids insisted on making a Belgian dish tonight for dinner, so we went out this morning and got groceries from the local Wal-Mart (I also made sure that Bennie and crew leave town with a bottle of Short Sugar's barbecue sauce). Dinner was stuffed peppers, some kind of neatly cooked stuffed tomato which defies easy description, and potatoes and it was all awesomely delicious!!

But around 3:30 this afternoon, Eric went for a walk. And didn't come back.

Long story short, we had to call 911 and have Rockingham County Sheriff's Department look for him. A short while later a deputy that I've known for many years pulled into my driveway and said that he'd found Eric walking further up the road...

Turned out that the dude went for a walk awright. He walked more than five miles east through the woods, then hiked down a road he recognized from earlier today and headed back along U.S. 158.

All in all that was around FIFTEEN MILES that Eric - a Belgian citizen who speaks only French and extremely little English - walked through strange terrain in a foreign land, and arrived right back home ('cept for about 1/5th of a mile's drive that Bennie and I gave him on the return leg).

Are these folks from Belgium a hardy breed, or what?? :-)

Anyhoo, we are currently eating Belgian chocolate mousse (yummy!) and watching Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones in French (not subtitles, real French dubbing, thank goodness for DVD technology). I speak very little French, but as it's a Star Wars movie I understand it perfectly anyway :-P

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Exactly two thousand, nine hundred and forty-five miles later...

Man oh man, I really need a laptop now, don't I?

Lisa and I arrived back home almost forty minutes ago. Already stuff is piled up on the plate that I'll have to address in the next few days. No rest for the wicked, eh? Next time, I'll try to blog some from the road too.

But right now, after a journey of epic proportions, I'm thankful for the adventure, for having a wonderful wife and best friend to share it with, and that God brought us back home. Fittingly, we crossed the border with Virginia right as James Taylor's "Carolina In My Mind" was playing on my iPod.

In the next few days, expect a number of write-ups and YouTube-hosted video about what happened, which entailed chasing down Amish farmers, animatronic cows, the longest road trip to a barbecue joint ever, snogging Ukrainians and Bollywood hopefuls, absolute horror at eighteen-hundred feet, watching The Dark Knight on opening day in another country, at least seven weddings in one afternoon, how we celebrated our anniversary, what can only be described as Providence near Providence, the Big Apple at night, breaking a bunch of laws on the Turnpike... and everything in between.

More soon.

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Fifteen years since...

"Dear Lord, am I really doing this?!" A Few Good Men. Red eye over England. Bennie and her mom. Mayhem in the marketplace. The brothers. Lots of wine. The village countryside. The pissing statue. The dark hospital. The odd pizza. "Coke is better than beer!" The American compatriots. A prophecy fulfilled. The peculiar picnic. A strange place to celebrate the Fourth of July. The haunted ruins. The jibber-jabbering Belgian lady. Helping the three Russian students. A kiss on the hand for a real queen. "Le stupid American!" The Piano. Andre's crazy cop cousin. The towering fortress on the river. The blood of Jesus Christ. Real magic. Cows at 150 miles per hour. The Eiffel Tower. The Bosnian refugees. The dead body in the alley. The Maquisard. The hunt for the Hard Rock Cafe. The singing drunk Frenchman. The four Dutch lasses. The unicycling saxaphonist. The Canadian Richard Petty fan. The two Valley Girls. Alive with medical commentary by Bennie. The long walk straight up. Gazing toward Hamburg. "She's out there somewhere." The canal tour. The carnival. Going home. Business class. Discussing Napoleon with a fellow passenger. Home Alone 2. Seeing the World Trade Center towers for the first and last time. The missionary family. Touchdown at Raleigh-Durham. Back.

And there was more, much more, that I am still leaving out from what was my first big adventure in the great wide world, that started fifteen years ago today.

Just the first. There have been others since then. And there will no doubt be many more in the years to come.

Zavel, if by some chance you ever read this: I found Christy. It took me over ten years, but I found her and she was every bit as sweet and beautiful as you described her to be. And I passed along your message to her, too. I don't know if you will get to know that but when I think about how it was that I found her, anything is possible.

Shawn, if you ever read this, I still have the flag that you gave me, dude!

Amazing how something that happened fifteen years ago can still impact one's life.

Anyhoo, it was one of the greatest times of my entire life, and I thought it was worth making a note of here :-)

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