In the words of the second-in-charge at Ron Burgundy's news station, "This is a big one"...

Having not drunk in 12 days we arrived in leafy (or in Tom's words "tree-ey") Durham looking forward to a night on the tiles. Once Trudy had convinced Tom to stay out past his bed-time (9pm) our inner compass led us from the traditional Irish Bar to a traditional American Bar where we were served our beers in what appeared to be egg cups. Trudy took umbrage to this and demanded to know why the person next to us had been served a "proper beer" and we hadn't? The owner of the big beer in question turned out to be former Durham Bulls PR Director and all-round awesome human being Matt Demargel who explained that for an extra dollar we too could receive a regular English pint! English drinking was resumed shortly thereafter with Matt taking us on a tour of Durham's finest bars.

Thanks to tour-guide Matt we were able to experience Durham to the full - we gatecrashed brunches, toured the Durham Bulls baseball stadium, ate pumpkin flavoured ice-cream, smashed baseballs in pro baller Chris Richard's batting cage (where Tom almost weed in his knickers from happiness), visited the world HQ of Burt's Bees (where Trudy couldn't stop smiling, especially when she was invited to take a prototype of BB's newest lipbalm away with her), toured American Tobacco, spent the whole of Saturday in Devine's Sports Bar (against her will and over 7 hours, Trudy was schooled in the intricacies of American Football - thank the Lord that alcohol was on sale), were taken out in Raleigh by fiery blonde bombshell Ashley and her dentist Rob (who elected to climb trees in Middle School rather than fire up the facial solarium), shot some pool in The Green Room (as featured in Kevin Costner's baseball classic Bull Durham) with such luminaries as Durham's favourite Mayor Barry, Spot and pool hustler Rick (watching Rick play pool against the owner of TGR was like watching Chuck Norris fight Mr T.), and enjoyed the Durham Art Walk. Apologies for the list format there...

We wanted to visit the Outer Banks but American public transport being what it is, we hired a car for the journey. Tom was alarmed to learn that not only would he have to drive the car on the wrong side of the road, but that he was also going to have to sit on the wrong side of the car as well as learn how to drive an automatic. The four hour journey to Elizabeth City in the dark saw a terrified Trudy assuming the brace position (Tom would like to point out at this point that the brace position only enables investigators to identify bodies after the event by preserving dental records) and intermittently screaming at Tom to get out of the verge/ hard shoulder/ deer/ truck/ stop falling asleep at the wheel ("I'm only resting my eyes"). You know what they say when about being a passenger in a car driven by Tom: like Mother, like Daughter!

The Outer Banks was truly lovely although we didn't see any wild ponies, probably due to the fact that the fog reduced visibility to 1 inch (cue more terrified, panicky screaming from Trudy). Tom recalls a particularly funny moment as we were crossing a long, thin and treacherous bridge and birds started to appear out of the fog - to paraphrase Trudy: "They're attacking us, they're trying to push us off the bridge to pick our bones clean, they're not seagulls they're clearly eagles and vultures".

We also stayed in Morehead City but nothing happened there.

We moved onwards to Hickory (via Durham again!) to stay with James whom we met on the boat to New York for Thanksgiving (we warned you James, if you invite us we WILL come to your house). We stepped down from the Greyhound bus (rubbish compared to this Blog's sponsor, Megabus) into the Hickory bus station (a petrol station which thoroughly confused Tom - "Trudy, are you certain that this is the right Hickory?"). (By the way, we (mainly Tom) hope you enjoy the 4 CONSECUTIVE punctuation marks right there, that doesn't happen often - drink it in).

We were joined at James's by Mike (again, whom we met on the boat) who we must applaud for driving 12 hours to be here for Thanksgiving. He came with his usual good humour, lots of beer and a shared love of South Park. He did however let slip the American ice conspiracy which Trudy has figured out - Tom however is still scratching his head on this one! Trudy was not shocked to find that the 300 shrimp (prawns) we were treated to last night were sitting proudly in salad bowls on a bed of ice. The beers at James's were served out of an ice-filled cool box (which inexplicably Mike was hugging).

Today is Thanksgiving so we're going to sign off now so that we can indulge in some turkey, liver mush (?), drink, good company and South Park ("as is traditional, of course"). We'd like to close by wishing everybody a Happy Thanksgiving (not you David), particularly the awesome people of Durham who are currently enjoying a mixture of Thanksgiving and Lord of the Rings at Mayor Barry's luxury pad (he will be happy to explain the reasoning behind the party's theme). We'd also like to thank the people who have shown us the true spirit of Southern hospitality (a huge thank you to James and Matt here).