Not a Hiking People, Either

I ♥ oceans, but I accept that some people ♥ mountains.

For them, there was Secretly Y'All, Tell Me a Story at Balliceaux tonight. Or, excuse me, Kampot at Balliceaux, as the re-formulated kitchen is now called.

That's right, stories about mountains at what amounts to an entirely new restaurant concept inside a mostly familiar setting.

Decor or art installation? Three small vintage TV (2 black and white, 1 color) sets mounted over the bar showing an endless loop of retro bike footage, interspersed with a fake snake (head rearing back) between TVs and a nearby pastel statue of Mary (with picaresque garland). You make the call.

But what to eat, what to drink at this new spot with the likes of Miguel playing overhead?

When I heard they had housemade root beer, I was thrilled, doubly so when a tall glass of creamy, foam-covered root beer showed up. I've had housemade root beer before - I'm quite fond of Weeping Radish's - but never with a head like this on it.

It was such terrific root beer I'd go back just for that.

But they didn't only score in the libations department because everything we ordered was pretty tasty. Our server began by explaining the tapas concept to us (hopefully that bit of unnecessary speech-giving will cease and desist soon) and we wasted no time making check marks next to ones that sounded promising on the menu.

Fried chicken skins because yes (the drier texture beginning uninterestingly but becoming more appealing after several bites). Caramelized boneless chicken thigh (because we wondered about a connection between those skins and thighs and inquiring minds wanted to know) with a piquant boost from pickled cabbage.

Grilled, marinated pork shoulder (because some judge a kitchen by its pig) with a sassy jaew sauce that, if it got too hot on the tongue, could be cooled down with iced yu choy leaves brought at the same time.

I didn't need it, but some people did.

One of the brightest tastes was the lobster and local greens Siam-wich (clever, sort of) with Kampot lemon vinaigrette. My unintended brilliance was in ordering cabbage 3 ways - Thai basil, chili, and Virginia peanuts - which provided a perfectly balanced plate of crunch and flavor to complement all the protein courses.

As the dance party king commented later when I told him about the meal, "We used to have no great Asian and now it's exploding everywhere." They say it's all about timing and I suppose that applies as much to restaurant trends as to romance.

The crowds began arriving for storytelling, so we moved to the back (on the way a woman stopped me and said, "I love your metal straw." Cue Jackson Browne story), where chairs had been set up in rows all the way to the back wall, the first time I'd seen that. Even so, plenty of people wound up standing or sitting on the floor.

With larger, younger crowds come more younger storytellers and tonight's group proved that in spades. With a theme of "mountains," we heard from more than a few hikers and mountain-huggers.

Taylor had gone to Alaska to find herself, as told in her story "Fire Weed," in which she para- glided (or, as she put it, jumped off mountains with strangers) in the rain. Metaphors followed.

Richard, a semi-regular legend at Secretly Y'All (also, co-organizer Colin's father, but that's not why we enjoy his stories so much), turned out to be a native of West Virginia (hence his story's title, "The Mountain State"), with the funniest bit being about how being a newsboy delivering in the hills gave him strong, muscular calves.

"Still the strongest part of my body," he bragged, lifting his legs. "Wanna feel them?" Awkward on purpose is always funny.

Joe's story, "I Guess I Like Hiking" concerned him being shorter and fatter as a teen. "But what I lacked in height and cool, I made up for in succumbing to peer pressure." He scored points by pooping in the woods on a hike because this is what impresses 15-year old boys. Succumbing naturally led to his first pot-smoking experience, which involved Dads who hiked slowly, a Bic pen and tin foil.

I don't pretend to understand.

Another story involved taking a selfie on Mount Everest after being able to only (only!) climb 18,198 feet. What was dire wasn't that she was oxygen and sleep-deprived - though she was and apparently a girl doesn't look her best when she is - but that her phone was at 4% power when she began her selfie attempts.

For the curious, she was willing to show the photo afterwards. Extra points for show and tell.

Charlie's "Slow Step Saji and the Sermon of the Switchbacks" began on a balcony on Monument Avenue waiting for the sun, moved on to a two-month backpacking trip through Utah and eventually to the end-of-hiking day pleasure of a Snickers bar and stripping off his clothes on top of a mountain.

Can I have the same kind of Snickers bar he's having?

We got a Hiking 101 lecture from Kylie who impressed us with her knowledge of hiking hunger, as in the sheer amount of calories she consumed on the trail (9,000 per day) and the heightened senses that come with being in that state.

Woman claims she smelled detergent in the middle of the wild, only to run into a pack of day hikers in (ah ha!) freshly-laundered clothes 20 minutes away. That's some nose.

Alicia said she was a writer but before we could romanticize that notion, she informed us she works for Capital One, about the least romantic job imaginable.

Her saga involved escaping Giles County and the lifestyle that has sucked her mother and sister back in to its mountainous clutches.

Ain't nothin' romantic abut that.

There was a story about a six month road trip that involved three weeks without a shower, seeing an eagle flying overhead after outdoor sex and a 12-year old being obnoxious on a Sea-Doo (or maybe that's redundant).

They decided to end the trip the day after the high school musical theater group stayed up all night practicing next to their campsite.

Remind me again why people think hiking and camping are fun?

Margaret was very nervous, but not so nervous she couldn't tell us her trail name ("Murder Worm") and that she found family in other hikers.

I liked John's style - he carried his PBR in his shirt's breast pocket for easy access - and gumption. Speaking of his relationship, he said he'd reached the point where it was time to shit or get off the pot.

"This was a shit I wanted to take," he said to explain his decision to propose to his girlfriend. The mystery was why he decided to do it near a mountain (as his GF put it, "We're not a hiking people" Indeed. They moved here from Brooklyn).

Among the highlights of his story: he planned the proposal with his parents (no comment), he did it on Black Friday (a high holy day in his cheapskate family) and after proposing, she grabbed the ring from him, effectively stealing his thunder.

You had to feel for John and his Mickey Rourke sausage fingers.

I didn't have the ♥ to tell him that real romance is David proposing to his girlfriend Maggie on the dance floor after a cheesy '80s cover band plays Journey's "Faithfully" in Urbanna Saturday night.

Oh, yes, that did, too, happen. I saw it on Facebook. But there are no mountains in the northern neck, so they couldn't share that story tonight. Pity.

With three beers in her already, Kathleen attempted to interweave two stories of why she and her girlfriends now qualify as mountain women.

A year after their first camping experience, they decided to re-wild. You heard right, re-wild.

Despite using Air BnB to score a sketchy RV and relying on a case of Coors Light and a bottle of Jack Daniels to sustain them, she believed that the one-time camping trip in Colorado during a hail storm was preparation for anything.

Two things came out of re-wilding: coffee brewed using a sports bra and an empty Coors can and the satisfaction that all the mountain women involved had "worked some shit out," probably about relationships, she guessed.

Unlike past Secretly Y'Alls, I really didn't have a theme-appropriate story to share tonight, even if I were brave enough to try, which I'm not.

My lone pseudo-mountain story involved a date suggesting we hike Humpback Rock. I remember two things from that day: we listened to the new John Mayer record "Heavier Things" on the drive there and that my Witty Fuchsia lipstick melted in the car while we were hiking.

Needless to say, after that kind of trauma, I knew it was time for me to get off the mountain pot. Mercifully, I've never felt the need to re-wild.

Oh, and did I mention I ♥ oceans?