Florida Flashbacks

I don’t know what happens when I’m on the road. Either I don’t have the time to spew forth the considerable bile I stockpile or I don’t stockpile the bile in the first place. I have pages of things written down, some quite drunkenly, but nothing I can be bothered to rewrite and share with the world. So, I’ll toss at you a few things I’ve encountered, survived, or inflicted on this latest trip to the real sunny south.

• If you lose the ability to form the written word, fall in the ocean, take meaningless photographs of your footsteps in the sand on a pitch black night and realize your brand new iPod headphones are hanging outside the car door being dragged along the highway at 30 mph only after five miles travel – you’ve probably had a very good night.
• When a King Tut exhibit – sans King – reminds you of the re-release of Star Wars you’re either entirely too much a Star Wars fan or too much a historian. Or, probably the only person in your age group that saw both when they made their first round in the late 70s. I’m special.

• Drinking Guinness just off the beach in a very well appointed, converted garage with the doors open on a breezy Saturday afternoon with the sun shining is enough to make even me reconsider my “I’ll never live in Florida” pledge.

• I still can’t get over rising up in the morning, stretching in the warm sun and picking an orange from the tree for a pre-breakfast snack. It blows my mind. I hope I never get used to it.

• It’s very, very hard for me to drive past Disney World without turning left at the Mickey Mouse high-voltage tower. I love that place.

• Anybody else ever had a greasy cheeseburger and an imported beer in a place called Yee Haw Junction? Didn’t think so.

• How about boiled peanuts in a fish camp on Lake Okeechobee?

• Ropa Vieja and Sangria may be God’s perfect meal.

• I think I’m ready to go home.

• ADDENDUM! I can’t believe I forgot this! I don’t witness many miracles but I saw one down there. Cruising up I-95 at 65 mph when a shovel came flying off a truck in front of me. I swear to God the handle looked to be about twelve feet in diameter as it headed directly for my head, then bounced one way, then another, bounding end for end down the highway always in my path. Somehow, I don’t really know how, I dodged the shovel and managed to basically stay in my own lane – not hitting any of the other rush hour commuters.

  I don’t care what you say, that’s a goddamned miracle.