31 Aug -5 Sept. 2010
Abandon all hope ye who enter here...
Welcome to the state where driving is more like wielding a 6,000 pound ricocheting bullet. Those sweet deathbedding retirees apparently tail gate more than Bama football fans, pull out without bothering to check a trajectory more than high schoolers, and don’t pay attention or care like, well, geriatrics patients; limits and laws are for the deft of sight anyway.
I entered the Florida panhandle via highway I-10 but left it for the more scenic H-98 as soon as I hit Pensacola. As I write the name I can’t help but wonder if the city is a giant CocaCola add: ‘Think Cola’ or if it’s talking about the tail end of Florida. Some of you Spanish speakers might pick up on that (in short, ‘pensar’ is to think and ‘cola’ is tail or cola as in Coke). Anyway, the slower, scenic H-98 afforded me some short sprints out to white sandy beaches for picturesque glimpses of what one might get to relax on if they didn’t have to be in Orlando before 9pm. I stayed only long enough to not get parking tickets or even noticed had you looked up twice within a 5 minute period from your sun lounging somewhere near Panama City Beach. (Also, as I was requested to bring back tar balls, I’d like add that I saw none to speak of, but then, again, I was brief).
Toll road trolls had me bummed about coming into Orlando. I thought about the 8, 14, even 24 Euros I’d handed over to Spain’s tenebrous toll toiling Ogres and now here I am getting tolled to drive through one lane construction at 45 mph. What a scam! But wait… only 80cents… what a scam.
Welcome to Miami Will Smith, the bitter center of soulless drivers and imbecilic pedestrians, ridiculously ignorant to their fellow man. I feel if they had been as intelligent as they are rude CSI Miami would have turned into Sonny Crockett’s worst serial killing nightmare. With the treachery culminating in Miami, I never felt so close to the river Styx as I crossed into the city.
Luckily the weather doesn’t follow suit. I arrived somewhere between Danielle and Igor and had 3 days of immaculate conditions. There was one day of rain which I spent in sweltering and sunny Key West and reached the southern-most point in the continental U.S. It was christened with a tour of Hemmingway’s ‘six-toed cat pad’ by a guide lost somewhere between a theatrical and horrendously monotonous performance, whose come-hither voice was lost in another parallel between an Annie Oakley cadency and a Southern Drawl, real pointedly timed and after time obnoxious… perhaps more notable was how she carried her persona with the same awkward rhythm in a buoying like hop and almost wildly flailing arm march. The mansion with guest house is now occupied by several dozen felines many with a common six-toe characteristic.
And what trip to the Keys would be complete without ‘parrotheading’ it up in the touristiest restaurant there is, drinking a margarita, and listening to a ‘Jimmy Buffet sound-a-like’ cover songs by people like the Mississippi native himself, Jimmy Buffet.
Two for one beers and it was off to catch the sunset at Bahia Honda (pronounced ‘Bah-EE-ah Own-dah’ and meaning ‘Deep Bay’ in English) State Park about half-way back to Miami. If you are looking for a great place to catch the sunset near Key West it’s here; not because of the small mosquito infested beach, but because there is still a piece of the old Overseas Highway maintained intact to walk up and catch an elevated view of the lowering sun.
Ending with appreciation, the Latin influence culture and food was unlike any I’ve been exposed to; whereas in New York and L.A. they are less integrated into the conglomerate quotidian life, in Miami there is no guarded border feeling and hearing the alluring singing of Caribbean idiom is welcomed not feared.
Finally, as the circular journey begins to transpire into a metaphoric Dante’esque ascension, with the help of my Beatrice, the lovely LeAnne spotted in a few of the photos, I was lead out of the ‘city of Dis’ without ailment and a promise in a land I once knew even less of. From here the ascension will begin and my journey will round the corner heading West as I try to make it to my next destination North Carolina.
Florida may not have been a cherub haven on the road…
…but it was definitely for lovers
.s.
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