77:Gulf of Mexico:Hunting for hillbillies
Still no complaints about the weather as I made my way through the farms and across the highways south back to the I-10 but there wasn’t really a lot to see. I was eating up the miles but I wasn’t really seeing the ‘south’ that I was expecting. No hill billies sitting on their porches, no crazy people walking around, all rather disappointing. :p Lots of expensive cars, nice houses, lots of money. I had chosen a route that wasn’t taking me past any interesting sights. I would check my map for things on the way and wasn’t really seeing much in that regard. I saw a sign for the USS Alabama battleship site down on the coast and that wasn’t too far off the Interstate so that seemed like a good idea. Of course I got there at 4.15pm and was greeted with the sign telling me the last ticket was sold at 4pm. I still got out and had a look, took a few pictures but it would have been a lot nicer to get inside and have a look.
74:Ocean Park:The plan wasn’t to get shot!!
Crazy Miriam and Patrick had left that morning at 4am to get back to Miami for a gig the next night so I met them at the junction of the Interstates for a final eggy-basket breakfast and to get my pillow back! Shall never the twain meet once more? Who knows, Im going south, she’s going to Italy. Well after her paying gig in Miami. I made myself comfortable and gunned my engine down the highway west. I rode the frequencies looking for something good to listen to. 90% is either ‘god-rock’, ‘god-country’ or ’god-chat/rants’ so plainly not for me. I would listen to it occasionally for pure comedy value, some of the stuff they come out with is absolutely hilarious to a true non-believer like myself. The other 5% is just country which is also occasionally side splitting. I will have to find a link to ‘Christmas Carol’ and post it here, I was crying with laughter as I drove down the highway from the horrendous clichés and terrible rhymes. 2 ½ % you get an R&B station which is usually better to listen to than any of the other crap and then occasionally the state will re-transmit National Public Radio, which at least doesn’t tell you its ‘fair and impartial’ like the fox news radio does… if they’re telling you that, it isn’t and it isn’t!
69:Charleston:New Old Money
I had an amusing conversation with the lady who checked me out of the campground who asked where I was from said she couldn’t understand my accent and would I talk slower. She then asked if I could understand her and I replied ‘Of course, you should watch more English Television’ but you could see the confusion on her face from such a simple sentence. America and England, two nations divided by one language. I did get a useful snippet of information from her though as she advised me that I could use my camping permit to get into the lighthouse for free. This wasn’t strictly true as I would find out so drove on the couple of miles down to the next park to have a look…
63:Cape Canaveral:Clean up time
Well, the next day I was rather embarrassed but dearest Miriam seemed to be very understanding. I guess she has to deal with peoples reactions to her slightly psychotic behaviour all the time :p So we ended up parting on good terms, no thanks to me. She drove South down the I-95, I jumped on Highway 1 and followed the coast North. I can’t believe its Mid-November.
60: Palm Beach-Stuck in the middle with you…
I was very happy I hadn’t been drinking that whiskey at 3am when I took a look at Randy’s face. It was 10am and he was 2 hours late for work. He took some time to show me his weapon though and I got shot… I meant I got A shot. Always get them confused. He took out the magazine and checked the chamber, a real pro and apparently a deputized cop. Not someone you want to be insulting while drunk but then I always get away with it when Im around WPC Tim Keenan :p
Everyone had seemed to disappear in the night, Randy ran off to work so that just left myself, John and Carrine to head off for breakfast. I did a bit of work as payment for my accommodation first and help do some wall scrapping. Very therapeutic I think.
Naples : Go west my boy!
We had planned on doing a Victorian Secret fashion shoot at the
Everglades National Park: Gurl! You bess be crazie playing wit tha alig8tors in tha Evaglades! Shiiiiit!
Miriams attempts at rising at 9am to catch her class were in vain and I dragged myself off her couch to wake her about 10 minutes before she was supposed to be there. We used the extra time to pack her things and decided it would be easiest for me to drive her to University and then we could leave as soon as she was done. Why this was a good idea was never explained to me since she lived North and the
Florida : Hey Markey you’re in the keys
The keys are Florida’s holiday capital it seems and there are loads of them all connected by concrete bridges down to Key West where you are then only 90 miles from Cuba. The Weather was pretty crumby, here I was ready to get a tan and it rained on and off all day. I’m sure lots of people have seen True Lies, indeed I saw it the first time I was in the States, we watched it in Virginia Beach and nearly died walking along the highway to the cinema from all the traffic. The bridges in the keys were where they filmed the sequence where Jamie Lee Curtis is pulled from her car as it drops off the bridge. You can see where they repaired the railings to make it look used as further down the bridge was in very poor condition. I now have the urgent desire to watch it again 
Florida : If Im in Florida why is it raining??
Thanks to the power of the Internet I found out holding down some buttons on the dash would put my van into a test mode and at least allow me to have cold air blowing so that was good. I also splurged $80 on a cooler in Walmart which was pretty big but seems to work ok. Wednesday was when the weather changed though and after a sunny morning it rained most of the afternoon. I had a fun afternoon looking for a place to wash my clothes. The area I was driving through was very posh and all I could see were dry cleaning places. Eventually I found somewhere and got myself sorted out, seemed to cost a fortune though. I got off highway 1 and went a bit closer to the coast, it was raining when I went past the Burt Reynolds museum and state park or I might have stopped for a look. The weather picked up after a few hours though so I pulled into another park and went for a swim with my new camera. The Pentax Optio w30 is really quite cool especially as its waterproof. I think the people on the beach thought I was mad going in the water with a camera but where better to test it out. Still seems to work… I found a Walmart to sleep in that night which was ok, but got quite paranoid by the security that kept cruising past and had trouble sleeping as it was so damn humid. But at least there were no mosquitos…
Titusville, Fl: We have lift off
When I woke up I was surrounded by cars and the fans were making a slight noise. My battery was dead but I had made it. The skies were slightly cloudy but it was sunny, warm, and looked pretty good to me. However Im not a rocket scientist! I said ‘hi’ to the 3 retirees in the car next to mine ‘um, can I get a jump?’. Thank god I had bought some leads for $8 the day before. ‘Sure’ said the guy and pulled forward, popped his hood and …. no battery. It was under the back seat for some reason. The guy in the big SUV saw what was going on and jumped at the chance to help out, despite nearly losing his spot to some cranky woman as we got connected. It fired up ok which wasn’t my previous experience at jumping cars (last time I was messing around in the work car park for 2 hours getting the damn thing going). I left it charging and put on the radio, seemed like there was some ice build up somewhere which might cause a problem. I chatted to my fellow viewers for a while ‘no Im not from London’ and made myself busy tidying up my car. There was stuff everywhere and it was going to be annoying if I couldn’t find something. I sorted out my cameras, set up my point and shoot on the roof on 10 second interval mode and watched the sky and the now rapidly filling grass verge.
New York : Tensing for the sprint south….
After the excitement of the previous night we weren’t up until late, Marie went out to buy a new phone while I lazed around. We went out for bagels in a cool little store nearby and decided what to do with the rest of the day. I wanted to go to a legendary camera store which was closed the previous day so we set off to walk most of the way there. It was hot and sunny again and, despite my protesting feet, another perfect day to spend in one of my favourite cities in the world. I was really going to be putting the miles in on those shoes, new or not. We took a subway a few stops since the store was going to close reasonably early and its a good job we did. The place was a mad house! Its jewish owned and run, which means its closed on Saturday so it was full of local shoppers who packed the place out. It was a huge store anyway and they stock everything. I got given a catalogue on the way in which was 3 cm thick and despite the masses of staff still had to queue to ask questions. I had wanted to buy a big telephoto zoom but I was still waiting on my last pay cheque so decided to hold off. I did pick up a nice point and shoot though which will now live in my pocket when I need something convienient to take with me. The store has a set of tracks that deliver the items to the assistant within a couple of minutes that is a wonder to see. They didn’t have the elusive backpack I was after though, that will be a job for ebay I think…
The road to New York City
I managed to haul my ass out of bed at 10am or so and sorted my stuff out. Renae had mailed me the previous night to say there was a NYC party on that night and when that happens it usually means something. She needed someone to go to a gig she wanted to see too so my next stop looked like New York. I went and got the car, loaded up and then what? NYC was quite close, only about 4 hours away and the gathering wasn’t until 9pm so I had time to kill. I decided to see something of Rhode Island so started driving south. I grabbed some lunch in Providence which is the state capital but you would never guess it from looking at it, it’s tiny. I carried on down to Newport and stopped at some mall for a couple of hours for some supplies, I went to the dollar store and got basic camping and cleaning gear as well as some stuff from Radioshack as my power inverter was lost in my little bag. I was still on a budget of sorts though so refused to get a $20 tape adapter. Shocking prices. I had a minor heart attack when I got back and found I had walked off and left my trunk wide open!
Snoring Bears in the wood
The 2 polish girls Andres and I had stayed awake until 4.30am didn’t turn up until the next morning, seems like they had a long night and they crashed right away. I spent an hour rearranging my backpack for the camping trip I had arranged through couchsurfing. We (well it wasn’t just me) were a bit dissorganised though and we didn’t leave montreal until gone noon and we still needed to go food shopping for the trip. The attendees were myself, Renae from Perth Australia, Mouina from Morrocco and Daniella from Mexico. The last two are studying in Montreal and saw it as a good chance to see some of the local flora and fauna near their new home cities. We stopped off on the Interstate and stocked up on Tortillas, fruit and Beer.
Ah, the romance of getting drenched.
At the hostel I had left a note seeing if anyone wanted to come to the falls on monday morning, but there were no takers! Stupid fools were paying $40 a pop to take the bus down and I only wanted a bit for gas. The fools. I managed to persuade Britni to come along though so I wasn’t going to be lonely. We hit the road with the usual confusion with Marta the tomtom girl sending us all over the place and had a good sing song on the way down, now I know what Styx sound like! Proper highway driving in the day is much more intense, but its only 1 1/2 hours away.
I was slightly confused about the whole thing, as you are when you have never been anywhere, but Im glad I saw it in Canada, they have a nicer view I reckon. We also had the wind coming to us so got all the spray as well which was fun Its a real tourist trap, unsuprisingly, but was nice to be there and check it out. We had another lovely day, sunny and clear, rainbows from the falls. Was a nice place to spend a couple of hoursShame I can’t post any cliched photos yet, but they will come!
We headed back and went for Pizza Pizza, no rats this time but was nice to be by the lake near the harbour as the sun set, I gave a pathetic salsa lesson on the stage, I really need to get drunk and go dancing. Seemed like a really short day somehow, but it took a lot of driving. We drove back up to the airport to drop off my car and wished the striking workers luck in their struggle against the man! I wonder what to do about the 2 parking tickets I got…? :p
Now we had a dilema as Britni should have been back at work the next day but couldn’t get back in time and we didn’t want to impose on Judy again so we started looking for a place to stay. The guidebook gave us some clues but we were still out of luck after a dozen phone calls, we didn;t really want to pay $320 for the honeymoon suite at some posh hotel.so we headed back to the scary place we had done a u-turn earlier.
No needles under the bed, no blood, just a big spider on the ceiling and a reasonable price. The guy at the reception was kinda scary, but it was late, we were tired and I doubt we would find anything else better. For me it had to beat the car and Judy’d floor by a considerable margin!