Okay, I’m not really built for vacations. Relaxation only makes me nervous. If I’m not doing something, I’m thinking about what I’m not accomplishing. Also, I wasn’t ready for this vacation, because I have too much work to do at the office.
That’s a warning that this day’s events might not sound exciting, but events will improve as the days of vacation increase in number.
We are staying at my in-laws’ double-wide in Polynesian Village, but I can’t tell it’s a double-wide. It looks like a modest but more than adequate house. This is the beginning of Floridian summer, so people keep their windows open and the world is moderately humid and warm. We live in upstate New York in a home without air conditioning, so these temperatures are like any mild summer day to us.
Unfortunately, I didn’t sleep well last night. Nancy is still sick with whatever it was that made Tim sick. (I’m immune to whatever illness my family contracts, tho I’ve no idea why.) And she awoke, coughing, many times during the night. Each time, I also awoke, disrupting my usually deep sleep. I ended up having mild nightmares in which something ominous was about to happen, but I never knew what and the event never took place, yet the experience remained unsettling.
So I slept in a little—late enough for my in-laws to say, “Good afternoon,” to me when I awoke, but that means anytime after 7 am. Almost immediately after awaking, I was sitting on the porch, chatting with the Mikes when a visitor arrived. (I call my in-laws’ “the Mikes” for obvious reasons: it isn’t “Mom and Dad” and it isn’t their real names, so I don’t feel uncomfortable using it to refer to them.) Our visitor was Garnet Dirr, a nice lady from Indiana, who chatted with us for a while. There I was, unwashed, unshaven (for two days), wearing glasses. The only positive development was that it no longer mattered that I hadn’t combed my hair.
During our conversation, Nancy and I heard the quiet voice of a cat somewhere, but we couldn’t find the cat. Later, we learned this was because we had heard the call of a catbird. At one point, a giant white egret swooped thru the neighborhood, flying low between two houses across the street from us.
I spent a good part of the day catching up on work, including a small report I needed to distribute today. Then I wrote and posted the blog for yesterday and relaxed a little. Everyone else went to the beach, returning in a couple of hours with a handful of shark’s teeth and a few shells.
As a service to the family, I made a simple teriyaki salmon with rice for dinner, which turned out just right for once. After dinner, Nancy, Tim and I bicycled around this peaceful complex (built, like Dante’s Hell, on the concept of concentric circles) and visited with Nancy’s Aunt Joan (who, strangely enough, lives about a block from her sister).
We also discovered today that Joan’s son Peter and his family were coming today. They arrived after ten (about when we did last night), and we showed up in time to help them unpack. We stayed for a while having fun talking to everyone, including the two smallest girls (Caroline and Sophie) who were a bit wound up after a seventeen-hour drive.
Earlier in the evening, Tim and I drove out to the entrance to the park in search of the armadillo we found yesterday. We drove our bikes off the road and onto the grass, with our lights cutting a path into the night, when suddenly we found a pair of armadillos before us. We stopped about five feet from them, enjoying the pleasure of seeing these weird beasts, something like armored opossums. After about a minute, one of the armadillos noticed we were standing there shining lights on them and it bolted around us (missing me by about a foot) and crashed into the woods, causing a terrible ruckus for such a small animal.
The other armadillo continued to nuzzle the ground, unperturbed. After a while, it stood on its hind legs, sniffing the air, so we figured this was the same armadillo we saw yesterday. We turned quietly and rode away, leaving him to smell the dark.
Sign of the Day: Congradulations Greg on Your GED
Quote of the Day (Geof to Tim, who was looking for a bug in Aunt Joan’s kitchen drawers): Tim, we’ve got food at home!
The Mikes’, North Easter Island Circle, Englewood, Florida
So back to yesterday: April 8th.
There is no reasonable way to accurately recount a fifteen-hour, thousand-mile road trip, the main feature of which has to be tedium. Instead, we’ll present a few impressions, barely held together by a thread of thought.
Waking at 6 am was quite a treat after only a few hours of sleep, but we couldn’t delay. We had a brief breakfast, chatted with Betsy and Steve, and even had the opportunity to talk to and play with five-year-old Shannon as well. But we had to leave, so we started out (a little late) at 7:20.
Betsy and Steve live in a wooded development that hasn’t flattened the landscape into uniformity. The roads thru the woods dip and swerve following the contours of the land—all of which is more pleasant in the morning than during the dark of night. Wolf Trap is in the same neighborhood. The world is peaceful here, but it isn’t the real world. The real world is the Beltway, and we made it there in only a few minutes, moving from 15 to 65 miles per hour in the same amount of time. Our fear was that the famed “Mixing Bowl”—where competing arms of the highway fold into and over one another, where flat roads and vaulting overpasses meet construction—would slow us way down. But we timed our arrival just right, and we were delayed only about five minutes, without ever coming to a complete stop.
Then we were on I-95, that unfabled strip of interstate highway that I call the Continental Rut. Heavy traffic streams over it continually, moving us north and south. Today’s travel was punctuated by occasional but fairly frequent instances of truck tires blowing. The broken pieces of huge truck tires littered the highway. A couple of times, we needed to change position to avoid flying debris. Once a huge strip of rubber was floating high in the air, just about even with the top of the truck and flipping over slowly in the air, everything so slow you’d think we’d slowed down a videotape. Usually, we merely swerved slightly around the burst shards of black tires in the roadway.
For much of the trip, we listened to National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice testify about the current administration’s preparations for potential terrorist attacks in early 2001. At some level this was a humorous event. Interrogators, Democrats and Republicans, would ask pointed questions or simply make statements meant to support or undermine the administration. Condi would do anything she could never to say anything besides what was on her script (“This was a systemic problem, and there were ongoing cultural issues that constricted communication”—I paraphrase). And everyone used Beltway jargon: “the August 6th PDB” [Presidential daily briefing], “the President tasked the FBI,” “no actionable intelligence,” and (in the answers) massive amounts of the passive voice (telling us that no-one in particular was responsible for any actions or non-actions, telling us that reality or existence in general was the only actor worth pointing out in this play).
In Richmond, Virginia, there is a Powhite Highway. Being a boy from Tennessee (when I feel like it), I found this quite humorous. In northern South Carolina, many of the interchanges (sets of entrance and exit ramps) were named after people. Imagine for a moment the honor of having an interchange named after you. If you imagine this is a great honor, take a look at one of these interchanges sometime. They are on I-95, and we can send you directions if you need them. This naming of interchanges is similar to the situation in New York’s Capital District, where we name everything after state senator Joe Bruno. He has a small stadium named after him (paid for with money he created in the state’s coffers), and our airport is graced with his bronze bust. All of this would be funny enough if Bruno were no longer with us in the flesh, but instead he remains the leader of the state senate.
I-95 is only a four-lane highway most of its length, but in Georgia it briefly widens to three lanes in each direction. This feature doesn’t last for long. Eventually, we leave I-95 and begin to move west and south thru the center of Florida. While driving south on 301, I looked around at the flat, wooded landscape, decorated with modest homes, abandoned trailers, and palmettos, and I said, This is the Florida of The Yearling. Nancy agreed—just about an hour before we passed a sign for Marjorie Rawlings’ home and one for The Yearling Restaurant. The latter listed the various game they served, including cooter (whatever that is). This part of Highway 301 is the I.B. “Skeet” Thrasher Highway.
We drove finally onto I-75 and deep into the night. I drove at almost 80mph thru the dark and over swift curves in the road. Fear slows me down, so I didn’t worry about crashing. My only goal, thirteen miles into the trip, was arrival. At one flat point in the road, we ran across a beautiful sight: hundreds of headlights approaching us on the other side of the road, interspersed with the glittering lights of state troopers’ cars. The troopers’ lights had a beautiful crystalline flicker, one I didn’t appreciate when one of the cars twisted itself away from this tableau just as we were passing it. (The car never entered the highway, but nonetheless it gave my heart a chase.)
Soon enough, we were off the highway and driving thru Englewood. The roads grew dark, but we found our way, we remembered our last trip here six years ago. As we pulled into Polynesian Village (the retirement community where my in-laws live) we saw an armadillo searching for food at the side of the road. As we waited and watched, it rose onto its hind legs, sniffing the air, its armor shining in our headlights.
Sign of the Day: Towels by the Pound
Quote of the Day:
Nancy: What license plate is that?
Geof: New Mexico.
Nancy: Oh, wow. We gotta live there. They have the best plates.
