A Hurricane Vacation

One hundred degrees Fahrenheit and 100% humidity one day and ridiculous winds, rain and crashing waves the next. The weather we experienced on our Florida vacation was extreme to the max. Okay, not quite THE max, but pretty darn close.

Going to Florida as a kid, I got used to the muggy air, then the chill of the a/c cranked to eleven when I went inside. It was exciting to experience different weather and see different plant and animal life in a different part of the continent - yet still watch Fraggle Rock at the same time because we never left our time zone.

When Suz and I went to Florida in August, we experienced hurricane Fay, then scorching days until hurricane Gustav ran past and smacked us around.

Between the vendors on the pier, the coast guard hovering overhead and a school of dolphins partying with the swimmers, crowded Clearwater beach was always exciting. But when Gustav started coming closer, things got more dazzling. I crouched on the beach for nearly 20 minutes before I captured 1.21 gigawatts of electricity, yep, a bolt of lightning coming down from the sky. Thankfully the DeLorean was nowhere in the vicinity and remains safely in 2008.

A trip to St. Petersburg gave us a real thrill when we watched 30 foot waves crash higher than the palm trees lining our flooded parking lot. Even from 200 feet away the mist wrapped its salty hands around my camera lens.

I managed only to smear the lens with my salt-covered shirt and resorted to licking the lens clean, much to Suz's disgust.

For most island nations and the coastline of the U.S., hurricanes are devatstating and a horror to flee from. But when you're just getting the fringes, it makes for some exciting times and some interesting photos.

Florida: It's Like High School.

Our trip to Florida was a moderately smashing success. Actually, that phrase makes about as much sense as ordering an Extra Medium coffee, so scratch that. The Florida trip was totally excellent, even though the weather wasn't.

The reason for the excellence of the trip was threefold: excellent friends, excellent price, and excellent fun.

The two friends we travelled with happen to be pilots who work for Air Canada, so procuring tickets for the airline was much less painful than usual. It doesn't even matter that we missed our first flight by 5 seconds and had to wait 5 more hours for the next one.

Nor does it matter that the toilet on that plane exploded and leaked down the side of the fuselage, then had to be cleaned up and paperwork had to be filed while we waited and waited. No. None of that matters because the price just couldn't be beat. Except, perhaps by a big European named Stipe - with a stick of course.

The highlight of the trip was an old mini-putt place near Treasure Island called Smuggler's Cove. When I was an unruly teenager the line for this place in the summer often topped an hour, as it was of amusement park quality. Now that I'm an unruly adult, I have the patience for such things, but luckily, being winter, we didn't have to wait a bit.

The place was exactly as I remembered it, from the massive pirate ship right down to the super sweet, nasty-ass alligators chillin' in the artificially blueified swamp. Upon viewing the lazy gators fenced off behind a military-approved-possibily-electrified-could've-been-barb-wired fence covered in signs reading "Do not stick your fingers into the gators' eyes, buttholes or mouths", one particular friend wondered aloud if they were real.

I wondered if he should have kept that thought to himself.

This was not the first time we had to reassure our Air Canada friends that something was actually real. It was about the fourth time, in fact. After two cranes and a pelican. I don't think I've ever said, "yes, it's real!" more in my life. It didn't matter what I said as the dang things had to move before anyone believed me. Then I changed stories and explained, not-so-convincingly, that they were robots. When still no one believed me, I punched them all and ran away crying.

Like I said, I'm unruly.

Despite the rain on Thursday and the overcast Wednesday, we had a grand time hanging out in my parents' condo, eating tasty bagels, teasing each other and going to bed early. It was kind of like high school all over again.