Saturday, January 02, 2010
 | ...(continued, somewhat changed from the Sailboat Story, PT1) ... forced life into my wretched vehicle, and then flooring the accelerator pedal, got straight back on the freeway, and did not get off again for the next three hours, until I absolutely had to, as the low fuel warning light had been illuminated for the last forty miles. I will not tell you how I spent those three hours white-knuckled and glancing into the rearview mirror every 30 seconds to see if I was being followed, or how I tried, to no good effect, to make sense of what I had just witnessed there in that tiny parking lot beside the Gulf of Mexico, but how I did indeed sense I was close to a very real danger that I did not want to know anything about, nor will I tell you how I will be revisited by this mental picture with accompanying fear every so often, unexpectedly, for the rest of my life. I will not tell you any of this. I do not want to bore you with ‘the little stuff’ that would prevent us from getting to the part about the boat as quickly as possible. In all fairness to the physical nature of my tale however, the cornucopia of geographical surprises waiting in store for someone driving across-the-country, I should at least mention that Florida is a very large and unique state. If you would humor me for a moment, close your eyes and imagine Florida. Yes, there it is. You’re imagining the semi-turgid, average sized penis (relative term used here - Length x Width as opposed to 'Actual Size' , which would indeed not be 'average', clocking in at over one thousand nautical miles in length ) a well-aimed cock that threatens to rain urine in the general direction of Cuba right? Well, there is another part of Florida too. Up at the top, where the cock joins the groin of the Southeast Continental United States? Well, right there, Florida turns left and West, and is proud to claim another five hundred miles of swampy coastline in that direction as well. Read: It takes a very long time to drive the length of Florida, from the west then down down down through toll road, swamp, marsh, your vehicle passing alien roadkill, giant bugs you have never seen before decorating your windshield in explosions of guts that threaten to shatter the very glass with their huge bodies. All day you have to pilot your vehicle. All day, and all night it will take you to drive this distance, and that is only if you are able to resist the billboards tempting you to stop and explore amazing Disney World and Epcott Center, and only if you stay as far away from Miami as possible, and are not sucked in by a sudden curious urge to ‘see the skyline’ , or ‘stop for a quick bite’ , since, GEE, you did just drive 3500 miles, and when are you ever going to be in your own car again near Miami? Only if you possess carbon-and-fire tempered self control will you be able to withstand such wonderful pleasures, and only then be able to make it across Florida, the long way, in a day and a night, driving only slightly faster than the posted speed limit, and stopping for gasoline only when absolutely necessary. Florida deserves this endorsement! It’s big, and it’s humid, and it is flat. You have never seen such a big, hot, flat humid state. If you ever find yourself wanting to experience the most unpleasant, hot and boring drive of your entire life, If you just want to go ahead and get it over with NOW, so you don’t have to keep wondering when it is going to happen to you, just pencil in a few days and head South and East. You’ll know when you’re finally there, because you will be wishing you were dead. And so it was that, finally, just a quick nineteen hours after crossing the state line from Alabama, I found myself crossing one of those weird bridge-things you have perhaps seen pictures of before that connect ‘mainland’ Florida with it’s daisy-chain of tiny tropical-looking islands. Actually seeing the road sign that read ‘Key Largo’ was pretty exciting, I have to admit. Soon that very song would be playing non-stop in my head as well as a mental picture of Humphrey Bogart in a trenchcoat, I do not know why. Is that when he says : “Here’s lookin’ at you kid”? I don’t know. I DO know that I could not banish either of these things from my mind, once they inserted themselves there. THAT’S what you get for driving straight across Florida, I guess. You lose your mind. The good news was that once across Key Largo, I didn’t have long to go now! And the road so tiny, it gave the effect of traveling faster, when in fact you can not. It should be noted that the freeway sort of peters out, and gradually shrinks after leaving the vicinity of Hell, AKA Miami. The lamp posts beside the road disappear suddenly and you are left in the dark wondering what happened. Remember: it is now the middle of the night. Doubt begins to flirt with you as the pavement literally disappears right in front of your shiny black SUV with no springs: from fourteen lanes to ten, to six, and by the time you begin to get frightened again, thinking you maybe made a wrong turn - but you have no map because you are 'better-than-that' - and you find yourself totally alone in a swamp after the most unpleasant drive of your entire life, after the road has dwindled down to two sinister yet-attempting-to-be-jaunty lanes, the shoulders of which are decorated with cardboard and plastic gaily-colored profiles of alligators and flamingos hawking God-knows-what, then far off in the black, moist distance where you imagined existed only an eternity of nothingness , and which you had been speeding towards all day and night, you finally see a flashing yellow light. |
