Vacation Day 6: And then I got sick...

I was feeling a little scratchy at the outlet shopping and the alligator viewing, but figured it was just strange foreign pollens in Florida assaulting my lungs. By yesterday, though, I was full out voice-cracking, hacking, coughing, vaguely feverish, it hurts to swallow sick. Since I can't come off of vacation and go right onto sick leave, I apologize in advance for sharing this with the office on Monday when I get back.

Being sick didn't stop us from driving over to the Jupiter Lighthouse yesterday afternoon, though. Nobody else wanted to go while they were here (understandably, since the baby can't go up the lighthouse so someone would have been standing around at the bottom the whole time), so we fit in the trip as soon as they were gone, signing up for our tour at the Gift Shop:



Personally, I prefer when it's a gift shoppe, but since it's not Ye Olde Jupiter Lighthouse, I guess the abscence of the P and E is acceptable. We had a few minutes before the tour started, so Sean and I visited the three room museum, where we learned that the lighthouse has stayed continuously lit since the Civil War and that you can spell "Jupiter" with nautical flags:



We also learned that, no matter what the tour or the size of the group, there is always at least one person who annoys you. Yesterday apparently being our lucky day, we got two.

The first made me wonder if it's possible to be an expatriate from a state if you just move to another state, rather than another country. If so, I would like to be expatriated from New York, please, and thanks. Mr. Montauk, as we'll refer to him, let us know five different times on the tour that while the Jupiter lighthouse is "you know, nice and all", they also have a lighthouse in Montauk at the end of Long Island that was commissioned by George Washington himself, and that lighthouse is just wonderful. I think that if you love the Montauk lighthouse enough to bring it up every time the tour guide mentions something about the Jupiter lighthouse ("Oh yeah? Well our lighthouse in Montauk was commissioned by George Washington himself! Oh, and Donald Trump is a real prick.") then you should just stay at home in Montauk next summer and hang out at George Washington's lighthouse all you want.

Our other annoyer, Kathy, was more of a stealth job. You can see her here, in front of Sean (he's wearing the red shirt) as we climb the steps to the lighthouse:



The tour only has two rules: Stay on the path, and stay together with the group. This is because the lighthouse is on a very small Coast Guard base, and the Department of Homeland Security will only let the locals conduct lighthouse tours if those rules are obeyed. In the beginning of the tour, Kathy only got separated from us a little bit, when she was snapping one more picture or two as the group started moving forward. By the end of the tour, she was full out wandering off on her own and arguing with the tour guide about the specific way he had phrased the rules. I had my camera ready in case someone came out to shoot her ("That guy there, the one from Montauk, I think they were working together! Shoot him, too!") but no such luck.

Ignoring the group members, which was sort of impossible, there was the tour itself, which was interesting, if short. We saw the bell from the first pineapple plantation in Florida:



Our tour guide rang it for us, but couldn't really explain why it was there. We also, of course, saw the lighthouse:



The lighthouse and the small storage building next to it are the only original buildings left, as the rest were destroyed by fires and hurricanes. I found it odd that the US Geological Survey Marker wasn't at the top of the hill, at the base of the lighthouse, but was instead on the steps:



but our tour guide couldn't really explain that, either. I was also the only one in our tour who did not actually climb the lighthouse. I intended to, but then I saw this:



and then this:



I can't climb steps that I can see through. I got to the first landing and was already dizzy, and I figured there was no way I'd be able to get back down if I made it to the top. I wanted to see the light and the lenses and stuff, but it just wasn't happening.

Sean was nice enough to wave, though:



and the ubiquitous Florida lizards kept me company:



After we wrapped up at the lighthouse, Sean drove me around to the Blowing Rocks Nature Preserve:





back to the regular beach, where we saw someone training to kite board:



and a sea turtle nest:



and then we went to dinner.

Vacation Day Five: Gators!

We all got off to kind of a late start again yesterday morning, but isn't that what vacation is for? Getting up late and lazing around reading and then finally deciding to leave the house? I'm going to say yes, since that's what we did. When we finally did all get up and showered and stuff, we decided to go for a walk down to Starbucks since it was a beautiful day and the first one without rain:



The walk was going well, the visit to Starbucks was going well (except for the girl who inexplicably tried to convince the Starbucks clerk that Lorraine was an exotic Polish name that a lot of people had trouble with; that wasn't really a problem so much as a "Wait? What? Is she serious? That's the mom from 'Back to the Future'. How could anyone have trouble with that?" moment), and then it happened: baby rage.



I know from hanging out with Jeannie and family that this can happen at any time, any place that there is a baby. Everyone can be minding their own business, perfectly quiet and content, and then there are screams! Piercing wails and shrieking cries like nails scraping on the chalkboard of your brain! Baby rage has struck without rhyme or reason, and often there is no cure.

In this case, Etta was trying to drink out of the smoothie cup, but kept tilting it wrong so that the end of the straw wasn't actually in the smoothie. D kept trying to help her, but she didn't want help, and then she flung the smoothie aside like JLo tossing away a warm Diet Coke. Fortunately most of the smoothie was already gone by that point, so the spill was rather small, but still... baby rage. Someone should have a telethon or something to fight that.

Once we apologetically whisked the baby out of Starbucks, we decided to walk over to the grocery store so that Nastjia could get some post cards. On the way we saw some birds:



a molested local statue:



(maybe it looks cuter when the kisser is drunk; I know I've had that trouble with guys before) and some mushrooms that were huge, like Smurf house huge. We asked D to get in the picture by them to give it a sense of scale:



What the hell is dead under there that lets the fungus get so big?

Anyway, our walk ended up taking us most of the way into the afternoon, so we ended up laying around reading and watching TV until dinnertime, which was at the Cheesecake Factory. I had some pasta which was good but came in a red sauce not clearly described on the menu, and then the Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake for dessert:



That's a lot of chocolate, and I probably could have just had that for dinner by itself and still been full. After dinner we caravanned out to the Everglades to see the alligators, which become more active after sunset:



There are four alligators in that picture. Seriously. For such large animals, they're pretty good at hiding, which is probably why the observation point had so many warning signs:



That warning sign is a little confusing to me, as it makes it sound like, "Oh, hey, by the way, it's against the law to poke the alligators. Don't do that, or you might get in trouble." If I wrote it, the tone would be a little more serious, like, "ALLIGATORS WILL BITE YOUR HANDS AND FEET OFF! BACK THE F--- UP AND STAY ON THE DOCK!", but that's probably just me. Anyone stupid enough to drive out to the swamp under the cover of darkness, miles from the nearest hospital, to provoke a carnivorous animal the same size as they are probably isn't going to benefit from a warning sign, anyway, no matter how well it's written. There is no warning sign that can cure stupidity.

Aside from the alligators, we also saw some other wildlife:



but mostly we were just waiting for the sun to finish setting:



so that the alligators would start hunting and become more active, and once it got darker they were happy to oblige. As we watched, a big one swam toward the dock:



and then ended up pretty much right at our feet below the railing:



It was getting too dark at that point to get any good pictures, even with the flash:



and we were all kind of tired, so we decided to pack it in for the night and head home.

The new season of "Top Chef" was starting, after all, and we can't miss that even for the joy of nature.

Vacation Day Two: The Truth About Biking

Baseball was rained out last night, not surprisingly. I'm told that it's "the season" in Florida right now, which I'm assuming means hurricane season. The only other time I've heard people talk about "the season" and have it be followed by repeated deluges of rain was in "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer", and I'm really hoping my vacation turns out better than that one, so I'm trying not to dwell on the weather.

Everybody was pretty tired yesterday from travel and such, so we all got up late and didn't really do much in the morning. Eventually it was decided that we would go to the pool so that some of us could swim, some of us could read, and some of us could attempt to exhaust our toddler. Kate and I, not having toddlers, opted for reading:





And no, I'm not being anti-social by being way over at the other end of the pool. There was more shade over there. We're still way too early in the trip to be tired of each other yet.

I didn't stay at the pool long, because the Boy Scouts staying on campus had a noon cookout and pool party scheduled and I didn't want to stay and accidentally pick a fight with the other guests about indoctrinating their children with the institutionalized homophobia that the Boy Scouts have gone to court to legally protect. See, committee member at work who said I was "combative"? I'm not always argumentative. I could have stayed and asked the kids if they had their "Fag Banning" merit badges yet, but I decided to go for a walk instead.



Sometimes my restraint comes as a surprise even to me.

When I started walking around the campus, marvelling at the wide sidewalks and palm trees and sunshine, I kept thinking, "This is a college? Why did I go to school in upstate New York?" After five minutes of walking, though, dripping with sweat and noticing a distinct lack of shaded spaces in the outdoor areas, I answered my own question. Florida is hot, and humid, and I can't understand how people live in climates like this deliberately. Everything feels like it's just on the verge of sinking back into the swamp at any moment and taking you with it. On the plus side, though, everything is air conditioned, and I could totally get used to that.

On the other hand, everything in Florida feels oddly alive, like plants might spring out of the ground at any moment. Granted, they would be strange plants that I wouldn't recognize:



but that's more my own fault for lacking horticultural knowledge. There are also bugs everywhere, and snakes, and frogs, and alligators, and tiny lizards:





so I keep finding myself spotting movement out of the corner of my eye and hoping it's not poisonous.

After lunch the baby fell into an exhaustion coma from being at the pool, and I got tired of reading and watching TV with everyone so I eagerly volunteered to go with Dan when he decided to go to the bike shop. While there, I learned that my biking friends have not been forthcoming about the actual benefits of biking. They've babbled about physical fitness and feelings of accomplishment and benefits of exercise and the wind rushing by and comeraderie and blah blah blah, but no one mentioned this:



Biking comes with candy.

And eating the candy while biking is not just accepted, but encouraged.

How could no one have mentioned this before now? That time that Sandy tried to take me biking and I was all "the seat is hurting my butt" and she was all "you'll get callouses and stop feeling that after a couple months", she never said, "Shut up and have some candy." Had I been presented with the right motivator, I could have been winning the Tour de France by now. Tragically the moment is gone and I will always think of biking as the sport that I was misled about. I may not have a bike, but I still have candy, and I guess that'll be enough to get by on.

Road Trip 2009: Day One

My vacation has officially started, and it's a real vacation where I leave the county, not a staycation like the one I took in the spring. Staycation was fun and all, but it's nice to be really, really away when you're away. This year's plan was to meet up with college friends in Florida, and since it's only eleven hours and driving is cheap while flying is expensive, I had to get up before dawn to get on the road:



It's not quite as early as last year, but still, that's a time of day that I rarely, if ever, see. As with last year's trip, I brought a copious supply of Mountain Dew for fuel, but this led to an unanticipated problem: Georgia would rather that you did not go to the bathroom in their state.

At first I thought this might just be because it was early. When I stopped at Georgia's Welcome Center, the lights were on but it was still locked up since it was before dawn:



I didn't really have to pee yet, but was just thinking that I might as well when I was finished with my breakfast bar. OK, the welcome center was locked and not very welcoming, but at least they had one, unlike, say, Maryland, which welcomes no one and only has a sign. I figured I'd just move on to the next rest area, and everything would be fine.

Except there wasn't a next rest area.

In the whole state, there only seem to be like three, total. I went zipping through Atlanta, still swilling Mountain Dew, and down into south Georgia, which I have never visited but have seen in a number of disturbing movies, and still... nothing. Maybe people in Georgia don't need rest? Or they have family all along the highway and can just stop in at their houses? I thought I might find a restroom when I stopped to get gas, but the gas station was kind of sketchy and all by itself out in the middle of nowhere, and I figured if I went into the bathroom alone I'd just end up feeding the clerk's family of inbred cannibals. Somehow these are the only kind of gas stations I ever manage to stop at on vacation.

In the back of my mind I still somehow believed that a rest area would appear, so I left the gas station, got back on the highway, saw a sign for a rest stop, and then this happened:



Someone got in an accident, and we sat for 45 minutes at a complete stop while they cleared the highway. When we finally got moving again, everybody pulled off at the rest stop, to the point that there was a line of cars going out to the highway, and somehow I thought it would be a good idea to skip this and just go to the next one with no guarantee that there would even be a next one, but eventually there was:



And I peed and all was right with the world.

Before I leave the subject of Georgia and I-75, though, I do want to say that I was greatly surprised that there was only one major accident along the way. When I called my friend Sandy, who lives in Georgia, to tell her to write her congresspeople to demand more rest stops I also told her about the accident and traffic jam and she said, "Oh, yeah, that always happens."

That always happens because people in Georgia are bad drivers. Given the option of passing on the left or on the right, they pick the right every time. A turn signal might mean that they are switching from one lane to the next, but it might also mean that they are cutting across five lines. A consistent rate of speed is frowned upon, but random tapping of brakes is not. If, for whatever reason, you are unable to pass someone on the right, you are apparently taught to get right up on their bumper and flash them with your high beams so that they can attempt to get out of your way, even though there is nowhere to go or you would have already pulled into that space to pass them. It's like everyone in Georgia sits in their driveway in the morning and thinks, "How can I make driving more dangerous? OK, I'll do that," and then, while doing it, thinks, "This thing that I'm doing now (applying makeup, swerving, reducing speed without braking and then speeding up again), would it be even more dangerous if I did it in another lane? OK, I'll switch to that lane and do it there."

Eagerly leaving Georgia, Florida welcomed me:



That sign is a crock, but I didn't think about it at first since they were busy handing me free juice:



I'd guess that they give away five times as much OJ as grapefruit. Given the choice, do you want sunshine in a cup, or something that tastes like soil? I sipped my juice, wandered back outside, and thought, "Why is the Sunshine State so cloudy?"



It rained the rest of the trip. Winds, thunder, sheeting downpour. Sunshine State, my ass. I finally got to Sean's, though, and as I pulled in the clouds miraculously parted, and we went to dinner, where I had delicious beef pot stickers:



and there was a classic car show wrapping up outside:



Today I think we're going to baseball and maybe to see "Star Trek".