Florida is all about water.
Today seemed the mirror image of yesterday. Got up this morning to clear blue skies. So I loaded up the 'scoot in the manner I'm used to in sunny CA and walked back to the room to check for anything I might have left. Heard a sound like someone emptyin' a bucket. Turned around to see, outside, what looked like somebody emptyin' a bucket. I think the Texasism for it is: "Rainin'? Son, sounded like a cow pissin' on a flat rock."
Seems I'd forgotten to check around the back side of the motel (South East, of course) to spot that fast mover runnin' in from the Gulf.
Aw, heck, the important stuff was in plastic bags...
But it only lasted a few minutes and then it all calmed down and I took off on US 98 to run the Panhandle. Really was an easy day. Only hit real rain enough to gear up once, rest of it was -- get a little wet, let the air dry ya' in about 5 minutes.
I started off in the more upscale part of it all -- Ft Walton Beach, Destin, et al. A bit Yuppified for my taste now, not as fun, and a little funky in places, as it was when I was a kid. Reminds me of that 'Retha Franklin song: "Chains, chains, chains...".
But even that has its benefits.
To wit: There is a good probability that the Baptist's Lady's Sewing Circle of Destin, Florida, will be talking for weeks about "some crazy man on one a them big 'ol LOUD motorcycles -- with them big high handlebars, ya' know? -- who just went all of a suddin' real fast and run straight across three lanes of traffic and made a great big ol' U turn (rear wheel slidin' all the way, Brothers) right into thayut big ol' new Bass Pro Shop they done put up on 98".
The sacred glasses have been replaced. Hallelujah and Amen. (Sorry, down here just trying to find the Weather Channel, one must go through about 50 channels of Televangelists. In the mornings they have women televangelists. Imagine Oprah: white, southern and Christian. I know --one shudders...)
They cost a bit more now, of course, but they still have them in different sizes for both glasses and faces. They're called "Cocoons" and I've never seen them anywhere else. They just work. Can I get an Amen? Thank ya' Brothers and Sisters.
So, properly attired, I continued on, happy to have provide the Ladies an opportunity to talk about something other than what Pastor Ruth had to say on th' TeeVee that mornin'.
Rolled into Port St. Joe, where one can just begin to see, in the hazy distance, the long body of Florida as it stretches itself South to form the great eastern edge of the Gulf. Getting into, now, what they call the "Forgotten Coast". Old Florida, my favorite, little towns like Beacon Hill and Ward Ridge and the sleepy gem that is Apalachicola. No "Sammy's" or "Hard Rocks" here. Just old Florida houses and local businesses and, sometimes, some surprisingly upscale beach homes owned by that dying breed -- people with both money and style. Ran that coast all the way to the turn south. People here call it the "Big Bend". As kids, being Atlantic Ocean Floridians, we called it the "Armpit". Older now, I see it for what it is. Beautiful and still largely unspoilt, the condos and hotels not yet here to block the sea and sky.
It's a fine ride.
Time now to run into the interior of the State, to the cattle ranches and horse country, to the citrus groves and the farms. But it's still about water. For while this place is a place of coastline -- the Gulf, the Atlantic, the Caribbean -- over all of its reach; the interior is a place of water as well. There seems a river around every curve, running dark and deep, and one runs through marsh and swamp and savanna as the whole Eastern part of America from the Appalachians on drains down to Okeechobee and beyond to the uniqueness that is the 'Glades.
Florida is all about water.
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