Tour de Florida

Day 3 - Port St Lucie => Pompano Beach Jupiter – Macdonalds I keep passing the same strange looking dude.  He's wearing floods, carrying a bible in one hand and a jerrycan in the other, and i've seen him three different times at intervals of ten miles or more. He’s always walking slowly on the same side of the road, at least half a foot of bare leg sticking out below his jeans, lurching along, impervious to the roar and stink of the traffic.   How does he keep overtaking me? It's either hitchhiking or armageddon. If it's the former, i have to ask:  who the hell would pick up someone looking as crazy as that? Now I'm eavesdropping on a hilarious conversation between a bunch of old people having their usual MacDonalds chinwag. One old codger, dyed hair, and insistent voice – identified by several around the table as a lawyer, and fairly obviously so – keeps saying to one them ‘You’re interrupting. You’re interrupting. You’re interrupting.’ Until the poor guy he was browbeating (a reverend, from what I can gather) finally subsides into silence. ‘Now let that be the last time you interrupt. Because I’m trying to help you here. I’m trying to help you not make a fool of yourself. Get possession of the facts before you open your mouth. Then you won’t make a fool of yourself. And no one wants to see that, because we all love you Reverend.” Talk about sweetening the poisonous barb! The same asshole has just walked out making a fist and urging everyone to ‘seize the moment.’ Thankfully, nobody seems as perturbed by this display of Sheenishness as me. In fact, they seem kind of inspired by it, since they've now moved on to Charlie himself. ‘One of those girls looks like a porno star!’  ‘She can’t be older than eighteen’. ‘He’s a confirmed dope addict.’  In the absence of the…

After spending a grey and wet day trying to put some miles on without getting soaked, a sizeable nail through the back tire put an end to my 100-mile ambitions at around six pm. it was getting dark, and i hadn't passed a seedy motel in ages. Best Westerns and Holiday Inns there were aplenty, but sadly it looked like I was about to venture beyond the land of the thirty dollar special, with only Albert and Brigette to show for it. After patching my the tire and getting back on the Publix-IHOP-Walgreens-Burger King-Marathon-7/11-CVS conveyor belt, i started to wonder just where i would spend the night. i was loathe to part with 100 bucks to sleep in a sterile box with cable. i did have another option. despite coming under fire from various parties, i've been toting a hammock under the vaguely delusional notion that i might be able to do some camping, save some readies, etc (after all, I am unemployed and with few prospects). ever since a rather soggy conversation in India with Uncle Howard about the merits of a Hennessey Hammock, getting one has felt a little bit like destiny. i mean, the thing weighs 1.1 kilos and you don't need any tent pegs. how cool is that? sadly, it's been looking rather like i wasn't going to get the chance to use it. Most of the trees in Florida seem to have been cut down to make room for RV parks, and most of the RV parks don't seem to have anything else you can tie a hammock to. it's strictly back in, and hook up, open a Busch and say hello to the neighbors. This has been double disappointing, since i vowed to recoup the cost of the damn thing through savings on h/motel rooms. using campgrounds, that would take eighteen nights assuming a cost of $20 per night. with the but only 4…

Greetings from the Siwash* prevalent conditions:  sun, wind, brush fires prevalent conditions:  wet, no wind, bad drivers   *more on this later