Surgical Strike

Sarah and I have a penchant for making road trips much longer than they really are. On our road trip from Tampa to Knoxville for example, we managed to turn a 10-hour drive into a 14-hour one. On our way back home, we somehow managed to add another two hours to that. And then there was the excursion to see the shuttle. But I'll leave that for another post. So we planned this trip so as to avoid any of the time-wasting pitfalls that had plagued our previous adventures. I arrived at Sarah's house around 7:30 and found a bemused girlfriend waiting impatiently for me. It was my fault; I had taken my sweet time getting to her house because she had gone to dinner with her family and I figured it would take her longer to eat and chat than it actually did. Mercifully, she's a great sport and accepted my humble apology. We were able to load my intact-but-inglorious hatchback quickly and soon began our journey to parts heretofore unexplored by us.

Sarah drove the first leg of the trip as I got to enjoy the remnants of the ziti she'd saved me. I recorded a couple takes of her discussing our reasons for driving to Miami and then took to watching the scenery. The suburbs slowly melted into exurbs, orange groves replacing the groves cookie-cutter-housing that litter the landscape of central Florida. We soon reached the gently rolling hills of Lake Wales and as pasture land made way for swamps we were treated to a glorious sunset-in the rear-view mirror. Given more time I imagine we would have stopped, but the darkening sky meant our drive was already impinging on precious sleep=time later in the evening. And so we pressed on and I managed to snap a few out-of-focus, faux-artistic shots of a distant electrical storm. Think I can sell this one to Trent Reznor?

Once the light had completely faded, most of the rest of our trip consisted of random outbursts of intellectualism, marveling at the island cities in the center strip of Florida's Turnpike and trying to listen to CDs above the din of my car. After reaching the South Florida metropolitan area and Sarah capturing me launching missives at the city of Miami, we pulled into the hotel ready for a good night's sleep.

Sarah and I set about our business early the next morning: I the chauffeur, she the neatly-coiffed executive with an appointment to keep. I am still unclear as to what exactly took place in her meeting as those without an appointment were not allowed access to the inner sanctum of the consular offices, although I heard it was conducted in both English and Spanish, presumably to keep the possibility of mutual understanding at a minimum. For me, it was forty-five minutes of staring at a wood-paneled corridor punctuated with the occasional check of my car which had been illegally parked across the street at a Publix but was easily visible from the window.

After breakfast and a quick nap at the hotel it was time to get back on the road. We had a four o'clock appointment to keep in Ft. Lauderdale, so we first did a little shopping to kill sometime. My first glimpse of the Miami skyline in the daytime was an eye-opening experience; I had not expected it to be the wall of gleaming high-rises stretching across the horizon that it was. It was for me an awe-inspiring sight as I had believed Miami to be a larger, more sprawling version of Tampa. It reminded me more of Chicago though, and coupled with it's elevated train system the city served as a stark reminder of how far my hometown must go to attain my aspirations of greatness for it.

We decided to take US 27 back home. I figured I simply had to see the Everglades and Lake Okeechobee before we left for Spain since I had embarrassingly neglected to do so for the past 35 years. It was a beautiful drive along the East Coast Buffer, a piece of land the state purchased and set aside as part of an Everglades restoration project and while I can't tell you how well that project is coming I can say it makes for lovely scenery along the east side of highway 27. The afternoon sky was painted a brilliant cobalt that I can only recall having ever seen before in the high desert and neatly decorated with cotton ball clouds that were more typical of a Florida afternoon. The emerald fields provided a nice contrast and the effect was reminiscent of an over-saturated photo.

We pressed on through the sleepy agricultural community of South Bay and into the bustling sugar town of Clewiston (pop. 7173), where we had the best Mexican food I have ever tasted. Happily, we managed to finish our meal with enough time left over to catch the sunset on the big lake. The cobalt melted into lovely soft-focused pastels, pinks and oranges were strewn across the clouds and I barely had time to notice that the lake truly began on the other side of the island we were looking at across the waterway upon which the park was situated. In retrospect, the eastern shore of the lake may have yielded a prettier sunset, but I was pleased nonetheless with the one to which we were treated. And we wouldn't have had the delicious dinner on the other side.

Then, it was back on the road for the final leg of the return trip. A distant thunderstorm treated us to a glorious light show on the horizon. Sarah managed to capture quite a few minutes of footage that came out surprisingly well, considering we were traveling around 80 for much of it. All-in-all, our quickest, easiest trip yet.

Road Trip!

"Road trip," is one of my favorite phrases in the English language. I don't know that I'll ever tire of loading my car with clothes, a camera and gas, and I hope I never do. There's a hypnotic quality to driving; whether it's in the city, constantly rowing back and forth through gears, or locked on at fifth doing 80 with limited-access asphalt as far as the eye can see, I simply love the act of driving. To say I relish my now annual trip to Knoxville to visit my best friend (and the Great Smoky Mountains that are visible from her house) would be an understatement. As soon as spring rolls around and the weather begins to get warmer, I finalize my plans for that 10-or-so hour drive up I-75 and begin dreaming of the open road.

This year, I got to share my trip with my girlfriend who, thankfully, shares my love of traveling. (I pretend not to be jealous of the fact that she's done a whole lot more of it than I have.) Inspired by a travel show we saw a couple months ago, she and I decided we should take video of our trip, edit it ourselves, and create our own little presentation. Look out, YouTube!

Our first mistake was not packing the car the night before. We'd both finished rather grueling weeks at work and were just anxious to get to bed, figuring we'd be fine taking care of it first thing in the morning. So it was at the crack of 9:30 that we started packing, and an hour later, with my Ford Focus rally edition loaded up, we finally set out. Sadly, even before we were able to get out of the shadows of downtown Tampa, we found ourselves entangled in a fine traffic mess. A frustrating couple of phone calls to the 511 traffic information hotline informed us that there was an "incident" on the freeway and that we'd be wading through a jam for the better part of 10 miles.

Roughly an hour and a half later, we encountered what we believed to be the scene of said incident. Little evidence of what had happened remained, but assuming we had found the start of the blockage, then it appeared that a rather large chunk of guardrail met with an unfortunate end at the wheels of an exceedingly undisciplined semi.

Undaunted, Sarah and I pressed on to the Florida-Georgia border shortly after noon. We thrashed out our thoughts on what sorts of shots we needed in order to put together our video, and captured our crossing into Georgia. The transition from northern Florida scenery to southern Georgia scenery is subtle (and, thanks to seemingly unending construction, slow), but gradually pine trees and peach groves began to dominate the landscape.

We marked our entrance into the Deep South with a tasty ice cream treat and made an amusing little video about our inability to find pecans. As we reached the rolling hills between Macon and Atlanta, I began debating trying for a third time to take the I-75/85 corridor straight through downtown Atlanta. The skyscrapers would have made for dramatic footage, but we were already approaching the 9-hour mark and I was rather anxious to reach Knoxville before sunrise.

Ultimately, traffic made the decision for us. Before we'd reached the Perimeter, there was another jam just to the south of Atlanta. I can understand traffic heading out of Atlanta, as there is a significant number of sprawling suburbs among the interstate web that dominates the metropolis. What I could not understand was traffic clogging the arterial highway heading into Atlanta, particularly at rush hour late on a Thursday afternoon. Sarah’s camera battery nearly ran out as she was getting footage of me swearing aimlessly at the situation. As we reached our exit, the miles of cars suddenly evaporated almost as quickly as they had appeared, and we made pretty decent time passing through the western suburbs. However, this was immediately followed by the dreaded rush hour jam on the north side of the city. Another hour's worth of gear-grinding, break-wearing driving and language unfit for print, and we finally, gleefully, escaped from metro Atlanta.

After stopping for dinner in the northern exurbs of Atlanta, Sarah and I decided that we had earned ourselves some whiskey. I figured that we should wait to search for a proper liquor store until we reached Chattanooga. I randomly picked an exit that I hoped would quickly yield a liquor store, and wandered into a small Chattanooga suburb by the name of East Brainerd. Looking at a map of the area now, I think there's even a possibility that our excursion may have taken us momentarily back into Georgia. We found no shortage of churches and even a couple of grocery stores, but alas, the liquor stores in that part of world all shutter their doors at 10 pm, a full 20 minutes prior to our arrival! In a last-ditch effort, we stopped at a Bi-Lo, one of the local grocery stores.

We failed to find anything even resembling Jameson. While walking toward the exit with our tails tucked squarely between our legs, Sarah suddenly pounced on me shouting something along the lines of, "Omygod, omygod, omygod!" As it turns out, she had noticed an old Valentine’s Day display showcasing an arrangement of flowers in a Fat Tire six pack. Fat Tire, as it turns out, is one of her favorite beers and unbeknownst to her, can be found in abundance in Tennessee. I got some entertaining footage of her sprinting to the beer aisle, then skipping out of the store with her bounty of beer. Then we gassed up, texted our apologies to our friends in Knoxville (again), gave them our new ETA (again), and hit the road (again).

The last leg of our journey from Chattanooga to Knoxville was mercifully uneventful, although for some reason, I have a mental block about just how long it takes to get from Chattanooga to Knoxville and it took us another hour and a half. But we arrived intact to greet our gracious hosts shortly after midnight, exhausted (as were they) but no worse for wear and excited about the weekend to come!

The Journey of 667 or So Miles...

...Begins and ends with a boat-load of patience. I've made the trip from Tampa to Knoxville three times now and this trip was far and away the longest it's ever taken. It should under no circumstances take 14 hours to drive less than 700 miles up I-75. Yet it did. Thank you, Atlanta. But, my girlfriend and I got some great video and a couple of pics I'm going to post and we had a great time doing it. And now we get to experience the beauty of Knoxville and the Great Smoky Mountains! I'm so excited! I'll keep you posted. As for now, I'm off to bed.

The Journey of a Thousand Miles

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”--Lao Tzu.

This is my first step. Where will it lead? I'm not sure yet, but I have a couple of ideas. I plan to use this space to document my travels as well as my photos and my occasional random thoughts. Hopefully, you will find these pages interesting and perhaps even useful (although I make no claims to their utility) and hopefully I will find many interesting and useful things to post.

With that I welcome you to "Random Pictures of Nothing in Particular." Enjoy, keep checking back and have a great rest of your day!