Category: florida

I grew up here, sometimes I go back here.

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my testicles hurt

Mercy me.
I used to joke with Sharaun that I must have some sort of internal “timer” that finds me visiting the emergency room whenever it runs down and resets for the next time. Sitting in the crowded waiting room now, I can remember the last time I was in a place like this – nearly a year ago. Hospitals suck. They suck bad.

This weekend was a whirlwind of travel. Sharaun and I flew home to Florida for our ten year high school reunion. Took the redeye into Orlando, leaving Thursday arriving Friday, and then flew back to Northern California Sunday morning. The trip wasn’t as long as I wanted, more run-run-run than relaxation, but it was good. Without going into the long of it, the short of it is that we had a great time. Saw some folks I literally hadn’t seen in ten years. Cheap beer and wish-I-hadn’t cigarettes filled two social-centric evenings with old friends. Since we were in Florida, we dined primarily the standard hot wings, southern barbecue, and sweet tea fare – stuff you just don’t get here in California. Fried alligator tail and Bud Light make for one hell of a fine southern meal.

I guess I’m not much in a writing mood. It’s late, I’m grumpy from flying and not getting enough sleep for the past three days. My Economy Plus seat wouldn’t recline on my last connecting flight home, which made getting my much-needed rest more uncomfortable than it could’ve been, and then our luggage somehow ended up on a flight coming in four hours after us. Since it was after 10pm, the next time they could deliver it to the house would’ve been mid-morning tomorrow (Monday). All Sharaun’s bathroom junk was in there, and it’s her first day of school with her new class tomorrow. That means we’d have to make the 45min drive back to the airport just hours after leaving, to stand and wait by the carousel for our bag to come off some flight we weren’t even on.

This place is somewhat surreal. Is it my imagination, or does the societal underbelly seem to need “urgent” medical care more than others? Right now, there’s a completely skeezed-out woman making a series of frantic calls on the payphone trying to locate some cigarettes. Something about leaving the older kids at Taco Bell and taking the younger kids home, then coming back for the ones left earlier. Bottom line though, is that she’s got to get those cigarettes. She’s got a pot-leaf embroidered on the right back-pocket of her size-zero jeans from Gap – Crack Whore. The young girl in pink terrycloth pants at the registration counter has multicolored hair and is giving her profession as “MT,” massage therapist. Cigarette-woman’s hands are soot-black, and her feet shoeless. I feel completely out of place sitting here with a portable computer on my lap. Emergency rooms are sad places, I don’t like them at all.

‘Night.

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ten years gone

Blimey.
Things are finally moving and shaking in places I’ve been waiting for them to move and shake. And that means I can start talking about them on Sounds Familiar soon enough. Until then, though, it’s the same-old same-old. The Gods of Northern California still have the oven on “broil,” and each day is so miserable I don’t even like being outdoors. Everything absorbs heat and then radiates it, the cars keep the garage sweaty well into the evening hours, concrete stays warm to the touch until the wee hours of the morning. Each afternoon I eagerly await that moment when I arrive home from work and can strip off the unneeded layers of clothes and get down to shorts, a t-shirt, and bare feet. As I’m pulling my shirt over my head, I imagine it as taking off an electric blanket, removing that outer layer of clothes that’s just been soaking up the sun. I immediately feel cooler. A man of my… stature… is not built for this kinda heat. Give me mild days and I’m happiest. You’ll know when that happens, as I start fawning over the Fallishness of things when those halcyon days arrive.

The house is a complete wreck again; one of those additive, snowballing kind of wrecks that just gets worse by the day… and more frustrating as well. I hate it. It begins pester me whenever I inhabit the place, my only escape being leaving for work each morning and letting it fester until I return again each evening. For all my complaining, I’m still sitting her ignoring it as I write. Oh, it’s there, looming right behind me; the menacing shadow of an ironing board left out for days, a table still in the wrong place from painting, unfinished half-painted walls, looking like the march of the yellow fungus growing on them is stalled in rough lines. Ack, I do hate it you know. I’m pretty anal when it comes to things like neatness… and I don’t think that’ll ever change about me. Sharaun, on the other hand, has about as high a tolerance for clutter as kids these days do for rubella (whatever that is). I’m trying to resign myself to the fact that it’ll never change, and if I want to have the place be ever-clean, I’m gonna have to pony up and maintain it that way.

Back to Florida in three days. Ten years have gone by and it’s customary to re-convene with your graduating high school class. I’m not looking forward to having such an abbreviated trip “home” (I do still consider the place home, for whatever reason), but I am, in fact, looking forward to the whole business of reuniting. Thinking about it, ten years doesn’t seem all that long – but when I think about what all I’ve been through since my last year of high school… good lord it’s been a long time. Flashback to 12th grade, and you’d find a skinnier me, fooling around on his long-time girlfriend with the willing. Trying to do right by his newfound religion and thinking only the slightest about college and “a future.” Things were looking up, my folks had given me the little red Nissan for graduation, and I’d managed to score my dream job hawking wax at the local mom-‘n’-pop record store. Having moved on from fast food and go-fer positions at the local CPA, I was ready to tread the cheap carpet of the retail world. Breezing my way through the no-more-challenging-than-high-school community college curriculum and blowing the multiple-scholarship windfall on things I can’t remember. Man, those were some good days. Lots less to worry about… that’s for sure. My biggest daily concern is when Jeremy would get home so we could go smoke menthols on the porch and catch up.

Did you know I won a cruise to the Bahamas at my “keep-’em-sober, keep-’em-alive” school-sanctioned graduation party? Yeah, I totally did. And, since I was 18 at the time, I could totally go too. I took Jeremy, and we road-tripped down to Miami to catch the smallest cruise liner I’ve ever seen, the no doubt affordable Dolphin IV. Three nights, four days. My first night on board I hit the triple-7s and took $450 back to the cabin. We had a great time, sleeping in hammocks on private islands, smoking triple-price-for-the-whiteboy Cubans, parasailing, and getting robbed by a local named “Deuce” (really). And although I know many look back on their own with detest, my high school years were not that bad at all. I had a good time, and I’m actually kind of exciting about seeing some folks. I’m sure I’ll be writing about the whole thing, as it’s bound to produce some good material.

As I go, I thought it was interesting that, despite JK Rowlings’ insistence that the latest Harry Potter book not be released in electronic form, entrepreneurial pirates have manages to scan and proofread the entire book – producing a complete and accurate copy within twelve hours of the book’s on-sale date. What’s more, they’ve also made an audio-book version available… all within one day of the books release. Things like that make you wonder, is there really every going to be a way to “secure” any kind of media? Makes me think that, despite various industries’ attempts to protect their content, the pirates will always be one step ahead of them. Seems the best you can do is change the public’s opinion what constitutes “stealing” in regards to digital media… an uphill battle, it would seem.

OK then, g’night friends and lovers. Until tomorrow.

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out of the shadows

My sinuses are still punishing me.
Saturday night was outstanding. At last pre-sleep glance, the cellphone said it was nearing 4am, and my swimming head said it was an evening to remember. The plan was to meet up with old friends at a local brewpub, enjoy some beers and company. Turns out the chosen watering hole must be a popular place in town or something, because before the evening was through, a small crowd of old friends had amassed. People I hadn’t seen in years, people I hadn’t dreamed of seeing. It was all so awesome, seeing people, talking to people, hugging people. Everyone’s a long-lost best friend when you’re standing around outside drinking. I couldn’t do it every night, but had time and beer not beat me down ‘round 3am, I’d’ve stayed longer. I really want to write more about it, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to gush on as if it were “magical” or anything, but it sure was nice to see everyone again and catch up.

And even though I don’t smoke, I found myself having a couple “social cigarettes” Saturday night. Beer-induced smoking is a vice of mine, and sometimes I indulge it freely. So happened that this time, as I was sitting, drinking beer and smoking, up walked two girls from the past. They walked up and greeted the older, fatter, balder, me, all as I sat swilling beer and puffing pussyish Marlboro Lites. What a great visual statement I must have made on my current station in life. Not that I expect I was judged, just wish I hadn’t had a cigarette pinched firmly between my fingers as I hugged my hellos. It’s OK though, the morning finds my body punishing me for my lung-blackening moments of weakness – with the stuffy head and caved-in-chest feelings of the infrequent social smoker. Look at me… smoking, drinking, and starting sentences with “and.” I am a soul damned. Here are some ones and zeros from the evening:

Old habits die hard.

Like it was yesterday, 15 years yesterday.

Changing subjects…

Because we’re driving home from Mims, FL, I’m reminded of a good story. So, sit right back and you’ll hear a tale. A tale of a fateful trip. Four passengers set sail that day, aboard a tiny ship. They were: Me, my then-girlfriend, her mother and her step-dad. I had been dating this girl for a couple weeks, or months, or something. It was the first time I really did anything with her family. We hitched up the boat, picked up some sandwiches, and launched at the local public ramp. I think the trip was mostly a pleasure cruise, I don’t really remember the intent – other than my intent, hang out with my hot new girlfriend in her bathing suit. I don’t remember a lot of the trip, but one memory sticks out in my mind.

The boat was anchored in shallows right off some island in the river, and we decided to get out and clam. Clamming involves walking around in the shallows, waist-deep in the river, and burrowing into the riverbed with bare feet, feeling for shells. It was just her and I, her folks stayed on the boat. Which meant, for us, clamming involved making out in the shallows, searching hands obscured from sight by the waist-deep river. It’s such a fun memory for me. Feeling, and being felt, up beneath the water. Adolescence, makes for good memories.

Changing subjects…

Just arrived home on a cool Sunday afternoon. Turns out there was some mix up with the housekey we left so that the cat could be fed and her litter emptied. While not that big of a deal, the combination of fatigue and travel-wear made it a sore point for me. Already pissed, I flipped on the computer only to have it tell me one of the drives in my RAID array had failed. Great. Not in the mood, I give up and emptied the cat’s shit-brimming litter box as Sharaun picked up the nuggets she left in her favorite litterbox-overflow area of the living room carpet. Having not eaten since the pre-flight 5am meal and arriving home to bare cupboards only exacerbated my agitation. As if to seal me to my gloomy mood, the fates made this the day the TV decided that the flaky video-in jack would start acting up again.

Woe is me, what I horrid life I have! Surely I must suffer like no other on Earth, right? I mean, how could anyone, anywhere, possibly have a worse day than me? The toll of flying home from a week’s vacation spent with friends and family, arriving at the house which I own and inhabit with my beautiful wife, and now the picture on the TV is so crappy that I can barely make out the “for the price of one cup of coffee a day” kid with a distended belly and fly-filled eyes… like I said, I have it so bad. Order me a pizza before I take my own life.

Changing subjects…

Wow, wow, wow. Got home from Florida and checked my e-mail. There was one e-mail that I got while on vacation, but couldn’t open the attachments. Turns out it was from my oldest friend – Shaine. After meeting in the 5th grade, he became what I consider to be my first “best” friend. We kept in touch after my family moved to Florida, but eventually lost track of each other somewhere after high school. Later on, Shaine somehow found my e-mail address, and we got back in touch. We had a few years of sporadic communication, and then I got married and moved back to California. Somehow, we managed to get in touch again – and now we talk pretty regularly. This year I saw him for the fist time in 15 years, and even attended his wedding. Anyway, the e-mail that this paragraph started out talking about came from Shaine. I guess his mom found some old letters that I sent him, dating from sometime after I’d moved to Florida. If I were to guess, these came from mid to late 6th grade for me. How rare is it to have something like this?

As, I suppose, is to be expected of a letter to an old friend – I stretched the truth a bit to make my goings-on seem a bit more exciting, but to be honest I was surprised to see how close I stuck to the facts. The part about the fire pit and gas and singed leg-hair is 100% true, as is the part about sneaking over to “Mary Jo’s” place and playing spin-the-bottle. We were what, 12, 13? Walking the streets at 3am, 4am… insane. Anyway, the only part that’s fabricated is the part about the kissing. Looking back, I exposed my own ruse. The part where I say it was “great” because there were two guys and one girl… not exactly what I call a “great” spin-the-bottle scenario. No one kissed me, I just hung out. In fact, my first kiss wouldn’t come for another year and a half. I don’t know if anyone kissed anyone, really, for the most part I remember being bored, but excited about being somewhere I shouldn’t at a time I shouldn’t.

I wish I’d saved the letters I got from Shaine. The one I remember most came in an ordinary envelope, but had a strange bulge at the bottom corner. Upon opening it, I found a small rectangular “packet” of paper, tightly wrapped and taped for transit. Inside that packet was a solitary seed. “Mexican Redhair,” promised Shaine. Although I was still a year or so away from my first experiments with marijuana, I’ll never for get that letter. If Shaine can dig up more, I’ll put ’em here… I eat this stuff up.

One good thing about getting home, I found the new dual Bright Eyes releases leaked online. Haven’t had the chance to listen to them yet, but am excited about both.

Look at all that media!! Blog-media, may I be excused from writing? Yes, yes you may. Dave out.

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pickin’ and grinnin’

Arms on fire, firearms, get it?
Not a particularly exciting day in Florida, but a good evening spent with friends. Used this day to play “catch up” on all the lost sleep. Rolled out of bed around 10:30am and got ready for the day by having a healthy slice of angel food cake and a diet coke. Dang, no wonder I’m fat.

The main order of the day involved heading over to the local mall to pick up some stuff to wear at this week’s wedding. I needed a white shirt, Sharaun needed some thing she kept calling a “top,” which I think means “shirt” in dude-speak. I was kind of excited about going to the mall (probably for the first time since 7th grade), because for me it’s like going back to my old place of employment. Two years service as a retail salesman at the local mom ‘n’ pop music store in the mall, the last year or so spent with the pretty meaningless title of “assistant manager.” I gotta admit though, I loved that job. Loved helping people find good music, loved getting to show off my knowledge of music, and loved selling music. Unfortunately, that mom ‘n’ pop store was forced out when the mall went “big,” letting it’s space to only the largest chain stores in efforts to homogenize the retail landscape and increase business. Now it’s a “Scrapbook City” or some such nonsense, with reams of colored paper and rolls of cute stickers. The carpet and walls are still the same though, so it’s fun to go in and walk around and remember.

I remember I used to collect music on a “family tree” kind of plan. I’d hunt down albums because I liked a track, then find out who played on those albums. Then I’d hunt down albums those players made, and so on down the line. The method worked pretty well, but also could get a little obsessive. I’d get to where I wanted to get every piece of recorded tape that an artist or group ever made. Problem is, just because most or some of someone’s work is good, doesn’t mean it all is; in fact, there’s very few acts/people who’s entire canon is good – so that method of obsessive collecting produced its fair share of stinkers. Anyway, I don’t know why I wanted to write about that – or, I guess I kinda do. We were sitting over at Bob’s place tonight, and he was plucking some great tunes on the guitar while we sat and talked. It got me thinking, it’s not so much about the “album” or “bloodline” or whatever, it’s about the song and if it’s good. Screw collecting an artist’s catalog, I just want to hear the good stuff. Man, I’m sorry, I know this relates to nothing and is not interesting.

Been listening to the new M83 each night in the earbuds when I go to bed, excellent album. Moody and at times “lost” or “homesick” sounding. Now, I guess that could be due to the fact that I’m listening to it away from home, so some of that is my own ideas and not something the music is telling me. This and the Earlimart album are great picks for the week, and I’m glad I was able to steal them both and burn them to CD before the trip. Nice and slow and quiet and hushed and feely. Go get both, as both will surely soon turn up as theme music to some Fox or WB teen drama in the near future.

Hung out tonight, as I mentioned, with Bob and his wife. Went out for a nice Italian dinner, eating shrimp and drinking red wine all refined-adult-like. Then retired back to their place for some general chit-chat and the usual stuff. Looked at some beautiful vintage firearms, busted out the guitar, etc.. I know, I’m supposed to be a “liberal,” and thereby be sworn against the evil thundersticks and the death and crime they enable… but I have an inborn attraction to guns – I think it has something to do with the engineering or design… or the fact that they can shoot bullets at things and rip shit up, not sure which. I think it actually has to do with the fact that my grandfather was a great admirer of firearms, and bought my brother and I each .22 rifles at the youngest age our parents would consent to it: 10. I still have that rifle, you think they’ll revoke my Democratic party affiliation? Anyway, the guns came out, the swords came out, and the guitar came out. A’fore too long, I found myself singing along to the chorus of meticulously-played versions of “Ripple,” “Illegal Smile,” “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die-Rag,” and others. Good time, free meal, good company.

I guess that’s all I have to write. I really like the way the pictures from today’s (yesterday’s, when you’re reading this) turned out – I think they convey “vacation” really well. I’m gonna try and post some more pictures this week, after I manage to get some snapshots of a few more interesting things. Look for it.

Dave out.

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the deep south

As the Lord sayeth, so shall my moms doeth. Hopefully...
On the road to Orlando, spent the entire hour-plus drive doing that nasty bit of outstanding work I mentioned yesterday. That’s fine really, made me feel all Jetsons, driving down the highway on a laptop; got several perplexed stares from bearded rednecks in old trucks spraypainted camo for hunting. Not really, but they probably really do think I’m from the future… or “fancy” or something. Working at Sharaun’s folks’ place was a nightmare, dialup isn’t even internet, as far as I’m concerned. I managed to check some e-mail, and decided I’d had enough. I surfed the web to look for a wireless hotspot, free or not – just needed something close. Turns out I was out of luck though, as the wireless internet apparently hasn’t come to my old home town yet. Not a hotspot for 20mi. If they passed a law to affix transmit antennas to all rebel flag back-window decals, trailer homes, and shotgun racks- they’d have the best coverage in the US. And again, I kid y’allz… Florida is rad.

Now it’s midnight and we’re driving back from Orlando, all the stoplights are late-night blinky. I’m even more dead tired than I was earlier, and just want to crawl into bed. Got my work-work done on the drive over here before dinner, and now I figured I’d get the blog done on the way back. I’ve got this tiny headache in the front of my head, I’ve had it ever since the flight out – and I’m pretty sure it’s just my brain telling me I need some sleep. 57% battery on the laptop, so this isn’t going to be a particularly long one. I will, however, spice it up with some photos to pad it out. Speaking of, here they are:




Florida beach through scrub.


Tyler commanding the expidition.



Launching before the sun.


How much better than an alarm clock?



Not a computer to be found.


The morning’s only catch.

I’m thinking tomorrow I may try and head down to snap some pictures of old haunts, which is something I really wanna do while I’m here. I also want to cruise by the old house and check it out.

My dad called me early this morning, California time, while I was trying to take a post-fishing nap on the couch. He started out with the same chat, then all of the sudden asked me if I remembered when my mom’s birthday was. “I know it’s in November,” I said. I’m bad with remembering things, dates especially. For some reason, my folks’ birthdays are something I never managed to store in non-volatile memory. Knowing that, I have “reminders” set on all my computers, and my cell phone. The reminders pop up and tell me who’s birthday it is, and that I should send them a card (they give me about a week’s lead time). The cell phone reminder goes off on the day-of, as a “last chance” reminder so I can call if I somehow missed the two computer reminders.

Well, this year, I switched e-mail clients, and the portion of Outlook that used give the reminders has been eclipsed by Thunderbird, which I hadn’t setup reminders on yet. So, I missed the computer reminders. Then, Sharaun accidentally took my cellphone instead of hers one day, and it happened to be my mom’s birthday. The reminder popped up, but she forgot to tell me about it. And, that brings me to today… where my dad tells me that both my brother and I forgot to send my mom a card for her birthday. Ugh. How crappy must that be? A card from everyone but your two sons. I even called her a few days afterward, and talked to her like any other day… making it painfully obvious I had completely forgotten.

Well mom, I’m sorry. Sorry that I have to set reminders instead of knowing, sorry that I missed the reminders, and sorry that I forgot. I love you though, even if I am bad at dates. Forgive me this once, and I promise I’ll do better next time, OK?

Dave out.

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sleepless

Run down, up, and around the block.
Sunday night, dead tired. Tired from a mere two hours of sleep the past 48 hours, tired from a full day of wedding rehearsal attendance and backyard cookout. Tired from jetlag. Good to be in Florida though, the weather is awesome, a balmy 80ish degrees and sunny. Already been to the beach, already driven the old roads and seen the family. Now I strike a familiar Sunday-night pose: laptop cradled in legs bent at the knee, earbuds in ears, fingers on the keyboard pumping out words about mostly nothing. The newly leaked Earlimart album provides a so far excellent soundtrack for wordsmithing. The connection is 33Kbps dialup, painful-slow and reminding me how nice it is to have broadband.

As much as I’m looking forward to this week off, that is, once I’ve used tonight to get properly caught up on sleep – I’m dreading the fact that I have some work-work to do tomorrow. See, there were some loose ends at work before leaving on Friday, and I just didn’t get all the things I expected. Without those things, I couldn’t make commitments I’d made, and was stuck having to phone-it-in on vacation in order to meet the deadline. It’s not much work, but any work on during vacation is blasphemy. Still, no worries. I think we’re waking up ridicu-early tomorrow morning (a’fore the sun here, which is something like 2am to my west-coast brain) to go fishing with my brother-in-law. Should be fun, I haven’t been fishing in forever, and I’m excited to head out on the river with the sun. Even if we stay out through mid-morning here, I’ll be way ahead of my unlucky 3-hours-behind coworkers just coming in. Should give me plenty of time to find a Starbucks or wardrive until I can get a suitable high-speed wireless link where I can do some real work. Work sucks.

You know, I was thinking on the un-sleepable plane flight out here, thinking about one of the stranger things that I enjoy so much about vacation and travel. It may sound funny, but I really enjoy not having to carry keys around with me. For some reason, hate carrying things in my pockets… call it some weird psychological thing or whatever – I just prefer empty pockets. And on vacation or business travel, I have no car to drive, no house to lock, no nothing. So I lose the keys and gain an empty pocket. It just struck me as funny, because it really is one of those things I actually look forward to about vacation. Easily pleased I guess you could say.

Only a few hours driving up and down the Space Coast today, and already I’m struck by a lot of the same thoughts I had last time I was here. Only now, things are compounded by the fact that this place is still pretty beat-down from the multi-hurricane hurt this storm season put on ’em. Boarded up windows, leaning stop signs, twisted metal and piles of debris. I can’t quite figure out it out – but it’s all somehow attractive. So different than shiny-new master-planned northern California. Maybe it’s a welcome change from all that or something. I think stuff just happens slower here. People don’t mind buying a new car from a dealership where the Ford sign is missing the ‘F’ and ‘R,’ don’t mind that the supermarket is all chipped paint and flickering neon. It’s a different mentality or something. And, to graciously exit this thought without plagiarizing my own previous entry, it still all very charming and somehow welcoming.

The rest of the week is roughly planned out: visits with old friends, family, holiday meals, weddings, dinners, naps and relaxation. And, despite my fatigue – I think this entry came together OK. Chalk at least one day up for vacation writing, let’s see if I can stick to it.

Dave out.

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smoke ’em if ya got ’em

The dirty South.
When I was in Florida for Christmas this past year, I had a lot of good food. I don’t know what it is, but something about home-cooked Southern food is totally awesome. It’s not just the taste of the food, it’s the whole “ambiance” that goes along with it. A real Southern meal implies things more than just good eats to me. For one meal, I was invited over to Bob in Florida’s house. His wife had prepared a honest-to-God Southern meal, and it was totally awesome. It was a fine meal, fine to the point of inspiring me to write about it in detail.

On the menu was a roast, a tossed salad, some red potatoes, and some green beans Of course, also present were the requisite “greens.” I don’t know about you, but being a Florida transplant from the west originally – I hadn’t ever heard the term “greens.” If you’ve never heard it, greens are the leafy parts of all sorts of stuff, and Southern people love ’em. They cook up greens with all sorts of interesting flavors, and then put hot pepper sauce on ’em before eating. Kinda like a warm leaf stew, or something. Thing is, I’ve never liked greens before. They tend to be bitter and kinda slimy – and I always passed on them. But man, we’re these greens awesome. I even used the hot pepper sauce like a true Southerner. I had like three helpings.

Anyway, we sat and ate and talked. Long leisurely meals are appealing to me, as long as the company and conversation is good. My family always used to talk at dinner, it’s where we’d catch up on everyone’s day. We always sat down and ate together, every night. I actually remember looking forward to dinner time when I was a kid. My mom would plan out the week’s meals in advance, so she could do the appropriate shopping. She’d also “post” the week’s meal itinerary on the fridge each week – I guess her way of keeping us informed about what we were having. Probably it was more of a reminder to her in case there was prep-work she’d have to do or something, but I always thought it was so neat to be able to “look forward” to a meal later on in the week. Thanks mom.

Here’s a long-winded story that eventually ties into the above rambling. I was a junior in college and my friend Kyle was in the Air Force stationed in Abilene, Texas. One winter, we cooked up a scheme where I would come out to visit him. However, being a broke college student, I opted to take a Greyhound bus from. Yeah, a Greyhound bus halfway across the country – 36hrs. I was never what I consider to be a “real” smoker, but throughout college I would occasionally indulge with my smoker roommate. I enjoyed a social cigarette with him quite often as a way to wind down in the evening, or to compliment a few beers and an evening out. The only time I ever bought cigarettes though, was on this particular Greyhound trip.

I mean, I was on a bus guys, for 36 hours. The only time the bus stopped was for a few minutes every few hours, for… you guessed it – a smoke break. At the first stop, I just got off the bus and mingled with the smokers. By the second stop, I was so compelled to get off that bus for some reason, I actually bought a pack of cigarettes and started having one each time we stopped. Normally, I hate smoking. I’ll have a cigarette and halfway through wonder: “Why am I doing this?” I hate the smell, they give me headaches, and they are just nasty all over. But for all their bad points, they can be extremely “rewarding” in their own way. They do promote a feeling of “ahhh,” and relaxation in some cases.

Anyway, back to the story. I arrived in Texas and met up with Kyle, who had been a smoker for a few years. For the entire week, we smoked like smokers. We took full advantage of the smoking sections in restaurants, sitting down for long meals while tugging on smokes and laughing. We smoked in the car, we smoked at the barracks, we smoked after meals and before meals. And for one week in my life – smoking ceased to disgust me. In fact, it became something supremely enjoyable. I remember fearing that I was liking it a little too much, but upon getting back to Florida – it once again became the occasional vice. Something about kicking back at a table, having just enjoyed a fine omelet, and breathing deep from a lit cigarette while discussing random events… I guess it only makes sense in Abilene after two days in a bus.

That bus trip was fun though. Sleeping on my suitcases in Dallas overnight so no one would steal them, playing poker with four old black guys on the floor of a bus stop in Louisiana. My bus leaving Dallas for Tallahassee was so late that, out of frustration, I ended up sneaking onto a bus for Atlanta and pretending to be asleep with they came by and asked for tickets. I figured, at least it’s closer to Florida than Dallas. It all worked out, but man oh man was that an experience.

Out.