Ok, there’s no great metaphor here. I just spent the week in Florida on Spring break, vis­it­ing my girlfriend’s Cousin as well as my Grand­fa­ther. The first day after I arrived, I took my bike out and rode to the beach. As I rode up the walk­way from the park­ing lot, I stopped for a sec­ond to take in the scene. As I was about to take the Cell phone pic­ture above, I looked down on the sandy wood, I thought “Hmm, I have my wheels in the sand. That’s quite nice.”

I’ll run through the inter­est­ing things I saw. I drove, so I got to see lots of the Gulf Coast, dri­ving through Louisiana, Mis­sis­sippi, and Alabama into Florida. The thing I noticed most was the after­ef­fects of Kat­rina, which are still obvi­ous. I didn’t get into New Orleans, but I drove all through the state. The first thing I saw was all along the inter­state, on the side of the road and the median, were tons of fallen trees. Some were com­pletely on the ground, and some had been snapped off halfway up. It was never com­plete, but it was con­stant. For a hun­dred miles at least. I also saw some of the tem­po­rary hous­ing, which looked pretty nice, if you want a tiny white trailer on the side of the inter­state in the mid­dle of nowhere. One other thing I noticed was a some miss­ing rest stops, which were sim­ply gone. There’d be a sign say­ing “Rest Stop Closed” and the entrance ramp would lead to a over­grown field with a empty con­crete slab. Of course, that’s prob­a­bly bet­ter than the alternative:

This was the first rest stop I saw at the first rest stop in Louisiana. I was wait­ing for an Alli­ga­tor to crawl out of the bay and eat one of the lit­tle dogs that peo­ple were walk­ing, but no luck. And is it me, or does that Alli­ga­tor look happy? I can say the facil­i­ties could use some work. Check this out:

Any­one plan­ning on steal­ing the TP? I didn’t even want to touch it.

I did con­tinue my state line sign photo project. Here’s my two addi­tions, plus another Texas:

I missed Florida, and their sign was bor­ing any­way. Nice add-ons to the Texas sign. I’ll counter with my new favorite bumper sticker I saw in Louisiana. It said “If you voted for Bush, a yel­low rib­bon won’t make up for it.” Ouch. Also, Dri­ving Friendly isn’t the Texas way. More like Dri­ving Maniacally.

Any­way, after arriv­ing in Jack­sonville, I spent a few days relax­ing, hav­ing fun, and get­ting in a few bike rides. I also ate mad amounts of home made Puerto Rican food, thereby can­cel­ing out my bike rides I’m sure.

So after that, my next move was to head down to Pom­pano Beach to spend two days with my Grand­fa­ther, oth­er­wise known as the Colonel. He’s 93, and I was also going to play a show for all the peo­ple at his retire­ment home as well. Let me tell you, this was a gig I was ner­vous about. For one, I hardly ever per­form com­pletely solo. For two, I was play­ing Jazz stan­dards, which isn’t my forte as well. I’d been work­ing up some stan­dards into chord-melody arrange­ments, but I hadn’t had as much time to prep as I would have liked. So after arriv­ing, we went out to a fan­tas­tic chi­nese restau­rant he liked and then hung out late rem­i­nisc­ing and look­ing at old photos.

The next day, I sat down in the main lobby of his retire­ment home to in front of a crowd of about 30 peo­ple, ready to play. The other rea­son this was tricky was that all these peo­ple actu­ally knew the songs I was going to play. That’s not always the case with Jazz, so that made it even harder. Here’s the set I played, more or less:

Hide­away
All Of Me
Soli­tude
Misty
All the Things You Are
Satin Doll
Black­bird
Don’t Get Around Much Any­more
Blue In Green

Just to add to the fun, here’s a great shot of me and the Colonel dur­ing my show. In typ­i­cal fash­ion, he was sit­ting next to me some­times, but also was in the back, on the side, and gen­er­ally run­ning around. He’s seri­ously active.

My per­sonal favorite moment occurred between songs, when this tiny old lady piped up, in a waver­ing voice, “The short­est woman here would like to ask the tallest man here to dance with her.” She was refer­ring to the gen­tle­man sit­ting next to her. So I played some dance music (I got Rhythm) and they danced. It was ter­ri­bly cute. Here’s the best photo I had. It wasn’t great, but it gives a good idea of what hap­pened. Also, my hair hap­pens to look good.

Over­all, the gig was good fun. It was hard and stress­ful, but I had a good time. I’m going to try to get back and do it again some­time soon. After the gig, we went out to (fun­nily enough) The Long­horn Steak­house for lunch, and then I started the long drive back to Jack­sonville. That drive was enough to write for­ever about, but I’ll let it go. Let’s just say it involved Whole Foods, Port St. Lucie, me being chased by a tiny crab, and Day­tona Beach at 1am dur­ing spring break.

The next few days were spent in Jack­sonville hav­ing fun again. There was a trip to St. Augus­tine, which was pretty cool. I drank the Ponce De Leon foun­tain of youth water, which is really nasty. I also went walk­ing on the Jack­sonville Beach pier, where I took this pic­ture of a pel­i­can try­ing to kill me.

It was really hor­ri­ble. He was chas­ing me around.

Any­way, on my way back to Texas through the Florida pan­han­dle, I had an expe­ri­ence I had to relate. Florida has the best rest stops any­where. As I was dri­ving through one late in the evening, I saw the fol­low­ing sign:

“Hmm.” I thought to myself, “ I won­der how that works.” So I drove over to where the sign was pointed, and saw this innocu­ous look­ing device:

I drove up to it, and the thing went…well, judge for yourself:

It was like a fire­hose! Totally crazy. It didn’t just do the wind­shield. It did the whole car. Awe­some. I hit a few more on my way out of Florida, just to get the bugs off.

The last thing I wanted to men­tion was how freak­in’ huge Texas is. As I entered Texas from Louisiana, I saw a sign that said “El Paso 880 miles.” Insane. The whole high­way, which runs from Jack­sonville Florida in the East to Santa Mon­ica, Cal­i­for­nia in the West is 2460 miles long. Of that, more than a third is in Texas. The next clos­est state is Ari­zona, which has 392 miles, or less than half of Texas. Doesn’t it seem like Texas should be bro­ken up into a few states? Or maybe it’s own coun­try. Peo­ple here would like that.

Any­way, it was a lot of fun. Good Vaca­tion, and I’m now sup­pos­edly ready to fin­ish the school year and get into all the work I have. More stuff on all that forthcoming.