Taking the plunge – or maybe not

I enjoy a nice dip in the pool as much as the next four-wheeled bum. So imagine my excitement when I learned that the Cabot Lodge, Tallahassee had what promised to be a perfect setting for aquatic frolics.  Here’s what the website advertised.

And here’s the reality.

 

Oh well, I thought. There’ll be plenty more opportunities to enjoy a fresh, invigorating dip. And there was. Or so it seemed.

On its website,  the Holiday Inn’s New Orleans hotel suggests that once checked in, guests should “Work out in the onsite exercise room and relaxing with a refreshing plunge into our sparkling indoor pool”. Which apparently looked like this:

  

But in reality looks like this.

 

One of the things I remember from my brief stint in the customer service industry is that you should strive to “under promise and over deliver” That is, try to surprise your customers with an unexpectedly good level of service. Unfortunately, it seems that some US hotels have got this mantra back to front.

The Holiday Inn, New Orleans also charges an exorbitant  $28 fee to leave your car in some grotty-looking garage next door. And don’t get me started about the shoebox-sized “gym”.

Still, things could be a lot worse. I am, after all, in the middle of the French Quarter, the Deep South’s capital of culture, surrounded by fine stores and high-class entertainment.

 

 

And exquisite, tasteful clothing on sale in the upmarket fashion boutiques 

Not forgetting the stunning architecture

 

Earlier, I’d been in Mobile Alabama where I stopped off at the local car repair shop to try to explain a strange puddle of liquid that has been appearing under my car since leaving Tampa. Either the elusive St Petersburg monkey had hitched a ride in the trunk and become incontinent en-route, or something was up with the engine.

Going to a car mechanic is like seeing a dentist. You’d rather not know how bad things are. It’s very likely to be a serious problem you can’t afford to fix. As you know nothing about the subject, the experts can tell you, and charge you, what they like. You are in a vulnerable position, and you can’t do a thing about it

“You’re English aint ya?” the jovial workshop manager observed after I ‘d outlined my problem.

“Yes” I replied, sensing an opening for a little repartee, which could potentially lower the price. “From Sheffield, actually. In Yorkshire”

 “We-elll, My sister’s husband, he went to in to Aiimmsterdaiim coupula years ago” he said. “Hell’va place, Aimsterdaiim”

I didn’t really know how to respond to that. Did he think Amsterdam was in the UK? The Dam is very familiar to me, but despite being home to huge numbers of wasted Brits, it isn’t in Britain.  And what did “Hellva place” mean? Did he approve?

“Yep” was my eventual lame response. “It really is..er.. one hell of a place”

Five hours later I got the diagnosis. No monkey to be found. The puddles were caused by condensation from the air con, and therefore not a serious problem. However, I urgently needed a new “gasket valve” or some such thing.

In the end I walked away just $155 out of pocket. Not bad going, all things considered. But for all I know, the mechanic could have spent his time lounging on the back seat flicking through a jazz mag while idly wafting his weasel. The car didn’t seem any different. I’ll never know for sure. Such is the lot of the non-mechanically minded. 

Back to the Big Easy, where it’s only easy to do certain things – like get pissed, for example. But just try finding something healthy to eat. I eventually found an iHop, which sold salad. I bought a takeaway, but when I got back to the hotel they had added a large free portion of deep fried dough to the package. Which I’m bound to give in and scoff after the few pints I intend to down later this evening.

 

Despite it’s rough edges, I’m really looking forward to exploring the city this weekend. The Fatman himself,  Antoine Dominique, still lives here,  as well as that wonderful girl who sang “I’m Amazin’”after her home was destroyed by Katrina. Of course, the city is famous for other things besides the disaster. Vampires, for example. Louis Armstrong, jazz and the delta blues.

 So I’ll head off out onto Bourbon Street now, and leave you with this aquatic offering from the Fatman, and a glance at my ravaged map of Florida. Now where did I put that umbrella?

 

Well…

Hi! I’m back in Tampa, after another grueling circuit of Florida. At the Hilton Garden Inn Tampa East, to be precise. And knackered. Really, knackered. Too knackered to do anything other than drive the half mile to the supermarket, pick up microwavable meatloaf, Dairy Crunch and beer, and collapse back into bed – from where I’m writing these words.

Jang has finally gone. I dropped her at Tampa Airport yesterday.  Her presence made the Florida leg of the road trip much more interesting, and rather exhausting. During her visit I’ve neglected the blog, but on the plus side, I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to travel 24/7 in the company of a girl.

So briefly, here’s what’s happened in the past week. We left Miami Beach on Monday, and decided to move downtown. We got a great room at the Hilton, which had floor-to-ceiling windows and a cityscape view. The kind of hotel room where you should really be snorting cocaine off the glass table before heading out in a limo to an expensive night club clutching a bottle of Bollinger. It was also right on a flight path to Miami Airport, meaning that a procession of large aircraft appeared to be heading on a collision course for the building.

Our stay in Miami involved lots of beachy-related things, the most memorable being Hollywood Beach, the summer retreat of thousands of weird French Canadians. Other highlights included an evening reconnaissance of the Vizcaya gardens, one of Florida’s many funky old mansions, and getting totally lost on the picturesque Key Biscayne – quite an achievement, as it’s only about three miles long and half a mile wide.

Then it was a long drive back through the Everglades all the way to Sarasota. Here, I was finally able to pick up my SIM card which had been sent over from Europe to Jang’s cousin. After spending the night in an unexpectedly sumptuous Holiday Inn Sarasota Airport, we headed onwards to St Pete’s Beach, and Tampa, where there was still time to get lost one last time before I drove Jang to the airport for her morning flight to JFK.

So back to the road trip. I’m not quite sure where I’m heading next, but one thing is not in doubt – this purposeless sojourn is making me fatter. It is especially noticeable around the breast area, while my legs – formerly strong from walking and cycling – are becoming decidedly skinny.

The reason? I spend my days watching trashy afternoon TV while downing bottles of gassy, weak beer and feasting on sugary, salty snacks from 7-11 and CV-esses.  I now drive everywhere, even to get across roads.   In short, I’m turning into a typical Yank.

I did attempt to halt the rot by purchasing a device called “The “Ab Tightener 2”. According to the packaging, this clever device would allow me to regain my six-pack abs after spending a mere ten minutes each day pumping away. I could even do it while driving, I anticipated as I stood excitedly in the queue at Marshalls, $9.49 in hand.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. To my eternal shame, I was unable to assemble the damn thing, even though it consisted of just three parts. It’s now sitting in the boot of the car, awaiting its consignment to the trash heap, where it will join the estimated 37.8 million tons of home exercise equipment discarded by US residents each year.

I consoled myself with beer and possibly my worst fast food experience so far – fried fish, hush puppies, onion rings and loose pieces of batter from Long John Silver’s. The only concession to health being a small tub of greasy, sugary coleslaw. 

So here it is. The first and last time you’ll see the Ab Tightener on my trip. I was going to zoom in for a close-up, but zooming isn’t possible on my phone. Actually, I’m now realizing that this damn Sidekick is the Ryan Air of cellphones. Want to zoom? Want a calculator?  An alarm clock? Sorry, but all such applications must be purchased separately. Ever felt you’ve been had?

Well, after that little moan, I’ll check out with a rare live track by Mozzer, who really throws himself into this old Bowie cover. Next blog will, hopefully, be from Alabama or some other such place in the Deep South.

Miami Twice

Disneyland was a load of fun when we finally managed to get in. Having paid your $14 parking fee, you have to drive to a huge series of parking lots, each one named after a dwarf. Aptly, this is where I ended up parking.

Once parked, you have to board a long, snake-like vehicle that stops at all the dwarf-themed parking lots. When its head is arriving at one stop, its tail is just leaving another. While on board, you are constantly advised to keep all hands and feet inside the vehicle by a strange man who actually talks like Mickey Mouse.

This vehicle then deposits you at a monorail stop. Only then do you realize that you could have walked to the monorail stop in just a couple of minutes if you’d taken a short cut through Dopey.

After a brief wait, the monorail whisks you, via the Disney resort, to the main entrance to the Magic Kingdom. Once there, those with vouchers must queue up the guest services booth to exchange said vouchers for tickets, then joint the main queue, present the tickets and submit a fingerprint.

Then you’re in! Despite my initial skepticism I began to feel a tingle of excitement once I was in. This is the world’s oldest amusement park and a historic, almost sacred place.

After mooning Mickey we headed to “Tomorrowland”, a space-age depiction of what the future looked like in 1960. There we went on rides like the Carousel of Progress, a gloriously kitsch attraction originally constructed for the 1960 World’s Fair, the Space Mountain, a roller coaster which employs two workers on permanent vomit-sweeping duty, and “Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin” which is best experienced on acid.

After all that I felt like I had earned a pint. The Tall Tale Inn and Saloon in Frontierland looked a good bet.

Well, I could have coped with a weak $8 beer in a cheap plastic cup. But what I couldn’t cope with was the news that the all alcohol is banned at the Magic Kingdom. The sense of gloom and despondency this news cast on the day made me seriously wonder if I might have a real alcohol problem.

Still, those cute, cuddly, loveable Disney characters soon cheered me up.

We pushed on. Tom Sawyer Island, the Thunder Mountain Railroad. Pirates of the Caribbean. The Jungle Cruise. The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. The Disney Railroad The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. It’s a Small World. Splash Mountain. Snow White’s Scary Adventure. The rides began to blur into one another. 

 

We left late in the evening, exhausted and moused-out. And I finally got my pint.

In order to make the blog more current I’m going to have to skip some things. I’ve not been updating regularly since Jang has temporarily joined me on my travels. It’s currently a different kind of vibe. 

Briefly, we drove back to Melbourne Beach, and returned to the same hotel I had stayed in the previous week. Then onwards to Miami from where I’m writing this. We hit torrential rain en-route, and the car’s interior got soaked. Inexplicably, I managed to lose a wet car rug.

Since then, we’ve been enjoying the amazing hospitality of Jang’s cousin (JC) and his wife, who live in a smart apartment on Miami Beach. The car now seems fine and the weather is good.

Last night Jang, myself and JC went to the local Irish pub and got very trashed on a combination of beer and “Irish car bombs”. We then headed back to the apartment, bombed, with more beers.

JC and myself decided to fork out the exhorbitant fee to watch the big pay-for-view boxing match – Pacquiao v Clotty – on JC’s huge TV.

Jang’s cousin  fell asleep in round four. Jang herself was out for the count by the end of round six. Like Clotty, I struggled – but managed to go the distance. 

 Next up – back to the Everglades with Jang. Wonder if that gator’s still around…

Busted – and mooning the mouse

Greetings from the latest episode of the Florida magic roundabout. So far, I’ve completed one circuit and two half-circuits. I’m now back on Melbourne Beach on the Atlantic coast.

Last time out, I was about to meet a person who I will now refer to as Jewish-American Nice Girl, or Jang – at Tampa airport. Surprisingly she showed up on time, was not overly laden down with baggage and was carrying relatively few indiscernible instruments. We returned back to the Tampa hotel without a hitch.

The next day it was back to Sarasota. I’d already been there on my travels and didn’t like its rather intimidating poshness. But we’d been invited by some of Jang’s relatives who had a rather nice house on the water. After listening to a description of the set up I was persuaded to give the place a second chance.

The trip from Tampa to Sarasota is supposed to take about half an hour. However, due to my increasingly misguided attempts to see the “back roads of the USA” it ended up taking two-and-a-half. That’s two-and-a-half hours of shopping malls, traffic lights and fast food restaurants. I made a mental note that the “roads less traveled” are less traveled for a reason.

We finally arrived in Sarasota, and the house was indeed nice, with a pool and a boat moored at the end of the garden. In fact, my shabby car looked a bit out of place parked in this lush tropical setting. Jang’s relatives made us very welcome before we headed out to the beach for happy hour margaritas.

 

But later that evening the tropical idyll was shattered after I lent Jang my computer to watch Jonathan Creek on You Tube. After she returned it, she simply stopped speaking to me. At first I guessed that she’d stumbled across my stash of porn movies, but it turned out she’d made an even grimmer discovery – she’d found this blog.

Jang was none too pleased with my former description of her, to say the least. Even though I didn’t refer to her by name, she pointed out, some people would know very well whom I was referring to. Her portrayal as some kind of chaotic female tornado that occasionally descends on my life was inaccurate, she said. In reality, I had not raised any objection to her flying down to Florida. In fact, she pointed out, I had actively encouraged her. 

She decided to sleep in the spare room, and demanded that I write an online apology.

So this is it. Sorry Jang, Your presence in Florida isn’t entirely unwelcome, and I have deleted the offensive text. If it weren’t for you, I’d never have ended up in Disneyland.

The next day, although we were hardly speaking, we visited the Ringling Museum,  an amazing collection of art established by a circus owner who grew amazingly rich by charging people to watch performing animals and clowns. Actually, that sounds a lot like Sheffield Wednesday’s business model, so why are they teetering on bankrupcy?

Then onwards to Orlando to visit Mickey and his chums. A brief reconnaissance of the Magic Kingdom revealed there was no way of jumping the fence and avoiding the $190 entrance fee ($88 admission each, and $14 parking). However, the helpful man at the hotel’s travel desk told us that we could get in for a mere $40 each if we paid him first, then went on a ninety minutes timeshare presentation. We’d be in the Magic Kingdom soon after lunch, he assured us.

Well, we agreed, and we must have been the timeshare salesman’s nightmare. After exchanging pleasantries, our conversation went like this.

Me: “I’d better tell you now, we’ve no intention of signing anything. We’re not interested in timeshare at all. We just here for the cheap Disney tickets. You’re just wasting your time trying to sell us anything.”

Salesman “Well that’s great. Really great. That means I won’t get paid. How about I give you a refund right now?”.

A secret photo of the "hard sell"

 

 

Me: “Do we still get our Disney tickets?”

Salesman: “No”

Me: “In that case, let’s go ahead with the tour. If it’s nice, we could tell our friends. Maybe we could take your business card?”

Salesman “That doesn’t help me at all. I won’t make any money from your friends. And we’re not allowed  to give out business cards. I’m losing money for every minute I talk to you guys”

So as you can imagine, the tour was conducted in a less-than-jovial atmosphere. We did our best to console the sullen salesman by telling him how great his resort looked, but that wasn’t going to appease him. It still took two hours and firm refusals to offers from three of his sales colleagues before we were finally on our way, Disney tickets in hand.

After all that, I was looking forward to a pint. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. The Magic Kingdom, we discovered soon after we were inside, has a strict “no alcohol” policy. No weak American beer, no wine with your meal, and certainly no hard liquor. Apart from the bottles of rum on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride which were placed tantalizingly out of reach (and lets be honest were unlikely to contain real Cap’n M anyway) the place was as dry as a nun’s gusset. Or a Frenchman’s bath towel, for that matter.

The great thing about Disneyland is that it brings out the child inside you. Or in my case, the teenage adolescent.

Where's Micky pointing?

 More mouse-related capers in the next update….

Coast to Coast – Again

It was a beautiful, calm, peaceful night. The moon, impossibly huge, cast its milky-white reflection onto the shimmering ocean. All that could be heard was the crash of the waves and the rustle of the light breeze in the palms. For the benefit of the blog, I decided to take a photo of this awe-inspiring vision.

 

 Well OK, it didn’t come out very well. But believe me, it was a wonderful sight, and for once in my life, I felt rather peaceful and relaxed.

I think it was the book “Into the Wild” which asked a question about whether happiness could be achieved in solitude. To be truly happy, don’t you need other people around you? If you think back to the happiest times of your life, weren’t they all spent with other people?

If that’s the case, then I should be verging on suicide by now. I’ve been staying in hotel rooms without company since the beginning of the year, with only very occasional forays into serious conversation. Most of the time I’m just driving, surfing the Internet and hanging out in anonymous mid-range hotel rooms.

But don’t monks, or hermits, and spiritual pilgrims spend days, weeks, months on end meditating alone? And isn’t the inner enlightenment they seek a form of happiness? Could I actually be moving towards a serene state of inner-enlightenment ?

Well, if so, it’s about to be put on hold. I’m meeting up with Jang tonight.  She’s arriving at Tampa Airport in  couple of hours. The past three times we’ve arranged to meet, her arrival has been delayed by between three hours and two days.

Earlier, I’d been hanging out at Melbourne Beach on the so-called “Space Coast”, so named after its proximity to Cape Canaveral. It was there where I’d had the serene, moonlit experience. This particular stretch of coastline is cheap, laid back and pretty. There are even dolphins frolicking in the sea. At least, I think they were dolphins. Big fish with large dorsal fins.

 

I spent most of my time in the Hilton, which has recently introduced a new line in flat, thin rubbish bins that can house nothing much wider than a couple of sheets of paper.

 They may look stylish and trendy, but they are actually quite useless – not unlike another  product of the Hilton family, some might observe.

 

Then yesterday I drove back to the Gulf Coast on route 60, a highway notable for its strip malls, chain stores and traffic lights. After safely arriving in Tampa, I met up with K+, one of my old friends from NY.  

We grabbed a meal and went to in search of a pub. After cruising the Tampa burbs we found a place called the Copper Top that appeared empty at 9.00, but over the next couple of hours people started to drift in, and by 11pm was  full of college students playing pool, getting drunk and neckin’ in the parking lot.  Not bad going for a Monday night.

We had a good time discussing, among other things, gigs that we went to alone because we couldn’t find anyone else to go with. My list included Electric Hippo, Real Tuesday Weld and the Fuckmobiles. K+’s list, on the other hand, consisted mostly of strange, obscure bands that no one has ever heard of.

That’s all for now. I’m off to the airport to meet Jang. Wish me luck…