Finding Florida

Finding Florida

Lake Okeechobee

Lake Okeechobee swollen with 12" rain in so many hours, waters enriched with fertilisers and chemicals drained from the sugar cane fields and flooding the coast with nutrient rich pollutants that spark the mother of all algal blooms on the east coast of Florida, and consequently starving the wildlife of all oxygen -result? hundreds of dolphins, pelicans, manatee, and other coastal sealife washed up on Florida's sparkling beaches, tho missed by many as it occurred before the influx of  Americans heading south for the winter, and suppressed by the state's tourism hungry government.

Crossing the state from one coast fringed by human excess to the other, this endless flatness, wetness, of remnant everglades, of intense cropping in sugar cane with its attendant black workers refugees from Cuba and other Caribbean hellholes, convoys of harvesters and smoking sugar mills dotted along ruled lines of concrete highways, morphing seamlessly into rambling cattle ranches, and broken only by the wake-up calls of buzzing crop-dusters, RV saleyards in the middle of nowhere, and Arcadia, the most original cowboy town left on earth, even if it's main street is marred with McDonalds, KFC, Subway, Burger King and Taco Bell.

Large heron and egret -sorry, Peli just flew off

One day in St Petersburg, named by a Russian railway entrepreneur, a city oversupplied with rental & retail properties as there is no work for many, but beautifully sited on Tampa Bay with gems of its own;  a retirement heaven, where big cars and bigger bikes thunder on the roads chewing up their super cheap auto gas, men & women in well worn midlife crises sporting long hair, leathers and tats; a cultural heart trying hard to keep the the city alive and safe -the Dali, an architectural masterpiece to house the biggest Dali collection outside of Spain, the only University I'm aware of that has waterfront promenades, solar powered recharge stations for students, and the Fountain of Youth on campus; research centres adjacent for sustainable energy and marine conservation, and a humungous Coast Guard base (-I can paddle board round them all each morning in less than an hour)

Students waterfront with solar device recharge timeout tables.
In fact there were recharge stations for electric cars as well.
And just beyond the sailing dinghy fleet is my yacht.

Spiral Stair of the Dali Museum

Dali's take on warping time - his melting clock

Ribs, ribs and more ribs - bring it!

In the main street "Central Street" I find it closed to traffic for the 3rd annual Scorpio Thunderbikes Meet, heavy metal being pounded out by a local band, beers flowing, and more leather and tattoos  on large 50-something blonde beauties than you can shake a Harley at. A  safe transit thru that, and I'm in the chute for the Ribs Fest - a collection of all the award winning Ribs recipes, with grits and salads and wings and coke and beers and bourbon and..and then? -Steppenwolf, pumping out Born to be Wild like it had just hit #1 - a mecca for the grey beards of the post war 70s dope heads. And everyone just so into it, happy to share whatever, and dance, and there must've been 60,000 there. A good nite out. 

Tampa Bay - no hurricanes, no lightning storms, yay
Half the yachties I've met in Florida have been hit by lightning resulting in
everything from total loss to total replacement of all electronics and electrics

First single-handed sail on Whakaari ( aka Pajarito)