My Sunday column

My Floridaze

Desperately tired I recently took a badly needed vacation, from which I came back seven days later even more tired and with a lot less money in the bank.
That said, it was a good time.

The trip down
We made our annual jaunt to gorgeous St. George Island in Apalachicola Bay last week.
I have been going to St. George Island for two decades. It is a wonderful place to visit, but it’s what my cousin Joe would have described as “a fer piece down the road.”
And now that I am hauling a chatty-four year old along, the trip seems to have lengthened by a few thousand miles. I knew it was going to be a long day when the precious little tyke inquired — about four miles south of Calhoun — “Daddy, are we almost there yet?”
We were not and we still weren’t at Cartersville when she asked again, or at Marietta or Jonesboro or Griffin or in Tifton where I — accidentally, of course — almost left her at a McDonald’s.

On the island
We hit the beach in all of our albino glory on Saturday. My daughter and I were sitting in the sand when I pointed to the southeast — in the general direction of southwest Florida, and explained that way, way in that direction is where Mommy and Daddy used to live. Then I pointed southwest and said that way, way in that direction was Mexico.
Not missing a beat my daughter replied, “And that’s where Speedy Gonzalez lives!”
I love that kid!
I was determined not to blister on this trip, and spent much of my vacation slathering on various sunscreen concoctions.
I also wore a lot of clothes to the beach. I looked more like a knight preparing for a joust than someone about to go swimming.
Of course, I got blistered anyway. Somehow my elbows got scorched. My elbows?
On Tuesday, six of us went out with Capt. Charlie Logue for a half-day of fishing. The first lunker I snagged was a 16-pound (give or take) Amberjack. I hooked him solidly and then held on for dear life as that devil fish slung me around the boat for a painful 10 minutes.
My blistered elbows screamed in outrage as the battle seesawed.
Once, needing some relief, I tucked the bottom of the rod between my legs and under a secure piece of metal. Or so I thought. The devil fish dove, the rod jerked upward, the metal didn’t hold and I screamed out unpleasantries in notes not heard since the heyday of Leo Sayer.
After landing the great beast, which went on to claim Best Catch of the Day Honors, I quickly handed off the rod to a fellow fishermen and collapsed in a pile like one of the 300 Spartans.
However, in the end I won.
The Amerberjack may have delivered a fearsome blow to my ... pride ... but over the next few days, I ate him.

Coming home
He was sitting in the corner of a fast food restaurant in Tallahassee, the American city most likely to be confused with Calcutta
He was a disgustingly fit looking young man, wearing bicycling togs and scribbling away furiously in what looked like a diary.
It was.
His name was Chris and he was on a quest.
Chris was from America’s heartland, Springfield, Mo., but his imagination and determination were taking him far from home, in this case on a solo 3,200-mile trip from Key West to San Francisco.
Why?
Why the heck not!
Much like Blanche DuBois, Chris said he was relying on the kindness of strangers. At meal times he would pull off the road, go in a restaurant, tell the manager what he was doing and ask for a “courtesy meal.”
So far, he said, he hadn’t been refused.
Chris was friendly, soft spoken and generous in answering questions he had already fielded repeatedly. He also smelled like a goat.
We shook hands. I wished him well and slipped him $10 for supper.
God loves a rover and so do I.