Dear Reader, I really want you to feel pity for me.
Yeah, I know, I'm spending the holidays in Florida. And, in doing so, I avoided the Great Christmas Blizzard of 2010 (or whatever the media are calling it) that hit the Northeast.
But where I am, while it's lovely enough, it ain't South Beach. Then again, I never really wanted to go there. In fact, I never had much of a yearning to go to Miami, or to come to this state at all. My reasons are beyond the scope of this post or this blog, but suffice to say that my parents are the reason I come here, to a place that's about halfway between Jacksonville and Orlando--and, for that matter, about halfway between Saint Augustine and Daytona Beach.
Now, all of those towns except Jacksonville (which, frankly, I don't know very well and--again, for reasons beyond the scope of this post and blog--don't want to know very well), have much to recommend them. The town in which my parents live is not without its charms, including some nice pedestrian/bike lanes.
So, there's some good riding here. The problem is this:
Yes, this is what I have been riding. My parents borrowed it from a neighbor. While I appreciate that neighbor's kindness, I have to wonder how much she actually rides it. I saw it two years ago, and it looked no more used when I saw again this week.
It's a very cushy bike: the sort of machine on which you'd float along on a boardwalk or around the golf course. But try to ride it more than half an hour, or make it go more than about three times your normal walking speed, and this bike will ignore your efforts and continue on its merry but very slow ways.
It's not too bad when ridden on level ground (which, around here, is pretty much the only kind of ground) and with the wind. But pedal against the wind, which sometimes kicks up along the coastline, and it feels as if you're riding suspended in syrup.
This is giving me incentive to order a Brompton. Of course, if I were to bring it (or any other) bike down, I'd have to check it in. Usually, I bring everything I need for a trip down here in a carry-on.
Well, I'm glad I have a bike to ride, anyway. And this one makes me appreciate my own bikes all the more.
This is one way you know you're in The South (and I ain't talkin' about the Bronx):
Between this bike/pedestrian path and the ocean is a strip of land about 200 yards wide, consisting of more trees-- like the one in the photo-- with moss cascading from them, interrupted by roadside ice cream and hot dog stands, biker bars, gated communities and a Publix supermarket. Between this bike/pedestrian path and the Inland Waterway are a couple of state parks, a couple of convenience store/gas stations, a couple more biker bars and a couple of "professional buildings."
I stopped in one of the convenience store/gas stations. The latter is owned by Citgo, but the store is part of a local chain called Jiffy. This part of Florida, like much of the US, has experienced its coldest weather on record for this time of year. So, I had a yen for something I never craved in my previous trips down here: hot chocolate. Also, I started the day with a headache, which I incorrectly thought I could pedal off. So I also wanted aspirin.
While there, I got talking with Sharon, the store manager. I can best describe her as a redneck wife, and I don't necessarily mean that disparagingly. She's somewhere between my and my parents' age and has lived all of her life in this area. Business was slow, she said, but that's how it is everywhere: "Nobody has any money."
She said she'd seen a report saying that the county in which her store is located--and in which my parents live--has the highest unemployment rate in the country. It's hard not to believe that: Everywhere I've pedalled, and every place I've gone with my parents, I've seen empty stores and condo buildings. A so-called European Village consists of a pedestrian plaza ringed with restaurants and shops, about half of which were vacant. When I last saw it, two years ago, all of the spaces were occupied and business, although not booming, had yet to be wracked by the ravages of the implosion of the local and national economy.
Sharon says she's never seen anything this bad. In a nearby town, where she sometimes has to go on business, she sees "kids with eighteen siblings, and none of them have the same father." And, she says, "They're white."
Five years ago, someone with no job, no income and no assets could get a loan to buy a house. Today, this county and other places are full of young people with no job, no education and no future. Now, if they had education, they'd be like certain young people in the Northwest of England nearly four decades ago. What did they do? They became the Johnny Rottens and Sid Vicouses of this world. If, instead of education, they had religious dogma, they'd be suicide bombers.
But those young men and women truly believe in nothing at all. At least, they're not willing to die for anything, and they're living, not for the future, not for (much less in) the moment, and not even for the present or the Eternal Present. Instead, they are in a chasm that cannot be filled with anything, not even their own deaths.
You can see it on their faces. In fact, during the time Sharon and I were talking to each other, three of them--the "rock-heads," as she called them, came into the store. One young man used the bathroom and left; a girl, younger, tried to buy cigarettes and another bought a case of beer.
"You've got to watch out for them," she warned me.
"They look pretty scary."
"You're on your bicycle. You're a woman riding alone. Around here, that can be dangerous, epecially between here and the bridge."
"What do you mean?"
"They attack people and rob them. And sometimes they do worse."
I thanked her for her advice and wished her a happy new year. And she wished me a safe trip, which I continued under the trees with moss hanging from them.
The local forecasters are saying that tonight we're going to have the coldest weather we've had for this date in at least forty years. The temperature is supposed to fall to 27 degrees here; with the wind-chill, the "real-feel" temperature will be 20 or less.
Now, if I were in New York, I probably wouldn't give a second thought to this weather. But I'm in Florida. Granted, it's about an hour and a half northeast of Orlando, but still...
I guess this weather is Floridian compared to what they're having in New York and, in fact, just about all of the Eastern seabord north of Savannah, GA. And I did get out for a brief ride this afternoon. Although it was still chilly and breezy, there was scarcely a cloud in the sky. Plus, I saw very little traffic. On the other hand, I did see lots of pine trees. I've nothing against them, but after an hour of seeing little else, they can get monotonous. Perhaps I wouldn't have felt that way if they were magnolias or some other trees I don't normally see.
The other day, I described the apparent lack of commuter and utility cyclists in these parts. That leads to drivers, whether intentionally or not, riding close to cyclists or turning into an intersection as a cyclist crosses. To be fair, the latter may be due to the faulty timing of traffic signals.
Those same motorists, once they leave their steel cocoons, can be very pleasant and polite, or even charming. I encountered one such driver today: He made an uncomfortably close turn and, upon noticing me, rolled his eyes and said "Dang!" or something stronger. As his window was closed and my lip-reading skills are only slightly better than my navigational or computational skills, I can't be entirely sure.
Anyway, I stopped in "Monkey," one of a local chain of 7-11 type gas stations/convenience stores, to use their bathroom. On the way out, I picked up a pack of Crysto-Mint Life Savers. As I walked up to the counter, that same man was chatting with the cashier. He turned and, upon seeing me, drawled, "How d'ya do, ma'am?"
"Oh, very well, thank you. Lovely day, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is, ma'am. I hope you're having a nice holiday."
"Why, thank you. And I hope you're having the same."
When I used to come down here in boy-drag, I found that some of the young good ol' boys would run me almost off the road and whoop, yell or make comments about my obvious Yankee-ness. Ironically, I was born in Georgia, though I spent only the first five months of my life there. My father was stationed there with the Strategic Air Command, and during my infancy, they moved him, my mother and me back to New York.
In the visits I've made since becoming Justine, I find that the motorists act more out of neglect or ignorance, or an unconscious sense of entitlement, than out of outright hostility than they did when I was Nick. And, in my days as the "before" photo, people were invariably polite and often friendly when they encountered me off my bike. Now, I still find most of them polite and friendly, though some men are what some would characterise as chauvinistic and sometimes solicitous.
These experiences remind me of what someone once told me: In Florida, South is North and North is South. Down to about Orlando, it's very much like one encounters in Georgia or Alabama. But much of the area south of Epcot Center has been colonized by Yankees and Quebecois.
But as far as today's weather goes, North is North, all right.
