Bayonet Point → Little Manatee River → Oscar Scherer (state park) → Bokeelia
I haven't really been in the mood to journal the past few days, so let me try catch up.
As i mentioned on a quick LJ entry, my night at the motel in Bayonet Point was not great. My neighbor was in the middle of some dispute with his wife, and he wanted the whole damn motel to know about it. I woke up with no electricity, which meant no coffee, then when i went to the front desk they said they weren't doing breakfast "for COVID reasons" (this is a really limp excuse because plenty of motels are doing breakfast) and just gave me a granola (muesli) bar and a banana. Then the maintenance guy couldn't find the breaker box, so i sat in my room with no coffee eating a banana in the dark. It fucking sucked.
Eventually the power came back on, but that was a couple hours lost, so i didn't really get as early of a start as i wanted. I had to cycle through Tampa! I expected to be cycling through suburbs all day, but i kinda hoped they'd be a bit interesting. They were not. It was just one chain restaurant after the next, one big box store after the next, one gas station after the next, one private estate after the next. It just went on and on for almost 50km.
I found a Puerto Rican bakery along the way, where i got a pastry called a Mallorca, which apparently outside of PR is called an ensaïmada. It's a really heavy spiral of dough made with lard, and it is extremely filling. Thank God for that, because by the time i found the bakery for my "mid-morning snack" i had been cycling through so many depressing fucking suburbs it was already lunch time.
My plan was to get lunch in Tampa proper, maybe in Ybor City, which is a historical neighborhood where supposedly the Cuban sandwich was invented. But i didn't make it that far. I was cycling around western Tampa and saw a "Latin American" restaurant that looked tempting, so i stopped and sat down. Turned out it was a Colombian restaurant, which bummed me out a little bit, because i'm not a huge fan of most South American food i've eaten. Outside of that Peruvian place in Wichita, every other South American restaurant i've been to has basically just been a shit ton of steak, with steak on top, and maybe some steak on the side. This place was no different. Everything was fucking steak. How many ways can you do a big fat hunk of dead cow? A million ways, apparently, in South America. Anyway, i ordered a bistec de palomilla apanado, which is a steak that has been hammered flat, breaded and fried. I think it's actually a Cuban preparation, not a Colombian one, but whatever.
It was a big piece of meat. It was a really, really big piece of meat. With rice. And potatoes. And yuca. And plantain. And beans. It was very dry, and very heavy, but somehow i found it satisfying. I think it's because the motel vending machine was broken, and the motel was not near any good restaraunts, so i hadn't had much for dinner or breakfast, and i hadn't slept well, and i was tired, and miserable. Getting such a solid meal, on top of the ensaïmada, it was just a massive injection of carbs and protein and fat, way more than i'd usually eat, but probably calories that i needed. I almost immediately felt better.
In my improved mood, i cycled on through Tampa, where i bumped over some cobbled roads of Ybor City and cycled through the 7th Ave historic district, which is pretty much exactly the same as every other American historic district. You've seen one, you've seen them all - it's the American equivalent of a European "old town". I did chat with a fellow cyclist who was going along the sidewalk, he said he took up cycling because he got 3 DUIs and they took his license away. He chattered a bit about how it's safer to go on the sidewalk, while dodging pedestrians, so i'm not sure that's true for the other people sharing the space.
Then it was through the docks and train yards, and on to Little Manatee River state park. It was a fine state park, with all the pines and palms and oaks that typify the Florida flora. I had an RV spot with electric, but no mobile signal, so i set up and watched a couple of shows before nodding off.
The next morning a neighbor dropped by to talk my ear off. Not the neighbor opposite, who had been playing jazz, reggae and hip-hop through sunset, but the neighbor beside in a truck camper.
Before i go on, i should explain the various types of RV that exist in America so you can get a better idea of what these campsites are like.
By far the most common type of RV down here is a longer version of what we would call caravans in Europe. Basically, it is a caravan - you still tow it behind your vehicle - but they have four wheels instead of two. They are called travel trailers, and you need to have a pickup truck to haul them because they are so heavy. Some of them are called fifth wheels. Those are the ones that don't hitch to the back of your vehicle, instead they overhang the truck bed, and you need a special mount installed on your truck to attach them. Either way, almost all of these come with slide-outs and are as big as a house on the inside.
Caravans of the size that we know in Europe are also technically travel trailers, but people usually differentiate them by calling them teardrop trailers, which are the very smallest kind of two-wheeled trailers. They're usually light enough to be pulled by a regular car. They're also explicitly banned from a lot of RV parks in this part of the US.
The second most popular RV down here after travel trailers is motorhomes. Specifically, "Class A" motorhomes. These are very large RVs the size of a bus where you drive the whole thing. Some of them you need a special license to drive. They almost always have "toys" attached on the back - sometimes just a couple of bicycles, but often they'll have a little trailer of their own with a motorcycle or ATV or jetski on it. Some of them tow a full-size SUV behind so they can park the motorhome and then use the SUV to go into town for groceries.
So, we have Class A motorhomes and travel trailers, which make up the bulk of RVs on the road. Then you have Class B motorhomes, which basically means vans - everything from oldskool VW hippie vans to six-figure Mercedes Sprinter conversions. These are often also banned from RV parks down here, presumably as a quick way of filtering out the poorer folks who are living in a station wagon or soccer mom minivan. Class C motorhomes are more like the European-sized motorhomes that have a van chassis with a caravan shell - they don't seem to be very popular over here.
Finally, there is the truck camper, which is a weird turtle-shell looking thing that sits in the bed of a pickup truck. It doesn't seem like it would be big enough to fit a bed, but somehow it does - presumably you either must be short and lie cross-ways, or you sleep in a bunk that stretches over the roof of the cab. You mostly see these things in Canada, because they're the standard "travel to Alaska" expedition-type RVs. You can drive over all kinds of rough terrain in your truck, but still have your home sitting there on the back. Also banned in a lot of RV parks, probably due to their reputation for being owned by rugged outdoorsmen who don't care that their vehicle is covered in mud. Can't have a muddy vehicle stinking up the place, can we?
Anyway, the point is, a lot of RV parks only accept the most expensive, cleanest, newest and largest vehicles. So, as a result, lots of people drive those vehicles, and they also make up the bulk of the neighborhood even in parks that don't have such douchey requirements. The only time you end up mostly seeing teardrops, vans and truck campers is in a state park or outback recreation area with really rough roads that a person in a heavier RV wouldn't want to risk trying to get up.
This also creates a little bit its own culture of traveler, because the big rig RVers like to go places with concrete pads and full hookups, and they get to enjoy exclusive access to the parks that lesser RVers are denied access to. But the lesser RVers also consider themselves more adventurous or perhaps more "everyman" than the big rig guys, despite the fact that you can still easily spend six figures on an RV that you could take up a logging road or onto a remote beach, and usually they just park them in the same places where big rigs park anyway.
Back to my neighbor. She was in a truck camper, and had a few snarky comments about the Class A motorhome opposite. But that was later in the conversation. We talked about bike touring and working from home and how COVID has created a bit of a restructuring in how a lot of people choose to live their lives. She said she does a fair bit of work from their truck camper, but they never go too far away from home because she works at a funeral home so she needs to be able to get back on relatively short notice when there is a sudden death and stuff needs to get organized in person.
I talked a bit about my feelings traveling through these endless suburbs-without-a-city and she said that it's a bit of a Florida joke that Florida used to produce fruit but now it just produces subdivisions. She's not wrong. The new development is everywhere. I cycled through way more of it today, but that's jumping ahead.
She also said that it was an open secret that these land developers don't follow any of the regulations that were set up to try keep the growth sustainable. She gave an example of a new development that went up next to hers, where the roads around it aren't wide enough to handle such a big influx of new residents, but the developers deliberately did their "investigation" on a weekend and a holiday so that the road traffic would be less and they could claim that the existing infrastructure would support their plan. I'm glad that what i noticed the moment i started cycling into this cesspit last week wasn't just my imagination.
None of these assholes really care about sustainable development. They'll give lip service to it, but really they're just trying to sell that land, rake in the money, and get out before the whole fucking state sinks.
It took me a while to get out of the state park. After talking to my neighbor for an hour, i decided to take an equestrian trail back to the park entrance, but because the park is in a wetlands, i got bogged on three different trails before giving up and backtracking to the main road. I'm not even sure horses could've made it through the bog. See, this is the thing with Florida - it only needs to rain a tiny little bit and now there are impassable swamps between point A and point B. Just cycling to the motel from my campsite in Crystal River i went through a completely flooded section where for several miles there was water on both sides of the road and lapping up on the doorsteps of every house. It was a little disconcerting, to see ducks floating along just a foot beside me off the edge of the road.
But i digress. I exited the Little Manatee River state park two hours after i intended to, then headed for Oscar Scherer state park via the town of Bradenton. I stopped in at a Jamaican bar in the Palmetto suburb and got a fantastic ackee and callaloo with beans and plantain. I also had a good chat with the bartender, who was really helpful and optimistic about my chances of finding work on a boat. She gave me a tip of a bar to go to in Key West to ask for cheap lodging and possible work, then said i'd be welcome back down her neck of the woods if i was looking for somewhere cheaper to stay. Bradenton in general gave me good vibes. It felt like a more chill and down-to-Earth place than the other Tampa-area towns.
Oscar Scherer is located in the suburbs between Sarasota and Venice. It's a very skinny park that's not much bigger than the nearby golf courses. I was staying in one of two "primitive" spots with no electric hookup. So, of course, my neighbor was a felon.
We didn't start out the conversation that way, but it came up when he said he used to enjoy visiting Canada and now he can't any more. I was talking to an American with a felony convinction a while ago about this, which is how i knew that was probably the reason. This dude went to prison for shooting someone who he claims robbed him. Said he'd do it again too. That's Americans for ya, they're spectacularly bloodthirsty. It makes me sick that people are so blasé about other people's lives, like they think their "property" is worth more than someone else's actual fucking life, but there's nothing to be gained trying to argue the point.
Our chat was short last night, but much longer this morning. The guy was 69 and still on parole. Said he lost his whole 60s to doing time and now he just wants to do his whole bucket list. He talked about how he bought a motorcycle and traveled across the US and Mexico when he was younger, and that my journey reminded him of that. I meet a lot of guys his age who did this solo motorcycle touring back in the day. I don't know if it's so popular these days. Seems like motorcyling is a bit of a rich man's game now. He learned to scuba dive, he got his pilot's license, he's done a bit of everything. He talked about going to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and how he felt a bit awkward when he walked into the gay section, and hung out with some drag queens (he called them crossdressers, then "corrected" himself to transsexuals). He was married twice, divorced twice, no kids. Was living in Kent when the Kent State massacre happened. Said it was just a tragic accident that happened when the National Guard shot warning shots into the air and accidentally killed "rioters" who were two miles away. Said they were having molotovs thrown at them at the time. It's interesting how people can construct their own fiction around a well-documented event.
He was a really interesting fellow, nonetheless. He didn't have a car, or a motorcycle, or anything. Just sleeping in the state park close to where he had to report in to Department of Corrections, taking a bus from the road out front. His plan was to try get his social security set up, because now he's out he's eligible again. Head back up to Ohio after parole, go see his grand-nephews, then buy a houseboat to bum around the Erie canal. "I want that to be my summer boat, then my winter boat i'll have down in the Gulf, doesn't have to be in Florida, just anywhere down here." He reckons liveaboard at anchor is better than in the marina, it's cheaper. He had lots of cheap traveling tips - everything from stealth camping to youth hostels to staying at hippie communes, although perhaps some of his experiences are out of date. He said i should definitely go to Baja.
It was interesting to hear how similar his thoughts were on nature and living the simple life to those of my neighbor the day before, a married woman who lived in the suburbs and went on mission trips to Cuba with her church. It seems like climate change is on everyone's mind, and the pace of development in Florida. The consumerism. How it's not sustainable. It's the first time i've had conversations like this with strangers since i lived in China, and it's funny because China's development is very reminiscent of Florida's.
I noticed that again when i got back on the road today. I cycled past Venice and then hit another 50km straight of non-stop gated communities, half of them brand new or still under construction. It's just... It's insane, i can't even describe it. I've been cycling through this for - what - three days now? Four? Just one highway going in a straight line with these occasional turn-offs into long, fenced-off areas. Ostentatious fountains and guard houses that look like fantasy castles at the entrance. It's exactly the same as what Chinese gated communities look like. Whole lines of cars waiting to be allowed in. And then you'll get the designated commercial zone, which is all exactly the same chain restaurants and chain stores that you can find anywhere in the US. Or, perhaps more specifically, it seems to be the same ones you'll find in the suburban northeast and possibly the midwest. It's like they've teleported a shopping mall out of the whitest suburb of Toronto, or NYC, or Chicago, and dropped it into the middle of this endless strip of gated communities.
And they are incredibly white. In a state that is 15% black and 25% Hispanic, the few of these communities i could find that have published demographics are around 93% white (with most of the rest being Asian) and 98% non-Hispanic. Many of the newer communities don't publish demographics themselves for "reasons", although i assume the 2020 census will show pretty much a similar distribution. Of course, you can pretty much tell by looking at the fucking abysmal choice of restaurants.
God, it was abysmal. I was starving by the time i finally decided to stop in a place called Punta Gorda, which looks from the outside like a slightly more organic waterfront community, something that isn't quite as bland and soulless as the developments around it. But, no. It fucking sucks. Name sounds Spanish, but it's 95% white and 98% non-Hispanic. I figured i'd just embrace the whiteness and go to an "English pub". I got fish'n'chips. It was the worst fish'n'chips ever.
Well, maybe not the worst, because they can get pretty bad. But the batter... Like, the whole point of English fish'n'chips is that the batter is supposed to be so heavy and fatty that it's like eating a thick-buttered slice of bread around the fish. Somehow this place had invented crispy air. Like, it looked like batter, and it crunched like batter, but it tasted like nothing and evaporated in your mouth like a mirage. And the chips weren't seasoned. I get it, when half your town is retired, you need to cook for people with high blood pressure whose doctors have told them they can't eat salt or fat. But come on! What's the point of living out your final years if you're going to live like an ascetic the whole time? And what's the point of a fucking pub if it won't serve real pub grub?
Ugh, i was so fucking annoyed. And then i had to cycle through another fucking 30km of fucking bullshit fucking suburbs and i just wanted to kill myself. It is hell. It is worse than hell. It is the worst place i have ever been in my life. I cannot remotely understand the people who choose to live in places like this. They're destroying the environment by living in large homes that are much bigger than they need, they're destroying the environment again by developing over wetlands, they're destroying the environment a third time by making everything only navigable by internal combustion vehicle, they're destroying the local agricultural economy by repurposing farmland, they're destroying the community by building walls and fences and moats around everything, they're destroying the culture by not supporting mom'n'pop businesses... It's such a radically annihilatory lifestyle, and it's risible that these people often masquerade as "conservative".
I needed to escape. I already knew two days ago that i needed to escape, which is why i booked an Airbnb on Pine Island. That is, the big Pine Island near Fort Myers, not the little one i visited a few days back. It's a large island that (contrary to the name) is mostly palm tree plantations. I guess they grow the palm trees here that get planted in front of all these gated communities. There are a few old-style caravan parks and holiday parks with little cabins in them, and some older homes, and some shops, but it still has a small island feel. There is a storm coming Thursday, so i booked two nights. The moment i got onto the island i felt a weight come off my shoulders. There was a taco truck that made real tacos. Almost every restaurant and shop is a mom'n'pop operation. It actually feels like a real community. First time i've had that feeling since i left the panhandle.
I still don't have anywhere to stay Friday night, because it's the weekend so all the state parks are booked, and all the RV parks don't allow tent campers. I would like to cross the Everglades this weekend, then i'll be in Miami early in the week and i'll probably end up in Key West for Thanksgiving, just to make it even more horrendously expensive and difficult to find accommodation than it already would've been. I still haven't figured it out. That's my plan for tomorrow, while i shelter from the storm.
But first i wanted to write all this out. I am sure i am missing out some things, and my thoughts are jumbled, because today was a very long and (mostly) depressing ride. My body is bruised and battered and on its last leg. I almost wiped out on a perfectly straight road today. I think i was just tired and distracted and annoyed, so somehow i lost my balance and swerved right into the middle of the road where fortunately i didn't get run over by a car, but i did drop my phone which is now smashed and almost unusable. That's my new phone from Louisiana too. Guess i better keep checking for that mythical Best Buy which actually has a Pixel in stock again. The almost-fall did worry me a bit, though. I am getting emotionally beaten by this stretch of Florida, and i think it's overflowing to my physical state too. Perhaps writing it all out will help exorcise the demon.
Oy. I need to sleep.
As i mentioned on a quick LJ entry, my night at the motel in Bayonet Point was not great. My neighbor was in the middle of some dispute with his wife, and he wanted the whole damn motel to know about it. I woke up with no electricity, which meant no coffee, then when i went to the front desk they said they weren't doing breakfast "for COVID reasons" (this is a really limp excuse because plenty of motels are doing breakfast) and just gave me a granola (muesli) bar and a banana. Then the maintenance guy couldn't find the breaker box, so i sat in my room with no coffee eating a banana in the dark. It fucking sucked.
Eventually the power came back on, but that was a couple hours lost, so i didn't really get as early of a start as i wanted. I had to cycle through Tampa! I expected to be cycling through suburbs all day, but i kinda hoped they'd be a bit interesting. They were not. It was just one chain restaurant after the next, one big box store after the next, one gas station after the next, one private estate after the next. It just went on and on for almost 50km.
I found a Puerto Rican bakery along the way, where i got a pastry called a Mallorca, which apparently outside of PR is called an ensaïmada. It's a really heavy spiral of dough made with lard, and it is extremely filling. Thank God for that, because by the time i found the bakery for my "mid-morning snack" i had been cycling through so many depressing fucking suburbs it was already lunch time.
My plan was to get lunch in Tampa proper, maybe in Ybor City, which is a historical neighborhood where supposedly the Cuban sandwich was invented. But i didn't make it that far. I was cycling around western Tampa and saw a "Latin American" restaurant that looked tempting, so i stopped and sat down. Turned out it was a Colombian restaurant, which bummed me out a little bit, because i'm not a huge fan of most South American food i've eaten. Outside of that Peruvian place in Wichita, every other South American restaurant i've been to has basically just been a shit ton of steak, with steak on top, and maybe some steak on the side. This place was no different. Everything was fucking steak. How many ways can you do a big fat hunk of dead cow? A million ways, apparently, in South America. Anyway, i ordered a bistec de palomilla apanado, which is a steak that has been hammered flat, breaded and fried. I think it's actually a Cuban preparation, not a Colombian one, but whatever.
It was a big piece of meat. It was a really, really big piece of meat. With rice. And potatoes. And yuca. And plantain. And beans. It was very dry, and very heavy, but somehow i found it satisfying. I think it's because the motel vending machine was broken, and the motel was not near any good restaraunts, so i hadn't had much for dinner or breakfast, and i hadn't slept well, and i was tired, and miserable. Getting such a solid meal, on top of the ensaïmada, it was just a massive injection of carbs and protein and fat, way more than i'd usually eat, but probably calories that i needed. I almost immediately felt better.
In my improved mood, i cycled on through Tampa, where i bumped over some cobbled roads of Ybor City and cycled through the 7th Ave historic district, which is pretty much exactly the same as every other American historic district. You've seen one, you've seen them all - it's the American equivalent of a European "old town". I did chat with a fellow cyclist who was going along the sidewalk, he said he took up cycling because he got 3 DUIs and they took his license away. He chattered a bit about how it's safer to go on the sidewalk, while dodging pedestrians, so i'm not sure that's true for the other people sharing the space.
Then it was through the docks and train yards, and on to Little Manatee River state park. It was a fine state park, with all the pines and palms and oaks that typify the Florida flora. I had an RV spot with electric, but no mobile signal, so i set up and watched a couple of shows before nodding off.
The next morning a neighbor dropped by to talk my ear off. Not the neighbor opposite, who had been playing jazz, reggae and hip-hop through sunset, but the neighbor beside in a truck camper.
Before i go on, i should explain the various types of RV that exist in America so you can get a better idea of what these campsites are like.
By far the most common type of RV down here is a longer version of what we would call caravans in Europe. Basically, it is a caravan - you still tow it behind your vehicle - but they have four wheels instead of two. They are called travel trailers, and you need to have a pickup truck to haul them because they are so heavy. Some of them are called fifth wheels. Those are the ones that don't hitch to the back of your vehicle, instead they overhang the truck bed, and you need a special mount installed on your truck to attach them. Either way, almost all of these come with slide-outs and are as big as a house on the inside.
Caravans of the size that we know in Europe are also technically travel trailers, but people usually differentiate them by calling them teardrop trailers, which are the very smallest kind of two-wheeled trailers. They're usually light enough to be pulled by a regular car. They're also explicitly banned from a lot of RV parks in this part of the US.
The second most popular RV down here after travel trailers is motorhomes. Specifically, "Class A" motorhomes. These are very large RVs the size of a bus where you drive the whole thing. Some of them you need a special license to drive. They almost always have "toys" attached on the back - sometimes just a couple of bicycles, but often they'll have a little trailer of their own with a motorcycle or ATV or jetski on it. Some of them tow a full-size SUV behind so they can park the motorhome and then use the SUV to go into town for groceries.
So, we have Class A motorhomes and travel trailers, which make up the bulk of RVs on the road. Then you have Class B motorhomes, which basically means vans - everything from oldskool VW hippie vans to six-figure Mercedes Sprinter conversions. These are often also banned from RV parks down here, presumably as a quick way of filtering out the poorer folks who are living in a station wagon or soccer mom minivan. Class C motorhomes are more like the European-sized motorhomes that have a van chassis with a caravan shell - they don't seem to be very popular over here.
Finally, there is the truck camper, which is a weird turtle-shell looking thing that sits in the bed of a pickup truck. It doesn't seem like it would be big enough to fit a bed, but somehow it does - presumably you either must be short and lie cross-ways, or you sleep in a bunk that stretches over the roof of the cab. You mostly see these things in Canada, because they're the standard "travel to Alaska" expedition-type RVs. You can drive over all kinds of rough terrain in your truck, but still have your home sitting there on the back. Also banned in a lot of RV parks, probably due to their reputation for being owned by rugged outdoorsmen who don't care that their vehicle is covered in mud. Can't have a muddy vehicle stinking up the place, can we?
Anyway, the point is, a lot of RV parks only accept the most expensive, cleanest, newest and largest vehicles. So, as a result, lots of people drive those vehicles, and they also make up the bulk of the neighborhood even in parks that don't have such douchey requirements. The only time you end up mostly seeing teardrops, vans and truck campers is in a state park or outback recreation area with really rough roads that a person in a heavier RV wouldn't want to risk trying to get up.
This also creates a little bit its own culture of traveler, because the big rig RVers like to go places with concrete pads and full hookups, and they get to enjoy exclusive access to the parks that lesser RVers are denied access to. But the lesser RVers also consider themselves more adventurous or perhaps more "everyman" than the big rig guys, despite the fact that you can still easily spend six figures on an RV that you could take up a logging road or onto a remote beach, and usually they just park them in the same places where big rigs park anyway.
Back to my neighbor. She was in a truck camper, and had a few snarky comments about the Class A motorhome opposite. But that was later in the conversation. We talked about bike touring and working from home and how COVID has created a bit of a restructuring in how a lot of people choose to live their lives. She said she does a fair bit of work from their truck camper, but they never go too far away from home because she works at a funeral home so she needs to be able to get back on relatively short notice when there is a sudden death and stuff needs to get organized in person.
I talked a bit about my feelings traveling through these endless suburbs-without-a-city and she said that it's a bit of a Florida joke that Florida used to produce fruit but now it just produces subdivisions. She's not wrong. The new development is everywhere. I cycled through way more of it today, but that's jumping ahead.
She also said that it was an open secret that these land developers don't follow any of the regulations that were set up to try keep the growth sustainable. She gave an example of a new development that went up next to hers, where the roads around it aren't wide enough to handle such a big influx of new residents, but the developers deliberately did their "investigation" on a weekend and a holiday so that the road traffic would be less and they could claim that the existing infrastructure would support their plan. I'm glad that what i noticed the moment i started cycling into this cesspit last week wasn't just my imagination.
None of these assholes really care about sustainable development. They'll give lip service to it, but really they're just trying to sell that land, rake in the money, and get out before the whole fucking state sinks.
It took me a while to get out of the state park. After talking to my neighbor for an hour, i decided to take an equestrian trail back to the park entrance, but because the park is in a wetlands, i got bogged on three different trails before giving up and backtracking to the main road. I'm not even sure horses could've made it through the bog. See, this is the thing with Florida - it only needs to rain a tiny little bit and now there are impassable swamps between point A and point B. Just cycling to the motel from my campsite in Crystal River i went through a completely flooded section where for several miles there was water on both sides of the road and lapping up on the doorsteps of every house. It was a little disconcerting, to see ducks floating along just a foot beside me off the edge of the road.
But i digress. I exited the Little Manatee River state park two hours after i intended to, then headed for Oscar Scherer state park via the town of Bradenton. I stopped in at a Jamaican bar in the Palmetto suburb and got a fantastic ackee and callaloo with beans and plantain. I also had a good chat with the bartender, who was really helpful and optimistic about my chances of finding work on a boat. She gave me a tip of a bar to go to in Key West to ask for cheap lodging and possible work, then said i'd be welcome back down her neck of the woods if i was looking for somewhere cheaper to stay. Bradenton in general gave me good vibes. It felt like a more chill and down-to-Earth place than the other Tampa-area towns.
Oscar Scherer is located in the suburbs between Sarasota and Venice. It's a very skinny park that's not much bigger than the nearby golf courses. I was staying in one of two "primitive" spots with no electric hookup. So, of course, my neighbor was a felon.
We didn't start out the conversation that way, but it came up when he said he used to enjoy visiting Canada and now he can't any more. I was talking to an American with a felony convinction a while ago about this, which is how i knew that was probably the reason. This dude went to prison for shooting someone who he claims robbed him. Said he'd do it again too. That's Americans for ya, they're spectacularly bloodthirsty. It makes me sick that people are so blasé about other people's lives, like they think their "property" is worth more than someone else's actual fucking life, but there's nothing to be gained trying to argue the point.
Our chat was short last night, but much longer this morning. The guy was 69 and still on parole. Said he lost his whole 60s to doing time and now he just wants to do his whole bucket list. He talked about how he bought a motorcycle and traveled across the US and Mexico when he was younger, and that my journey reminded him of that. I meet a lot of guys his age who did this solo motorcycle touring back in the day. I don't know if it's so popular these days. Seems like motorcyling is a bit of a rich man's game now. He learned to scuba dive, he got his pilot's license, he's done a bit of everything. He talked about going to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and how he felt a bit awkward when he walked into the gay section, and hung out with some drag queens (he called them crossdressers, then "corrected" himself to transsexuals). He was married twice, divorced twice, no kids. Was living in Kent when the Kent State massacre happened. Said it was just a tragic accident that happened when the National Guard shot warning shots into the air and accidentally killed "rioters" who were two miles away. Said they were having molotovs thrown at them at the time. It's interesting how people can construct their own fiction around a well-documented event.
He was a really interesting fellow, nonetheless. He didn't have a car, or a motorcycle, or anything. Just sleeping in the state park close to where he had to report in to Department of Corrections, taking a bus from the road out front. His plan was to try get his social security set up, because now he's out he's eligible again. Head back up to Ohio after parole, go see his grand-nephews, then buy a houseboat to bum around the Erie canal. "I want that to be my summer boat, then my winter boat i'll have down in the Gulf, doesn't have to be in Florida, just anywhere down here." He reckons liveaboard at anchor is better than in the marina, it's cheaper. He had lots of cheap traveling tips - everything from stealth camping to youth hostels to staying at hippie communes, although perhaps some of his experiences are out of date. He said i should definitely go to Baja.
It was interesting to hear how similar his thoughts were on nature and living the simple life to those of my neighbor the day before, a married woman who lived in the suburbs and went on mission trips to Cuba with her church. It seems like climate change is on everyone's mind, and the pace of development in Florida. The consumerism. How it's not sustainable. It's the first time i've had conversations like this with strangers since i lived in China, and it's funny because China's development is very reminiscent of Florida's.
I noticed that again when i got back on the road today. I cycled past Venice and then hit another 50km straight of non-stop gated communities, half of them brand new or still under construction. It's just... It's insane, i can't even describe it. I've been cycling through this for - what - three days now? Four? Just one highway going in a straight line with these occasional turn-offs into long, fenced-off areas. Ostentatious fountains and guard houses that look like fantasy castles at the entrance. It's exactly the same as what Chinese gated communities look like. Whole lines of cars waiting to be allowed in. And then you'll get the designated commercial zone, which is all exactly the same chain restaurants and chain stores that you can find anywhere in the US. Or, perhaps more specifically, it seems to be the same ones you'll find in the suburban northeast and possibly the midwest. It's like they've teleported a shopping mall out of the whitest suburb of Toronto, or NYC, or Chicago, and dropped it into the middle of this endless strip of gated communities.
And they are incredibly white. In a state that is 15% black and 25% Hispanic, the few of these communities i could find that have published demographics are around 93% white (with most of the rest being Asian) and 98% non-Hispanic. Many of the newer communities don't publish demographics themselves for "reasons", although i assume the 2020 census will show pretty much a similar distribution. Of course, you can pretty much tell by looking at the fucking abysmal choice of restaurants.
God, it was abysmal. I was starving by the time i finally decided to stop in a place called Punta Gorda, which looks from the outside like a slightly more organic waterfront community, something that isn't quite as bland and soulless as the developments around it. But, no. It fucking sucks. Name sounds Spanish, but it's 95% white and 98% non-Hispanic. I figured i'd just embrace the whiteness and go to an "English pub". I got fish'n'chips. It was the worst fish'n'chips ever.
Well, maybe not the worst, because they can get pretty bad. But the batter... Like, the whole point of English fish'n'chips is that the batter is supposed to be so heavy and fatty that it's like eating a thick-buttered slice of bread around the fish. Somehow this place had invented crispy air. Like, it looked like batter, and it crunched like batter, but it tasted like nothing and evaporated in your mouth like a mirage. And the chips weren't seasoned. I get it, when half your town is retired, you need to cook for people with high blood pressure whose doctors have told them they can't eat salt or fat. But come on! What's the point of living out your final years if you're going to live like an ascetic the whole time? And what's the point of a fucking pub if it won't serve real pub grub?
Ugh, i was so fucking annoyed. And then i had to cycle through another fucking 30km of fucking bullshit fucking suburbs and i just wanted to kill myself. It is hell. It is worse than hell. It is the worst place i have ever been in my life. I cannot remotely understand the people who choose to live in places like this. They're destroying the environment by living in large homes that are much bigger than they need, they're destroying the environment again by developing over wetlands, they're destroying the environment a third time by making everything only navigable by internal combustion vehicle, they're destroying the local agricultural economy by repurposing farmland, they're destroying the community by building walls and fences and moats around everything, they're destroying the culture by not supporting mom'n'pop businesses... It's such a radically annihilatory lifestyle, and it's risible that these people often masquerade as "conservative".
I needed to escape. I already knew two days ago that i needed to escape, which is why i booked an Airbnb on Pine Island. That is, the big Pine Island near Fort Myers, not the little one i visited a few days back. It's a large island that (contrary to the name) is mostly palm tree plantations. I guess they grow the palm trees here that get planted in front of all these gated communities. There are a few old-style caravan parks and holiday parks with little cabins in them, and some older homes, and some shops, but it still has a small island feel. There is a storm coming Thursday, so i booked two nights. The moment i got onto the island i felt a weight come off my shoulders. There was a taco truck that made real tacos. Almost every restaurant and shop is a mom'n'pop operation. It actually feels like a real community. First time i've had that feeling since i left the panhandle.
I still don't have anywhere to stay Friday night, because it's the weekend so all the state parks are booked, and all the RV parks don't allow tent campers. I would like to cross the Everglades this weekend, then i'll be in Miami early in the week and i'll probably end up in Key West for Thanksgiving, just to make it even more horrendously expensive and difficult to find accommodation than it already would've been. I still haven't figured it out. That's my plan for tomorrow, while i shelter from the storm.
But first i wanted to write all this out. I am sure i am missing out some things, and my thoughts are jumbled, because today was a very long and (mostly) depressing ride. My body is bruised and battered and on its last leg. I almost wiped out on a perfectly straight road today. I think i was just tired and distracted and annoyed, so somehow i lost my balance and swerved right into the middle of the road where fortunately i didn't get run over by a car, but i did drop my phone which is now smashed and almost unusable. That's my new phone from Louisiana too. Guess i better keep checking for that mythical Best Buy which actually has a Pixel in stock again. The almost-fall did worry me a bit, though. I am getting emotionally beaten by this stretch of Florida, and i think it's overflowing to my physical state too. Perhaps writing it all out will help exorcise the demon.
Oy. I need to sleep.