elfs | Wednesday: Driving To Clearwater

Wednesday morning, we packed up our things, packed into the rental car, and headed up to Mom's apartment. It was her two-day weekend and she was glad to be able to see us without having Paul around to confuse things.

We all swam in the apartment complex's pool. I'd forgotten that she lives next to a massive golf course. I'd also forgotten that she had strong opinions about how "blacks" had moved into the neighborhood, but then some equilibrium had been acheived and the local ethnography wasn't changing much anymore.

We had lunch together at a local deli. I'm really happy that I was able to cook for her the other day, and I'm really getting sick of dining out.

We hit the road, crossing the Everglades through Alligator Alley, stopping once at the Miccosukee Reservation gas station. Despite being the only gas for a hundred miles in either direction, the gas prices were not unreasonable. The bathrooms, however, were positively Lovecraftian.

We stopped at a place called "Ralph's Reef" for dinner, where I had more fish. I'm drinking way too much soda pop this trip; gonna have to go back to a serious diet when I get home, I suspect. Ralph's is the kind of place that has TV on all the time, and FOX news on all the time. "Woman missing in Aruba!" was the headline of the moment, and I turned to Omaha and said, "Watch, she's young, white, and pretty." And so she was; Hell, she was even blonde.

Then we turned North and headed up the coast to Clearwater, Omaha's old home town. Every billboard between Naples and Tampa was for a personal injury attorney or lawfirm. Every last damned one of them. It was eye-opening.

We reached Omaha's father's house, and he led us to his brother's condominium on the beach, which we had borrowed for a few days. It was a beautiful space, and we even got decent wi-fi. But after seven hours on the road, we all just went to bed.