Florida Story · 7:06am Jul 21st, 2015
I've got terrible insomnia, so I got rambling in a chat group about the times I've been to Florida. They insisted I put it up here to share. So, with only my story (no comments from the Jury) and the beginning/ending times of the whole thing, I present: that one time I went down to Florida: A Bedtime Story.
[1:58:30 AM] Sharaloth: Story time: I've been to florida twice. Once when I was really young, and we did the whole tourist thing. Disneyworld, Universal Studios, the beach, the time-share hard-sell, etc.
The second time, I went for a wedding of a friend's.
He had met this girl online, and after a while they decided to get married. She lived in Pensacola Beach.
I drove down there with a 300+ pound friend of mine named Dave (he's very interesting, shame about his legs, though). He drove because I didn't actually have a license at the time.
I was designated navigator and snark machine. At one point we missed a turnoff because we were deep in a discussion about the ramifications of time travel, and so we went hundreds of miles out of our way and drove through the appalachians (?). It was beautiful.
We got to Pensacola and it was hot as I've ever felt it. I was sweating so badly that I looked like you were seeing me through the misty sheen of an artful waterfall.
We had absolutely no fucking clue where we were or where we were supposed to go, mostly because we didn't have smartphones at this point and also didn't have a map. So we stopped at a gas station to buy one and also some cold drinks because of the aformentioned dampness issue.
That's when we met our first floridian. And he was... he was.... well, I don't know how to say it any other way: he was Florida Man
He started off being really nice. Talking to us in his pleasant southern accent about where we were from and where we were going. Then... then began the odd references to his jail time. Before we knew it we were desperately trying to escape a conversation with a man who insisted on telling us ALL ABOUT HIS GODDAMNED TROUBLES WITH THE LAW.
We, being terminally Canadian, had no escape.
Florida Man wasn't working. Florida Man was hanging out around the gas station to talk to random people about his legal and ex-girlfriend related troubles.
Best I could tell, Florida Man had no job of any kind at all. At least not since he kept violating his probation. Apparantly every week after getting out for the last violation.
Like fucking clockwork.
So, eventually we escaped the scourge of Florida Man, though to this day I am unsure of what miraculous series of events allowed us our egress. I would believe it the work of a benevolent god, were it not for the fact that the men holding bibles and shouting at us from every freaking street corner killed what little faith that providential escape had generated. Also, waffle house. Every block. I assume they're like Tim Hortons, but with waffles instead of suspect coffee and maple donuts.
We wandered around Pensacola for three hours before we finally found the hotel we were staying at. This is odd, because Pensacola is not that big a town. I think Florida generates random time-warps where everything seems to take longer than strictly necessary, but only when it would be inconvenient for you. The hotel we were staying at was beautiful, one of the best looking places I've ever stayed in. The AC was nice, too, but as if in recognition that I had found a man-made miracle to beat the bloody heat, the sky opened up, it rained for twenty-five point two seconds and then the weather broke and it was no longer like being rolled into a soggy blanket in some swampland production of 'The Human Burrito'
That's when we went off to meet my good friend's soon-to-be inlaws. Who were half from Florida, and half from Alabama. I admit, I was not the best guest. I decided to get people to say "y'all" as much as I possibly could. Mostly because it fits my internal stereotype of the south, and who doesn't love having their biases confirmed. Ad nauseum.
Of course, our earlier escape had only been a reprieve.
For now we got to meet Florida Man's less well-known cousin: Alabama Shack Woman
She lived in a shack in Alabama.
She wanted us to know this.
It was important to her that we know this.
She worked it into every other statement she made.
She worked for the govornment doing something I honestly cannot recall. But whatever it was, she was sure to add "And I live in a shack in Alabama!" to the end of her job description.
She had a grin like a shark. Teeth set too widely apart, like you could reach through the gaps and, if you were lucky, avoid the sting of the terrible creature that lived within and prove you had the courage to be a man. I assume said creature also lived in a shack in Alabama, but I didn't speak with it, so I can't be sure.
She also had a laugh that could strip the childhood memories from your skull and replace them with the terrified whimperings of a lost puppy.
She was the bride's best friend.
The bride herself was a relatively normal woman... at the time. I mean, she met her fiance online in one of those play-by-post RPGs, so there was a little weirdness, but not much.
She also fervently believed that Barack Obama was a muslim, and that he was planning to build a mosque at ground zero in New York, which was the style at the time in her neck of the woods, I heard.
We escaped that debacle with our throats intact, but only barely. None of us said anything to upset the delicate balance of seething racism and thin self-control. Which was commendable of us, I think. A little jaunt to the local wal-mart netted my friend Dave some crocs to wear in lieu of the shoes that he had, somehow, neglected to bring.
We all went back to the hotel and settled in for the night. It was pleasant. The next day we planned to have some fun at the local beach resort before heading to the wedding proper. Now, we weren't dumb, and this wasn't our first sandy rodeo, so we wore lots of sunscreen and shirts and somehow still got burned into lobster people within an hour of hitting the beach.
It was... bad. I was barely able to stand wearing a shirt, and a balding friend of mine was fine from the shoulders down, but that combined with his rail-thinness just made him look like a human matchstick.
Dave, having more than twice the skin area as the rest of us and crocs instead of shoes, ended up being a whole-body victim of the sun's hatred for man.
but the wedding was on, and wouldn't wait for silly things like intense dermal pain. So we got in our various way-too-hot suits and piled into the back patio of the local bar for the ceremony.
It was a nice little wiccan celebration. Short enough to be decent, at least. No calls for conversion, which have been the scourge of almost every other wedding I've been to in the past decade. Well, except for the street preachers, of course, but I don't think they fully count.
At the reception (Scene: same bar, interior), my friends and I were openly taking bets on how long the couple would last.
There were also these little table thingies that were full of these tiny, flat white and black stones. So, being the easily-bored individual I am, I made it my business to steal every last one of them that I could and build a pyramid of them at my table. Presumably once my little stepped tower was finished I would either sacrifice whichever virgin was handy or challenge God for supremacy.
If you're wondering who won the bet, we all won. They were divorced within two years and she never moved to Canada, and he never moved to Florida.
She also got pregnant with someone elses kid while they were still considering this whole 'divorce' idea.
So, the happy couple off to the first of their very few nights together, we went back to our hotel room to cry and lick our wounds. Not literally, mind, because I was afraid any sort of abrasion and my matchstick friend would end up burning the place down.
The next day, slathered in as much aloe vera as we could afford, my friends and girlfriend (who was there, but didn't do anything interesting enough to talk about), boarded their planes home, and I climbed into the (AC-less) car with Dave, who had the thousand-yard stare of a soldier who'd seen combat in the trenches and a face so red he looked like a pissed-off, half-shaven bear, and we set off for the long, slow drive home.
It was maybe four hours in, and a discussion about the merits of DC comic's 52 series that we realized that we'd missed our turn off an hour earlier...
[2:47:27 AM] Sharaloth: [/story]
That girl sure sounds like a winner!
:|
Probably around the eastern parts of Canada if you drove to Florida, right?
... sounds like Florida to me.
It's also not really accurate to compare Waffle House to Tim Horton's. It's actually more like a Denny's, only somehow more terrible and depressing.
It is said that people don't go to Denny's; they end up at Denny's (this is completely true, by the way). Similarly, people don't end up at Waffle House; they turn up at Waffle House. If someone you know has gone missing, check the nearest Waffle House. You'll probably find them there, confused, unsure of when and how they got there, and halfway through something that might have been a waffle in someone's imagination and/or drinking from the bottle of maple-colored corn syrup.
3256694
I live in Ottawa, Ontario.
3256695 In a 200km area I know of 3 Denny's... They aren't a thing in Canada
3256695
See, I can see the comparison in terms of being a seemingly omnipresent chain and serving breakfast food 24/7, but...
I've been to both, and Waffle House is like, the Alabama of Denny's - a crude sham set up for people who don't know any better. I've never been to a Waffle House that didn't feel trashy, whereas I've never been to a Denny's that DID feel trashy. Denny's is Denny's - clean, pseudo-homey, and just kind of there. A clean, well-lit place that serves mediocre but consistent food and marks you as still being within the bounds of human civilization.
I've heard Florida being described as the oil sump of weirdness for the rest of USA. This story reinforces that image.
3256703
The official website begs to differ.
3256711
Nowhere in that conclusion do I see anything that invalidates what I said; that no one goes to or ends up at Waffle House, but that they turn up at Waffle House. Much the same way that people "turn up" in the East River: It's not clear exactly how they got there, and maybe you're happier not knowing.
Well, if nothing else, you got one hell of a story out of that.
Also, did neither your friend or his girlfriend/wife/ex-wife think it would be a good idea to take the step of moving in together, or at the very least into the same general area as each other, before going ahead and getting married? I don't see how they thought this would be a good idea while they were living in separate countries...
Did you know Florida is actually two states? North Florida is a normal part of "the South", and South Florida, being south of "the South", is much closer to a northern state (if that northern state had swamps and beaches and way too much sun.) This is why you hear about Florida in elections so much: Whoever gets that 51st % of the vote wins two states worth of population and demographics. You did manage to have an authentic Floridian experience, (sunburns,) but if you ever have to go to a friend's ill-considered Floridian wedding again, try to avoid North Florida. South Florida has most of the good tourist spots and better sunburns.
3256750 Official website backs me up.
I said that I know of in a 200km area. There are 5 total in a 100km radius which is coincidentally almost half of them in the province of Ontario. For comparison I know of 2 locations in my city with 5 Tim Hortons in a 5 block DIAMETER.
Denny's aren't a thing here if they can only manage a dozen locations in Ontario. Especially since they're all in areas that are higher tourist traffic. Well except
BramladeshBrampton but the sheer number of truck stops for long haul/international drivers means that it's basically the same thing."What do the tests say, doc?"
"I... I don't know how to say this..."
"Just give to me straight!"
"It's... You're Canadian."
"Oh no. Oh God, no."
"It's terminal. I'm sorry."
Ah, the wonderful world of Florida. Rednecks in the north and drug smugglers in the south.
And if you think Florida is bad, you should come down to West Virginia next. I think you'll like what you see here.
Obligatory:
ioneglobalgrind.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/bugs-bunny-cutting-florida-state-off-gif.gif?w=630&
I can only imagine what RainbowBob would have to say about this wacky story, seeing how he's a Florida native.
Did it work? Is your insomnia cured?
3258036 I did manage to get a few hours of sleep, so that's a hopeful maybe.
I live in Florida.
Frankly, this doesn't sound at all abnormal for my state. Also, in the future - Solarcaine w/Aloe Vera is better than straight Aloe Vera. Most people from other states don't know it exists. It's a spray - with a topical painkiller, so it numbs the pain a little while still coating you with aloe so you can heal better. It's how I survived childhood here - I have the complexion of a ghost, so I burn if I even glance outside.
Anyway. Yes. Florida is a strange, weird place - and that's the whole state, not just north or south - and it's filled with stupidity and hatred. The climate is awful, the politics suck, and you're best off never doing more than visiting for a day or two at a time if you can help it.
3258183
Huzzah!
Maybe.