I’ll need a few hours to adjust to vacation mode. It’s been the better part of six years since the real thing for me. Total budget to get from Hollywood to St. Augustine was $22.44. That includes an estimated $5.00 in gas in the tank when I started. This is not an extravagant and includes $3.75 for a quart of oil.It was a pleasant enough drive, although it is at the upper limit of what the scooter can handle. I dared not take it over 40mph and that means I saw a lot of the scenery. The trip was typical Florida, with delays, detours, unannounced construction zones and no road signs. That is correct, Florida does not put up very many road signs and you can forget asking for directions. Miami huh isn’t that in Georgia
It was an opportunity to check out the helmet cam. It eats batteries. One set of AAs lasts less than two hours. The camera seems to drain the charge, shut itself down, but pick up again after the cells have had a rest. Points of interest, I saw Jupiter lighthouse. The cannons Wallace and I toured are missing. Other than the bridges over the various inlets and sounds, there is little to see even on the coastal A1A. It seems like the highway people deliberately trim the plants too high for motorists to see the ocean.
And screw Vivtar. I forgot to install the driver on the laptop. Just you try to tet help on-line. You must know the model, serial number and give your name and address just to download the goddam driver. I’ll try again later but the very fact they are such pricks says it all.
My priority is to tour the old Spanish fort. The Ripley “Odditorium” wants $16 (the earlier price quote of $48 was a rare typo here) for a ticket and their trolley tour is $22. Both are within budget if I don’t eat any place fancy. I didn’t stop to see anything on the way up but instead weaved through a lot of the small towns to see what was there. Nothing, though I did see one pretty gal in Sebastian Inlet. And she was walking on the bridge with her boyfriend.
You see, meeting new women is one of my primary incentives to travel and that hasn’t changed in a mighty long time. I also dream more vividly and that can be an IMAX in the mind for somebody with an active imagination. Most noticeable changes were crossing the frost line south of Daytona and the change of vegetation that goes with that. I had to dig out the winter jacket and gloves. The scenery became less palms and more pines.
Arriving after dark, my luck held out and the first road I took led me motel strip, where I found a ScottsInn for $32 a night. Not first class, but even first class isn’t first class any more. It was clean, spacious, had everything except a quieter location further from the street. But I must emphasize for the height of tourist season, the roads and shops are empty. I’m near a main approach to the local “Bridge of Lions” and looking down a long strip of ghost town. But at fifty bucks to see a museum, what do these people expect Come daylight, I’m heading to WinnDixie for my grub.
I had intended to go out to Karaoke, but flaked out for 8 solid hours on the top quality mattresses of the ScottsInn. I am quite serious describing this effect that travel has on me. Deep, refreshing sleep and instant adaptation to new surroundings. Maybe I crave the input, even if it is the same as back home. Or as Homer puts it, “cable TV in another state”.
The real adventure starts tomorrow when I find that ancient castle, or more accurately, the fort. The diagrams show it to be an early “star” design which I’ve never seen in real life. This design had arrowhead shaped corners that eliminated blind spots along the outer walls, that is, the defenders could fire at anyone who got to the base of the outer wall from any direction without risking their own lives by leaning over the edge.
It takes a little bit of backwards logic to see how the system works, but accept that the fort should be able to fire back along its own walls if need be. No other shape allows this to be done safely. I believe these designs were from a French guy named Vauban, you can look it up on your own. (I’d link, but lately the Google and Yahoo! search engines have returned nothing but garbage. If you looked up Hitler you’d get sites on how to cast his grandmother’s horoscope.)
