One year ago today: July 22, 2016, define “the whole truth”.
Five years ago today: July 22, 2012, I trusted her.
Nine years ago today: July 22, 2008, hip-bulge & bra-bite.
Random years ago today: July 22, 2015, the Heikendorf Panther.
It’s here, twelve years later. The microscope, and it is a Barska, think mid-grade, a college scope but too much instrument for high school, not enough for university. No doubt you’ll hear more about this beauty, but for now, it is the acquisition that takes the headlines. My description of Florida as a third world economy bounces off the reader like some kind of idle insult rather than the conclusion of a man who has been there and is qualified to make a valid comparison. I did not leave y’day because the forecast was for rain.
What gets me is not that the weatherman got it wrong because that happens all the time. But to outright miss a massive storm so extreme it was visible from the satellites, that takes the special Florida brand of stupidity. The microscope was 40.1 miles away total, this photo was taken around 9 miles from the destination. But it required another two hours to cover that 9 miles. I know you want to hear about that.
First, I had to go through downtown Tampa, reluctant as I am to taking the batbike on the freeways. You can see by the photo how sharp-looking I’ve kept it and that doesn’t happen from driving the snot out of it down the Interstates. The directions from Google Maps, Mapquest, and the seller all said to stay on Highway 60. Which I did. Problem, when you get to Tampa, every few blocks there is a sign saying “to Highway 60”. I made six wrong turns. Wait, there’s more.
Water skiing.
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I know I had to get through Ybor City, which is always a hassle. You see, except on certain southbound streetsides, the City of Tampa refuses to put up any signs on how to get to Ybor City. There is no road that goes directly there, you have to make a few zig-zags which are not clearly marked. Generally, stay in the left lane. I kept getting cut off into right lanes that come to a T-intersection where it was 50-50 which way went to Ybor City. Those southbound street signs are useless because anybody who lives in the north end already knows where Ybor City is—there are no arterial roads from the northside. But Tampa and Miami have always hired the cheapest city planning rejects on the market.
Now, I have yet to meet a Florida resident with an IQ high enough to give a stranger correct directions to his own house. Such was the case, I had to repeatedly call the guy, who kept saying take the last exit before the bridge. Duh, I’ve been down I-4 twice before, once to the Dali museum, and once to buy the Rebel, and I know that you cannot see the bridge until you are already on the ramp. That’s correct, the guy was telling me to wait until I could see the bridge, and turn a quarter mile before that. Am I overestimating this guy as a mycologist? Hell, I’m probably over-rating him as an adult.
The thing is, he knew I was lost less than five miles from his place after the first call. But I had talked him down to half-price on that microscope, so he wasn’t going to give me a break, not even lift a finger to help. He told me to turn on Memorial, but didn’t mention there is a big sign saying last exit before the toll road. The toll road might mean a ten mile trip before you can turn around, so everybody who wants to avoid that trap takes the exit. It’s the wrong one, and he could have mentioned you could still get to his place, but no, he makes me back track twice, the first time because where he said to turn, the off ramp was closed with orange cones.
The second time, I had to go through the toll, go ten blocks, turn around, and go through the toll again. It makes you wonder what kind of prick the guy was. It’s the same as Wallace’s sister in Palm Beach. They tell people to turn at some strange road (in this case Edward Somebody Memorial Blvd) rather than just say take Exit 4. Quite often, Florida residents are so thick-headed they don’t know what exit they live on. I live on Exit 39. Like many Florida roads, it is known by three or four other names that nobody who lives here can tell you.
He knew I kept getting to George Road, so I was less than a mile from his house. He could have just walked out there and sold me the microscope, but no, the bastard had to make me work off the price. This George Road turns turns into what is distinctively an industrial park. Samsung headquarters, a Shriner administrative building, nobody would drive through there suspecting there was a housing development on the far side of the peninsula. I had the printout, but it did not show any small private roads through the area.
And the seller never even mentioned the industrial park it until the third time I called from George Road, and only then reluctantly and because I insisted he stay on the phone until I found his street. I know, but Florida is full to the gills with these brand of two-bit people. Now you are beginning to see what I mean by third world. It takes a stagnant atmosphere for such people to not only survive, but to thrive, and that stagnation can only occur when the worst and most useless elements of a society are in the majority.
No, I do not have GPS. They are a waste of money on a motorcycle. You see, GPS is also precisely the kind of thinking that turns people into useless millennials. Trained never to do anything to improve themselves, but only to brim with suggestions of how the other guy can make up for the millennial’s own shortcomings. You could memorize the route, you could draw a map, you could buy a GPS, you could do this, you could do that. But the people who live there learn what exit number they live near, or get the city to put up road signs? That is sooooo last century.
“Why’s it called lipstick
when you can still move your lips.”
~ Unknown
Turns out the guy is not a mycologist, though he did know the term. Ha, you and I know more about cell biology in our sleep than that boy ever will. What fooled me was his vocabulary [on the phone] was half-decent. He spent a career in IT with IBM as a line worker. He bought the scope to keep the old brain sharp, but like so many, found out the hard way that such late-life catch-up schemes never work. Gee, isn’t that being too absolute? I mean, never? That’s correct, until I see a first-hand example otherwise. Don’t bother telling me unless you can here-and-now show me.
As far as my experience, anybody who says it is never too late is a paid shill for his uncle’s hobby store. That would be like my brother buying a piano this year. What the hell for? Decoration? Listen, I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I am saying it takes a next to exceptional type of person to pull it off, and most of us never meet such people. So I’m not ruling it out, because I have met women who are not bubble-heads, who don’t play the helpless card, and who can read a road map. Just like I’ve met men who are over 40 who can learn completely new things. Like how to sing, celestial navigation, robotics, and passable Spanish. What? Hey, I’m just quoting the best examples that I know of, alright. No need to go ape about it.
What’s really fun is looking for the woman that isn’t a space cadet. I’m not kidding about the road map. The last time I met a truly wonderful woman who had made her own way in life and could keep up with me was over twenty years ago. The last real woman I met was over thirty years ago. Never you mind what the nature of those relationships were. Just that they are not here today and I miss them. All the time. Since then, I’ve never met one who did not turn into a clinging, over-attached, lazy, talentless, lie-there-and-sog type the instant she thought she had me snagged. You can hardly blame a man for being super-cautious around these over 30 types. There is a reason nobody else will touch them.
ADDENDUM
For nearly two hours, I ran over my set lists. I remind the reader that for all I’ve done on stage, tomorrow is the first time in my life I’m attempting a full-scale guitar-vocal solo. I’m not ready, my equipment is not ready, and instinct tells me everything will go wrong. That means conditions are ideal. Some could say these are the concerns of a twenty-year-old, but they have not taken stock of how full this world is of such people who never had the cajones to take the leap. See you there, alone and by myself again.
In the quiet moments I looked up various back injury conditions. Of what I read, the one that seems to fit is sciatica. My lady friend out west has this, and is awaiting surgery. Does this mean the condition is enough that doctors go poking around with nerve endings? Is this sciatica condition so common and serious that two of my closest people go through it at the same time? One thing I am certain of is everyone I’ve known with these back conditions never fully recovers.
Last Laugh
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