Florida

I went to Florida for five days to see rail yards. There were trains and stuff. But all I really remember, or want to write about at this exact second, is the ocean.

Like most of the Atlantic coastline, or at least the beaches I've been to -- a boardwalk in South Carolina, a dark rocky corner of a Massachusetts beach, a rocky fly-infested stretch of Montauk, Coney Island -- the beaches in Florida are brown and well tread.

I only went to two, so I might not be accurately describing all of Florida's beaches. But I'm going to assume they're all brown and well tread until I find the great, undiscovered tropical-ish paradise someone, somewhere said was in Florida.

On my way to Georgia I made a not incredibly necessary stop in Daytona Beach, and on the way back I stopped in St. Augustine, the spot on which the Spanish first starting fucking things up.

I had this ides that beaches advertised on highway signs would lead me to places of quiet solitude, or at least places where sky and ocean overwhelm whatever man has built.

Daytona Beach, not so much.

It seems like there's a blue print for tacky beach-side tourist locales.

All restaurants must feature fried things that may have come from the sea, and have either sea creatures (weird) or pirates (kinky) as mascots.

The closer you get to downtown more utilitarian thoroughfares are replaced with little cobblestone roads that look like they're taking you to the beach, but actually take you to another filled lot of $10-per-hour parking.

Located across from one another, on all streets, are tourist-oriented outlets with the same beach towels, sunglasses, shot glasses and T-shirts.

Beach-related puns abound.

(Just a word of advice, "Hair on the beach" is not an appealing title for anything).

Imaginative names -- Driftwood Drive, Mermaid Circle, Ocean Boulevard, Beach Street -- aid in disorientation.

It seems like it should be an easy enough thing, but even the ocean was hard to find in Daytona Beach -- where dingy high- and low-rise hotels, all painted orange or pink, obscured the area's main draw.

All along the sand people not walking their dogs or taking pictures seemed confused about why they were there -- this is vacation, right?

St. Augustine was pretty much the same. Only the claustrophobic beach strip was more annoying because you couldn't tell it was the beach strip until you hit the luxury condos that signaled the end of it, and the beaches were less impressive, with more orange people on them.

It didn't really matter though.

Water is water. The ocean, even the parts we have touched, is connected to something great and wide and very old and very primal.

When I finally touched the waves I did not care about what had been constructed around them.

I think I frolicked (really), jumped up and down, sort of ran, stumbled in, stumbled out. And got sort of wet. And then walked away, and then walked back, and got really wet.

And all of this in 10 minutes, and I felt whole, and like crying, and like I was home and missed home.

And I thought, the beaches I left are so much better than these. So off I will go again, one day or another.