Carl and I rose at the crack of 10 and he refused my invite to breakfast. I went to shower and learned that I left my towel at home so I used a hand cloth to dry myself. Traffic out of Fayetteville was fine and I got to take in the sights of the south:
- A realtor offering “free Christian flags”
- A Walgreen’s selling a “9′ apple pie” at less than 7 cents a square foot
- A gas station offering a free “bootle of water”, I assume a bootle is a small boot
- A White’s Motel and Restaurant, thought that was illegal
I-75 into Tampa turned into a parking lot and I lost about an hour seemingly due to the world’s tiniest car accident. As traffic was at a stand still I started looking into whether Biscayne National Park required any sort of reservations and discovered my second omission of trip, my national park pass. Traffic flow resumed and I made it to Tampa with great haste meeting Bob Tyler and quickly going to Steak n’ Shake. His Steak n’ Shake exists at some sort of strangeness nexus (Fark.com refers to it as “Florida”) and I lost an hour to stories of a boy that barked like a dog, Bob’s friends’ inability to properly roll up and snap a straw, the subterfuge required to a member of a restaurant wait staff, and finally a Gabe Newell impersonator who manipulated his newspaper quite angrily. We slammed some cookie-topped brownies and I left for Miami Beach.
Alex and Ashley met me in front of the Bass Museum of Art at around 2:30 AM and I made way to their tiny apartment.