Pizza, and More!

     I'm not the only Baby Boomer who's recently visited the Sunshine state, or who has returned to face snowstorms and freezing temperatures. But Meryl Baer of Six Decades and Counting has an especially interesting take on the phenomenon. She came home after spending four weeks in the great state of Florida, and now offers some amusing insights about traveling in her post Four Weeks from Home.

     She lists the Ten Benefits of Being Away from Home (one of them: "I do not have to eat leftovers!"). And then she goes on to contemplate the Ten Advantages of Staying at Home ("Really good pizza.")

     As for me, I found a great pizza place when I was in Florida, better than anything I get around my neighborhood at home. So if you're ever in Bradenton Beach, FL, and looking for good pizza, give me a shout. I have a recommendation.

     Meanwhile, on a more serious note, Rita Robison, consumer journalist, writes on The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide about a consumer group that's questioning the marketing used by Life Line Screening, a national cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis screening company. The company's advertising makes unproven claims ("Helps save thousands of lives!") about the medical benefits of its screening package and omits information about the health and financial risks.

     Kathy at Smart Living 365 tackles an equally important, but much more personal issue, in her post Not My Monkey. Not My Circus. If you want to know what that phrase means -- if you've ever found yourself sucked into involvement and drama that is not of your doing, and not under your control -- then swing over her post and find out how to scramble out of the thicket of other people's problems.

     Finally, Laura Lee Carter, aka The Midlife Crisis Queen, proves that the mainstream media is beginning to take bloggers seriously, She received an invitation to Steve Harvey's Success Summit in Chicago, and will go on an all-expenses-paid jaunt to the conference sponsored by Strayer University, to debate and discuss the meaning of success. Harvey is also holding a mini-press conference just to meet VIP bloggers like Carter.

     Wish her luck!

 

What a difference ...

     a day makes, when you say goodbye to Florida

     and wake up, at home in New York.

When in Florida ...

     There are two basic topics of conversation in Florida -- at least when you're among the Snowbirds, not necessarily the people who live and work here. The first covers all the bad weather we are missing by being in Florida instead of up north.

     "Did you hear it was zero degrees last night back in New York?"

     "There was a foot of snow in Pennsylvania."

     "I called home, and it's raining in St. Louis."

In Jacksonville the roads were crowded, but not the beaches

     One elderly woman told me, "I come here in the beginning of October and stay until the end of April. I miss most of the cold weather back home in Indiana." She has a double-wide trailer out near the airport, she said. She has two sons. One drives her down in October and flies home. The other flies down in April and drives her back. "I'm very lucky," she concluded.

They like their mermaids

     "It was minus 32 degrees when I left home after Christmas," one fellow from Canada told me. "That's centigrade. But still, that's about minus 26 Fahrenheit."

     The other topic of conversation centers around: Where do people come from originally? If you're ever in Florida by yourself, and you get lonely, there is a tried-and-true way to start a conversation with any stranger. Just ask, "Where do you come from?" And the conversation will go from there.

Seafood restaurant on Anna Maria Island

     I was in a coffee shop at the beach the other day, and a fellow walked in sporting an Ohio State sweatshirt. (A lot of people are wearing Ohio State clothing these days, because, in case you don't know, Ohio State beat Oregon to take the national collegiate football championship).

     "Oh, where in Ohio?" someone asks. "Youngstown," comes the reply. "Oh, I'm from Pittsburgh," a man offers. Somebody else is from Wilkes Barre, and then another one chimes in that they know Wilkes Barre. They're from New Jersey, but they have family near Wilkes Barre.

It was warmer farther south in Sarasota

     Then another says, "Oh, my wife comes from Cleveland. But we live outside Atlanta now." Then someone else is from Savannah. And pretty soon we have the country covered from the Eastern seaboard out west to Kansas and Texas. People come to Florida from all over -- but mostly from the East and Midwest. Not too many from the West Coast.

     Douglas, from Boomer Musings, was kind enough to have me join him for a game of golf. He is always the contrarian -- he came to Florida from San Diego. His friend (the guy who won the money!) grew up in Connecticut, but spent 25 years in the Virgin Islands before landing in Florida.

     I read recently that Florida just surpassed New York to become the third most populous state in the Union. First is California, then Texas. And now Florida ranks third with 19,893,297 people. New York has a population of 19,746,227. That seems to me to underscore one trend going on in America today -- more people are retiring than ever before.

Picturesque seaside inn

     The other observation I made came when I visited Disney World. I went to Epcot, and the place was mobbed. If all these people have $100 a head to blow on a day at Disney, then the American middle class can't being doing half as bad as many of our pundits tell us.

Would you wait 1 hour 50 minutes for a ride?

     Because of the crowds, I didn't get into all the rides I wanted, but there was a very impressive acrobat show put on at the Chinese pavilion:

The Chinese put on a show

     Anyway, I hope they didn't count me as a Floridian. I love to spend some time visiting here in the winter. But I don't think I would ever actually live in Florida. I'm headed back to New York.

Says it all!

Should We Protect Them from Themselves?

     I live in New York State, where all motorcycle riders must wear a helmet, and so I'm used to riders on the highways and the country roads wearing protective headgear. I couldn't help but notice that many riders in Florida do not wear helmets. I've seen more than a few speeding along the third lane of the freeway, going 70+ mph -- and, honestly, to me they look like sitting ducks, like a fatality waiting to happen, like road kill. I also noticed several cases where the rider had no helmet, but the woman riding on the back of the bike was protected by headgear.

     So I looked it up. In Florida you're not required to wear a helmet unless you're under 21. Presumably anyone 21 or older is mature enough and wise enough to decide on his own. But chivalry is not dead in Florida, since the men either allow or insist, or at least go along with the idea, that the women riding with them wear a helmet, even if they don't themselves.

     Meanwhile my cousin, who is an engineer-type of person who used to fly airplanes for the military, and then worked in computers for most of his career, is a big motorcycle enthusiast. He's also a family man who's been married for 30-some years.

     He retired a few years ago. His two children had grown up and gone out on their own, so he bought himself a motorcycle -- apparently a dream he'd had for a long time. He likes to go out on the highway, ride the back roads, feel the wind in his hair (not that he has much hair left).

     My cousin recently bought himself a new, bigger bike as a Christmas present to himself. He lives in New Hampshire, where there is no helmet law at all. He concedes that a helmet can protect the rider in certain circumstances . . .  but, oh, how he loves being out there, feeling the wind and getting an unobstructed view of the hills and the mountains towering in front of him.

     So he is pretty vocal about his opposition to any law that would tell him he has to wear a helmet. He knows he's taking a risk, but he's fatalistic about it. He doesn't think the government should "protect" him for his own good. He believes that choice should be up to the individual biker. Apparently, just like the people in Florida.

     I've probably tipped my hand about what I think. But what do you think?

Bittersweet Memory

     When you're on vacation you have a lot of extra time, sitting on the beach, hanging around the pool, lounging on the deck. Believe me, I'm not complaining, but sometimes your mind wanders and you get to remembering about things at home, events in your past, about your family . . .

     It was early one morning toward the end of August. My ex-wife and I bundled our daughter into my old Saab, along with a trunk full of bags and suitcases, and left for JFK airport. At the time my ex-wife, Jane, and I lived around the corner from each other in one of the NewYork suburbs, about an hour's drive from the airport.

     Our daughter was catching a 7 a.m. Jet Blue flight to San Francisco, heading back to California for her senior year in college.

     The sun rose as we came to the end of the Hutchinson River parkway and climbed onto the Whitestone Bridge. "Good flying weather," I announced, as a few wispy clouds caught the first rays of light in the deep blue sky. We had a panoramic view of Manhattan off to the right of the bridge. Even though it had been three years since 9/11, the skyline still looked empty without the Twin Towers, especially on a day like today, with the sky so clear and blue.
 
     Emily had made this trip to college a dozen times, and she knew the drill. I didn't want to have to park the car out in the lot, with a $15 charge and a 15 minute walk. So I would pull up to the Departures curb, Jane would rush into the terminal with Emily, get her settled, and then meet up with me to go back home after I drove around the airport loop.

     As soon as we arrived at the Jet Blue terminal Emily jumped out of the car and ran around to the trunk to grab her bags. I opened my door, climbed out and helped her haul the suitcases onto the sidewalk. "Got your ticket?" I asked as she zipped a book into her carry-on.

     "Yep," she affirmed.
  
     "And your driver's license for ID?"

     "Yep."

     I helped her drag her bags up to curbside check-in, where Jane had gone to stand in line. Emily gave me a quick hug, and I turned to go. One of the traffic cops shot me a dirty look as I walked back to the car, idling at the curb, but I nevertheless stopped and looked over the roof of the car, taking a moment to watch Emily and Jane.

     My ex-wife was short and a little hunched over. She had long blonde hair hanging down in front of her shoulders, covering part of her face. That was an intentional look. She liked to hide behind her hair. At that moment she was standing there, peering anxiously through her hair to the front of the line.

     I caught sight of Emily, bent over a suitcase making last minute adjustments to her baggage. Emily was always in motion, doing two or three things at once. Her copper-colored hair -- the color it got from overexposure to chlorine in the swimming pool -- swung back and forth as she moved her head and shoulders. She looked purposeful, confident, eager to get on with school and life.

     I opened the car door, slid into the front seat, yanked off the parking brake and started down the ramp from the Departures building. I drove out about three miles to the return lane next to the airport police station, then circled back to the Jet Blue terminal. By then, maybe eight or ten minutes later, Emily had disappeared inside the building and Jane was waiting  for me at the curb.

     She pulled open the door and climbed in the front seat. "So, everything went okay?" I asked her.

     She didn't answer.

     "Did you get Emily to the security gate?"

     Still no answer.

     "Is there a problem?" I pressed.

     "No, everything's fine," she finally replied, staring straight ahead through the windshield. I checked the traffic and started to pull away from the curb.

     Then she burst out crying.