After what seemed like an eternity of flying over the
endless lights of New York City, the glow faded away and we were whisked down
the East coast toward our destination, Fort Meyers, Florida. Neither Seth nor
myself knew many of the lyrics to Kenny Loggin’s Holiday Road, but we certainly knew the chorus which we proudly sang over and over throughout the trip, starting on the airplanes. And with a DC-9 with
at least 90% empty seats, we were probably noticed. It was time for a drink,
and we ordered a couple P.B.R.’s. We were the last flight into the airport that
night, something we should have paid a little attention to for later, but like
anything else of relative importance, it was washed away in the excitement of
arriving at our vacation spot.
We stepped out into the balmy Florida winter. It was a
beautiful 71 degrees; the coolest temperature we would see that week(ish).
We went to the little cab-shack, told the guy our destination, and off we went.
To say we were excited would most definitely be an understatement. It was after
midnight, but we didn’t have any alcohol so we asked the cabbie if there were
any bars in the area of the hotel in which we were staying. He thought about it
and said there was only one bar around there and our hotel happened to be right
next to it. Win!
We checked into our room for the week(ish) and rather
quickly made our way just across a driveway to our new bar, Stevie Tomato’s. It
was 1am, and the place was quiet. We grabbed a couple chairs at the outdoor bar
and commented on how this wouldn’t be trendy this time of year back home (ha ha
ha ha), and we ordered a couple P.B.R.’s, our diet for daily life. We made
small talk with the bartender and told him where we were from. He said it was
nice to have Midwesterners here for a change. I think they have quite a lot of
folks down from Philly and such. More on that later.
Sadly, just like any normal bar back home, they were going
to close at 2am. We asked about buying off-sale, and I don’t believe I’ve ever
seen a more bewildered look on a man’s face before, “You know, for consumption off the premises". He had a right to be confused as they do not
have off-sale in Florida, it’s purely not necessary. They sell liquor and beer
roughly 20 hours per day at any gas station, grocery store, or anywhere really.
We hopped and skipped our way over to the 7-11, one of which I hadn’t seen in
years, and we were both absolutely amazed at the selection. Half of the store
was set up with liquor. Brilliant. We chose a case of Land Shark beer, and I
think a bottle of good tequila. As it would turn out, it was barely enough for
the next 12 hours.
We brought our booty back to the hotel and started to
celebrate…… Uh, hmmm. We started to drink, and I mean heavily. It was
delicious. It was approaching 3am and we had boundless energy. We wanted to be
outside because it was so nice, so we brought chairs out to the balcony and
really took in the view the hotel had to offer. Directly in front of us was a
beautiful sea of orange and white U-Haul trucks, covered sparsely with palm
trees and a chain link fence. It was dark out, but fortunately the fine people
at U-Haul had dozens of High-Pressure Sodium lights to brighten up our view.
Yes, we had a view of a parking lot, but that wouldn’t bring us down that
week(ish).
Sometime between 5 or 6am, after the sun came up, we fell
asleep, only to be awakened by our alarms at 7. We had things to do. This was officially
day one of our vacation, and we had a plan…
To be continued…
