Musings from the God of Cities

last friday, september 24th, i packed my bags and headed down to orlando, f-l-a to go to my friend snowpea's wedding. i knew hurricane jeanne was a'comin', but i figured that i could narrowly avoid disaster-related hilarity since my flight out was for sunday morning early, in theory before the hurricane got there. so, i land in whorelando after a great flight on superawesome jetblue, and see this sign:



which i should have interpreted as a sign to turn tail and head back to new york. shoulda, woulda, coulda, as they say. as planned, i met up at the airport with my friends and fellow wedding attendees j-fly (bistro award winner, and two-time MAC award nominee) and r-toz (all-around stand-up guy). we find a cab and tell the driver to take us to the holiday inn express in cocoa beach. an hour, and $72 later, we arrive. when we try to check in, we find out that we're at the wrong holiday in express in cocoa beach. lame. luckily our cab driver was still there, so we had him take us to the other hotel. we get there and apparently didn't see this sign on the door



'cause we went in and tried to check in. the lady behind the counter said that they were closed, and that the whole area would be evacuated by the next morning at 6 a.m. doublelame. she also informed me that there are fully three holiday inn expresses in cocoa beach, and we were booked at the third one, which was 12 miles in the direction in which we had just come. triplelame. our driver was again still there, so as i was figuring out what the hell was going on, r-toz asked him if he would drive us back.. the guy said yes, but that he had to go to the bathroom, and would be right back. needless to say, he didn't come back. luckily, the hotel lady gave us a number for a cab company, and after a bit of a wait,



our car showed up, driven by a crazy old redneck named tom. half an hour and $40 after that, we were finally at the right holiday inn express where we met up with three other nyfriends. an hour in the hot-tub and the better part of a case of beer later, we had virtually forgotten our troubles. wet, half naked, wrinkly from the tub, and half in the bag due to lots of beer and no food i make my way up to my room only to run into snowpea, her hubby to be, and their families. i kiss snowpea hello and hurriedly make my way back up to my room 'lest i make a bad first impression on the in-laws. once i get to my room i leave a dump (it was decided during our cab ride that that's technically more correct to say than "take a dump") which refused to go down for the whole of my time there. it didn't really smell all that bad, as the poop smell was covered by the smell of mold that permeated the entire floor that my room was on.

that night, we went to the pre-wedding party, which was somewhat marred by the impending natural disaster. lots of people were trying to figure out a way out of dodge despite the fact that the airport was going to be shut down the next day, and amtrak wasn't running at all (the lady on the phone virtually laughed at me when i asked her if there were any trains leaving florida.) post-party, my companions and i weighed our options and decided that 4 of us would drive back up to new york, and 2 of us would stay behind and try to ride out the storm or find an alternate route home. the morning we left, the orlando sky looked like this:









the drive back, though 17 hours long, was largely uneventful. despite the fact that i spent more time traveling than anything else, the trip was worth it because of one small souvenir that i picked up at a rest stop in south carolina.



i imagine that i'm just about the only person that's ever bought one of these out of a sense of irony and not to get in better with my fellow militia-men.

all told, it was good to see snowpea, it was nice taking an impromptu road trip, and i enjoyed watching direct tv while flying (i really like jetblue, y'all!) but it's gonna be a cold, cold day in hell before my ass gets anywhere near florida.