Florida is wide

So wide. It splays and spreads. And it's hot. So hot. Puerto Rico is hot, but it's a different hot. It's a living hot, a jungle hot, a green hot. This is a brown hot made of winds that are hotter than the standing air and are what you think of as desert winds. So many highways. The highways have highways in their highways. So, so wide. Huge loops leading on to perpendicular highways. Whole municipalities in Puerto Rico could fit in the dead space of these loops. A land made for giants and we are tiny ants on the sidewalk.

I spent the day looking for used bookstores after the sterile disappointment of Barnes & Noble. I found a little place in the old downtown area of Ocoee. The forgotten downtown. Little stores in a row in a low brick building made of real brick, not stucco, nestled in an area of Florida bungalows with jalousie windows from the 20's and 30's. An older blond lady runs the place. I don't know her name, but she's Patty in my mind. She looks like a Patty. She was nice. She laughed a lot. Her eyes were mostly crow's feet behind thick glasses. I bought a book because I didn't want to be another looker and not a buyer. Maybe she does alright, maybe not. Who knows. We chat for a little while. She knows her Sci-Fi. The old stuff. The good stuff. She's fun. We dork out for about half an hour. I get the feeling that a half an hour of dorking out is more important to her than the four dollars I paid for the book.

Back in my rental car, in the layer-cake of heat, and back to the hotel. Maybe some of the Brits will have ceded a corner of the pool area. Two kids per family, but seven lounge chairs? Even if we set aside one lounge chair per family to house the copious alcohol and cigarettes, still, the maths must be different in the U.K. Later I'll look for a thread about American tourists and think ironic thoughts.

Vacation. Yay!