Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, posting from the airport after ten days of heat and sun and humidity and carnivorous crawly things and long-necked waterfowl and sunsets in hues of coral and tangerine and bruised purples and blues, angry reds and soothing grays, the sun a glowing orb sinking into gulf waters reflecting the same colors in shards broken by waves and foam and splashing gulls and pelicans.
B used to live here. I've never been. After several years of venturing further and further from home in our last hoorays before the season descends on us and the snow buries us, this seemed the year to vacation somewhere that did not requ
ire a seven hour flight over water, or changing currency. One of our first big purchases after we were married, when we could ill-aford it and spent several years paying it off our credit cards, was a transferable timeshare, the guarantee of a free stay for a week in a condo every other year for the rest of our lives. Free if we stay in "our" condo, and about $120 a week to stay anywhere else in the world. Since "our" condo is in Orlando, and once every twenty years in Orlando is about enough, we have yet to stay in it, but have already recouped our money in savings on lodging on other vacations. It also means that instead of staying in seedy motels, we now stay in luxury resorts and vacation clubs with expansive accomodations and kitchens, whirlpool tubs and private balconies, large and varied workout facilities, pools that cover acres, with cabanas and tiki bars and rediculous landscaping, on-site stores where one can buy bottles of aquafina for $3.00, and, in this case, a private island. It matters less what there is to do off-resort when one can so easily occupy one's time for a week without leaving the premises. For a week at the Hyatt Coconut Plantation, we spent hours flat on our backs on tubes, spinning in the current as the lazy river carried us around and around, and around. I read all five novels I had brought along, including the Dean Koontz I discovered I had already read a few y
ears ago and still remembered the ending, tucked into a hammock under a tiki hut, surrounded by happy crickets and all sorts of flowering bushes and at least a dozen different variety of palms, new-agey, bongo-ey music bouncing out of hidden speakers, water gushing loudly
over the many waterfalls worked into the landscaping, cascading into the many swimming pools and hot tubs and hidden grottoes. And in such manner, I didn't notice the oppressive heat and air heavy with humidity until we actually put on clothes that were not swimwear and left the resort. And then, my hair stood straight up, frizz covering my head in an inch d
eep layer, and I began to sweat, and to stick to myself, and settled into a heat-induced stupor, broken only by my irritable replies to B's happy yammering, until the sun dropped behind the bank of thunderheads on the horizen in it's nightly celebration of a job well done, throwing every shade of happy-inducing color at me, and I shook myself, wondering what was wrong with me, and felt myself becoming myself again. We spent every sunset on a beach somewhere, B wading and swimming and, by all appearances, thoroughly enjoying the way the salt and the sand stuck to him.
I planned on running a charity 5k in Naples on the 3rd of 0ctober, and completely underestimated the effect the heavy air would have on my running. And I had underestimated how hot i
t would already be at 7:00 a.m., which was when the run was. I had envisioned a cool early morning run, maybe 7o or 75 degrees, not 88 degrees. Although I can do 10K fairly easily, if not fast, at home at 8,700 feet, running 5k on the treadmill at 5 feet nearly finished me off. By the end of two miles, I was gulping breaths that nearly exploded my aching lungs, my head was spinning, my breakfast had risen nearly to my tonsils. After a few failed attempts, I discovered that keeping my mouth shut and breathing only through my nose kept me upright by limiting the amount of air I could draw in. If I took half breaths, and expelled the last breath fully before tenatively drawing the next one, eventually the pounding headache eased and I could settle into an easy gait that required no effort or concentration, and I could watch the miles roll by with almost my usual ease. All the same, I did not feel like sweating the gallons I knew I would, even though Alzheimer's research could have used me, so I ended up leaving the outdoor running to those more inclined to sweat and stickiness and humidity.
After we left the resort, we drove into the everglades. Actually, seeing the Everglades up-close and personal was the reason I had been excited about going to Florida. Yes, I knew it would be hot, although I may have not realized just how hot, but I am big on the whole getting a feel for the Land, in it's natural state, it's natural beauty and as it's natives knew it before civilization crashed in and drained it, or razed it, or devoloped it, or mined it. And I was determined to see an alligator. No, not in a zoo, as B tried to convice me to do, thinking it was just that I wanted to see an alligator. I told him that was not an option, because in a zoo, one might see an alligator, but one could not actually SEE an alligator. It's just not the same. It had to be one in the wild.
I did finally concede and agree to not make him rent a canoe or kayak and row through Everglades National Park, because of time constraints. We ended up not going the eighty miles out of our way to go into the park at all, although I am pretty sure we will regret not doing so. Every national park it it's own unique experience, and should not be skipped over if it is possible to go see them. But we did follow a narrow highway for miles through dense jungles of trees and swamps, water as still as the sky it reflected, oceans of grass, dripping spanish moss, and birds standing on long sticks of legs, white against murky backdrops of shadow and trees, necks kinked in s-curves, unfolding to shoo
t out and snap up unsuspacting insects, then settling back for another long wait. And yes, at a rest stop so fetid I decided I didn't need to go THAT bad, a wooden bridge lead over a still patch of water, the opposite shore looking like just the spot an alligator might like to hang out. I shaded my eyes and studied it, and even when a fellow observer pointed out the floating log with eyes, I still didn't see it. I was staring so intently at the shadows, hoping one of them would move, I didn't see a shadow to my right creep out into the water, and begin to silently drift toward me. I did see it as it was about halfway across the water, and watched, breath held, as it swam all the way over to us, drifted to a stop and sunk into the water below us, a twelve foot alligator. I whispered to B that he should get the camera, and he did, and I got pictures of my first alligator. I know, not so much of a novelty to those who see them all the time, but to me, it was pretty cool to see the carnivore in it's natural habitat. Even though I am pretty sure the reason it came so close was it was hoping someone had a chicken wing to throw it.
We kept driving, and got to Key West late that afternoon. I was feeling a bit queesy from reading my book, and one corner of my lip had swollen to grotesque, purple proportions, thanks to me trying to eat it along with my sandwich at noon. And it. was. hot. And humid. We checked into our frosty hotel room, which had my sweaty self shivering before I had changed into swimwear, and headed to the beach, as south as we could go in the U.S., and waded into the tepid water, mud, not sand, squishing between our toes. We didn't spend a lot of time there. I got hot. And sticky. And asked if we could go back to the motel. Which we did, and I spent the rest of the afternoon in the gym, where it was cool, and the only sweat was induced by work, not overwhelming heat.
And now we are boarding, I will go ahead and publish this for now, but there will be more- I promise.
..And now, more. We are home. It feels amazing.
That night, we hit Key West, went to the pier to see the sunset and take in the Sunset Celebration, street performers and vendors jostling for attention in the crowds pouring off the cruise ship docked there, the sun worshipers and tourists, all gathered to soak up the last few rays and take pictures. I missed my bike, because it seemed everyone except me had two-wheeled transportation, either on a scooter or a bike. I had my new Teva wedges, but still. I wanted to pedal.
We walked down Duval street and found a place to eat outside in a courtyard, where we sat and watched the varied flow of humanity pedal, ride, drive, walk, stagger, stumble, swagger and sway past us. After which we joined them. At one point, I looked ahead of us and noticed an especially perky backside in an especially short skirt, sporting especially big hair, and halfway through my raised eyebrow, she turned around, spotted Bobby, waved a manicured hand, and said "Hi, Gorgeous...you here for the sho
w?" in a decidedly male voice, which caused us to do a double take and realize that half of the bodacious, jostling girls around us were definitely not one hundred percent female. How were we to know that? We're just farm kids. Oh, we recovered quickly, and added it to our trove of stories from that night, but we felt a little betrayed by our small-town roots.
We got back late that night, loathe to leave the lights and music and hot summer night, but booked on a snorkel cruise early the next morning. We needn't have worried. We passed out as soon as our heads hit the pillows, but a few hours later, both of us were awake. The air conditioner was loud. Shake the walls loud. And it ran in short bursts. And B did not turn his phone off, since he was using the alarm clock feature, so every time someone posted something to his facebook or sent him an email, it vibrated on the bedside stand, which he didn't hear, but it woke me up every time. Never have we been so glad to see six o'clock. We had a carb-tinental breakfast, checked out of the hotel, and were at the pier, a hungry parking meter fed, at 8:30. We spent until noon seven miles offshore, over a reef, spotting dozens of kinds of fish, yellow, blue, silver, red, striped and spotted, dodging jellyfish. We went out on a smallish catamaran, only us and two other couples, with two stops. On the second one, schools of yellowtail snappers flitted around us in the hundreds,
staring into our fat pink faces. Another school of great barracuda drifted below us, and angelfish, butterfly fish, and parrotfish poked along the reef. After two hours of being tossed around on the surface of the water, except of our brief dives that only lasted until we ran out of air, we were feeling extremely mellow. The waves were high, high enough that I had to wait till the crest to look around and find Bobby. We got back to shore, and I did the beach shimmy, simultaneously changing peeling out of my wet swimwear and slipping into a dry tank top, skirt and underwear in layers in the simmering parking lot. I brushed the salt from my skin as it dried, then B found a beach shower, so I rinsed out my tangled mop of hair and washed the salt from my legs and arms. He showered all of him, then, after a Taco Bell burito, we hit the road for the four hour trip back to Ft. Lauderdale.
That night, B asked me where I wanted to eat, and out popped the last place I would usually suggest- Olive Garden. Don't ask. I just wanted carbs- a lot of them. Oodles of noodles. And white, pasty bread. I am usually loudly opposed to the wanna-be Italian chain with it's red and yellow interiors that everyone wants to emulate in their own homes and wanna-be snooty atmosphere that says, lets pretend that this fettucini is better than the Ragu you dumped over your pasta the last time you wanted empty carbs without a hint of healthy veggies or whole grains. Okay, it is a pet peeve. Maybe I'm just tired of the hype and everybody always wanting to go there when they go to Denver, to the exclusion of privately owned, more sustainable restaurants. And maybe it's just me, but I've eaten at one maybe three times in six years, and all three time the waiter seriously creeped me out, asking for our order in a conspiratory library voice. And twice out of the three times, the two of us have been seated at a table set for eight, which just added to the whole creeped-out feeling I got. So if you are ever out with us, and B or I snorts, then quickly tries to cover our inapropriate response to the suggestion that we eat at Olive Garden, think naught of it. We will still go there with you, and it won't kill us. At least the food won't. We're not so sure about
the waiters...
And today, eight hours of airports, and airplane, and wrong busses, and right busses, and driving, and here we are, back at home with Andy and the kitties. It is wonderful. And I thought I would get the chance to post pictures tonight yet, but now B has proclaimed it bedtime. Maybe tomorrow.
B used to live here. I've never been. After several years of venturing further and further from home in our last hoorays before the season descends on us and the snow buries us, this seemed the year to vacation somewhere that did not requ
ire a seven hour flight over water, or changing currency. One of our first big purchases after we were married, when we could ill-aford it and spent several years paying it off our credit cards, was a transferable timeshare, the guarantee of a free stay for a week in a condo every other year for the rest of our lives. Free if we stay in "our" condo, and about $120 a week to stay anywhere else in the world. Since "our" condo is in Orlando, and once every twenty years in Orlando is about enough, we have yet to stay in it, but have already recouped our money in savings on lodging on other vacations. It also means that instead of staying in seedy motels, we now stay in luxury resorts and vacation clubs with expansive accomodations and kitchens, whirlpool tubs and private balconies, large and varied workout facilities, pools that cover acres, with cabanas and tiki bars and rediculous landscaping, on-site stores where one can buy bottles of aquafina for $3.00, and, in this case, a private island. It matters less what there is to do off-resort when one can so easily occupy one's time for a week without leaving the premises. For a week at the Hyatt Coconut Plantation, we spent hours flat on our backs on tubes, spinning in the current as the lazy river carried us around and around, and around. I read all five novels I had brought along, including the Dean Koontz I discovered I had already read a few y
ears ago and still remembered the ending, tucked into a hammock under a tiki hut, surrounded by happy crickets and all sorts of flowering bushes and at least a dozen different variety of palms, new-agey, bongo-ey music bouncing out of hidden speakers, water gushing loudly
over the many waterfalls worked into the landscaping, cascading into the many swimming pools and hot tubs and hidden grottoes. And in such manner, I didn't notice the oppressive heat and air heavy with humidity until we actually put on clothes that were not swimwear and left the resort. And then, my hair stood straight up, frizz covering my head in an inch d
eep layer, and I began to sweat, and to stick to myself, and settled into a heat-induced stupor, broken only by my irritable replies to B's happy yammering, until the sun dropped behind the bank of thunderheads on the horizen in it's nightly celebration of a job well done, throwing every shade of happy-inducing color at me, and I shook myself, wondering what was wrong with me, and felt myself becoming myself again. We spent every sunset on a beach somewhere, B wading and swimming and, by all appearances, thoroughly enjoying the way the salt and the sand stuck to him.I planned on running a charity 5k in Naples on the 3rd of 0ctober, and completely underestimated the effect the heavy air would have on my running. And I had underestimated how hot i
t would already be at 7:00 a.m., which was when the run was. I had envisioned a cool early morning run, maybe 7o or 75 degrees, not 88 degrees. Although I can do 10K fairly easily, if not fast, at home at 8,700 feet, running 5k on the treadmill at 5 feet nearly finished me off. By the end of two miles, I was gulping breaths that nearly exploded my aching lungs, my head was spinning, my breakfast had risen nearly to my tonsils. After a few failed attempts, I discovered that keeping my mouth shut and breathing only through my nose kept me upright by limiting the amount of air I could draw in. If I took half breaths, and expelled the last breath fully before tenatively drawing the next one, eventually the pounding headache eased and I could settle into an easy gait that required no effort or concentration, and I could watch the miles roll by with almost my usual ease. All the same, I did not feel like sweating the gallons I knew I would, even though Alzheimer's research could have used me, so I ended up leaving the outdoor running to those more inclined to sweat and stickiness and humidity.After we left the resort, we drove into the everglades. Actually, seeing the Everglades up-close and personal was the reason I had been excited about going to Florida. Yes, I knew it would be hot, although I may have not realized just how hot, but I am big on the whole getting a feel for the Land, in it's natural state, it's natural beauty and as it's natives knew it before civilization crashed in and drained it, or razed it, or devoloped it, or mined it. And I was determined to see an alligator. No, not in a zoo, as B tried to convice me to do, thinking it was just that I wanted to see an alligator. I told him that was not an option, because in a zoo, one might see an alligator, but one could not actually SEE an alligator. It's just not the same. It had to be one in the wild.
I did finally concede and agree to not make him rent a canoe or kayak and row through Everglades National Park, because of time constraints. We ended up not going the eighty miles out of our way to go into the park at all, although I am pretty sure we will regret not doing so. Every national park it it's own unique experience, and should not be skipped over if it is possible to go see them. But we did follow a narrow highway for miles through dense jungles of trees and swamps, water as still as the sky it reflected, oceans of grass, dripping spanish moss, and birds standing on long sticks of legs, white against murky backdrops of shadow and trees, necks kinked in s-curves, unfolding to shoo
t out and snap up unsuspacting insects, then settling back for another long wait. And yes, at a rest stop so fetid I decided I didn't need to go THAT bad, a wooden bridge lead over a still patch of water, the opposite shore looking like just the spot an alligator might like to hang out. I shaded my eyes and studied it, and even when a fellow observer pointed out the floating log with eyes, I still didn't see it. I was staring so intently at the shadows, hoping one of them would move, I didn't see a shadow to my right creep out into the water, and begin to silently drift toward me. I did see it as it was about halfway across the water, and watched, breath held, as it swam all the way over to us, drifted to a stop and sunk into the water below us, a twelve foot alligator. I whispered to B that he should get the camera, and he did, and I got pictures of my first alligator. I know, not so much of a novelty to those who see them all the time, but to me, it was pretty cool to see the carnivore in it's natural habitat. Even though I am pretty sure the reason it came so close was it was hoping someone had a chicken wing to throw it.We kept driving, and got to Key West late that afternoon. I was feeling a bit queesy from reading my book, and one corner of my lip had swollen to grotesque, purple proportions, thanks to me trying to eat it along with my sandwich at noon. And it. was. hot. And humid. We checked into our frosty hotel room, which had my sweaty self shivering before I had changed into swimwear, and headed to the beach, as south as we could go in the U.S., and waded into the tepid water, mud, not sand, squishing between our toes. We didn't spend a lot of time there. I got hot. And sticky. And asked if we could go back to the motel. Which we did, and I spent the rest of the afternoon in the gym, where it was cool, and the only sweat was induced by work, not overwhelming heat.
And now we are boarding, I will go ahead and publish this for now, but there will be more- I promise.
..And now, more. We are home. It feels amazing.
That night, we hit Key West, went to the pier to see the sunset and take in the Sunset Celebration, street performers and vendors jostling for attention in the crowds pouring off the cruise ship docked there, the sun worshipers and tourists, all gathered to soak up the last few rays and take pictures. I missed my bike, because it seemed everyone except me had two-wheeled transportation, either on a scooter or a bike. I had my new Teva wedges, but still. I wanted to pedal.
We walked down Duval street and found a place to eat outside in a courtyard, where we sat and watched the varied flow of humanity pedal, ride, drive, walk, stagger, stumble, swagger and sway past us. After which we joined them. At one point, I looked ahead of us and noticed an especially perky backside in an especially short skirt, sporting especially big hair, and halfway through my raised eyebrow, she turned around, spotted Bobby, waved a manicured hand, and said "Hi, Gorgeous...you here for the sho
w?" in a decidedly male voice, which caused us to do a double take and realize that half of the bodacious, jostling girls around us were definitely not one hundred percent female. How were we to know that? We're just farm kids. Oh, we recovered quickly, and added it to our trove of stories from that night, but we felt a little betrayed by our small-town roots.We got back late that night, loathe to leave the lights and music and hot summer night, but booked on a snorkel cruise early the next morning. We needn't have worried. We passed out as soon as our heads hit the pillows, but a few hours later, both of us were awake. The air conditioner was loud. Shake the walls loud. And it ran in short bursts. And B did not turn his phone off, since he was using the alarm clock feature, so every time someone posted something to his facebook or sent him an email, it vibrated on the bedside stand, which he didn't hear, but it woke me up every time. Never have we been so glad to see six o'clock. We had a carb-tinental breakfast, checked out of the hotel, and were at the pier, a hungry parking meter fed, at 8:30. We spent until noon seven miles offshore, over a reef, spotting dozens of kinds of fish, yellow, blue, silver, red, striped and spotted, dodging jellyfish. We went out on a smallish catamaran, only us and two other couples, with two stops. On the second one, schools of yellowtail snappers flitted around us in the hundreds,
staring into our fat pink faces. Another school of great barracuda drifted below us, and angelfish, butterfly fish, and parrotfish poked along the reef. After two hours of being tossed around on the surface of the water, except of our brief dives that only lasted until we ran out of air, we were feeling extremely mellow. The waves were high, high enough that I had to wait till the crest to look around and find Bobby. We got back to shore, and I did the beach shimmy, simultaneously changing peeling out of my wet swimwear and slipping into a dry tank top, skirt and underwear in layers in the simmering parking lot. I brushed the salt from my skin as it dried, then B found a beach shower, so I rinsed out my tangled mop of hair and washed the salt from my legs and arms. He showered all of him, then, after a Taco Bell burito, we hit the road for the four hour trip back to Ft. Lauderdale.That night, B asked me where I wanted to eat, and out popped the last place I would usually suggest- Olive Garden. Don't ask. I just wanted carbs- a lot of them. Oodles of noodles. And white, pasty bread. I am usually loudly opposed to the wanna-be Italian chain with it's red and yellow interiors that everyone wants to emulate in their own homes and wanna-be snooty atmosphere that says, lets pretend that this fettucini is better than the Ragu you dumped over your pasta the last time you wanted empty carbs without a hint of healthy veggies or whole grains. Okay, it is a pet peeve. Maybe I'm just tired of the hype and everybody always wanting to go there when they go to Denver, to the exclusion of privately owned, more sustainable restaurants. And maybe it's just me, but I've eaten at one maybe three times in six years, and all three time the waiter seriously creeped me out, asking for our order in a conspiratory library voice. And twice out of the three times, the two of us have been seated at a table set for eight, which just added to the whole creeped-out feeling I got. So if you are ever out with us, and B or I snorts, then quickly tries to cover our inapropriate response to the suggestion that we eat at Olive Garden, think naught of it. We will still go there with you, and it won't kill us. At least the food won't. We're not so sure about
the waiters...And today, eight hours of airports, and airplane, and wrong busses, and right busses, and driving, and here we are, back at home with Andy and the kitties. It is wonderful. And I thought I would get the chance to post pictures tonight yet, but now B has proclaimed it bedtime. Maybe tomorrow.
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