-The best trips are the ones I can't wait to do again and, more importantly, because I have the feeling that I want to do it right this time. I get that feeling with Miami.
-Now it wasn't all lush hosannah. Being on the road is a hassle. First, the traffic sucks. Once I got my bearings, it took about a half-hour to get to anywhere.
-Second, there are tolls everywhere in Miami. Most of them go to Miami Beach, which is on an island just east of the mainland. Most of the (what they call them) expressways are tolled. I avoided them like the fucking plague, and even turned around when I saw a pay station.
Two reasons for this. One is philosophical; I don't think there should be a capitalist hierarchy when it comes to driving around roads we all paid (or should pay) for. Second is practical; I learned when I was returning my rental that the city of Miami no longer accepts cash money for tolls. It's all electronic, which is stupid, because maybe someone who doesn't go to South Beach regularly wants to go for his one time in the summer, and maybe it's easier for him to just pay money, and maybe it's quicker for the tollbooth to take money instead of making the driver get an electronic beeper for the car. We don't have to leave in the technological age for everything, you know.
Anyway, the rental car company automatically has this thing called "TollPass," I think, a beeper automatically embedded in the car. They charge you an extra two bucks for every day you go through a toll on top of the toll itself. Um, no. It took me a hell of a long time to get around town as a result, but I kept my principles, dammit.
-The third big car-related thing that sucks is the inconsistent numbering of streets. First of all, every sign I saw while going through an intersection had, like, three fucking names on it. One of them was to commemorate some person that's famous or important to Miami. Look, if you want to commemorate the person, change the whole fucking street to his or her name! Don't dither and give the road three fucking names. It's ridiculously confusing.
-Fourth: I was in a hotel close to the airport, and even though there is a grid system for much of Miami, the whole city isn't in this basic, easy system, and I was in the middle of the metropolis, the old part, one where expressways criss-cross everywhere. I went through intersections that had five streets you could turn onto. Also ridiculously confusing.
Finally, the drivers there suck. Big donkey dick. Big. There are slow drivers, who, as soon as I passed them in frustration and looked over for a quick peek, were by and large old and minorities. I could then understand all the fast cars smoking me after I change lanes in front of the slow cars. But that scares the shit out of me, because I react defensively towards them, which could have caused an accident. I wanted to follow their contrails and go 70, but even though I saw no cops stopping people on the highways, I couldn't rise above the speed limit for fear of getting another ticket while on vacation. Both slow and fast drivers are dangerous, and there were plenty of both in Miami.
-Tried Cuban food. Sort of. Tasted good!
-Women here? Hot. The gap between the babes there and the ones here is apparent, especially if you like the Latinas, but it's not as if they're Amazonian down there.
-My God, it was hot as fuck down there! Most everybody said it was tropical down there 365 days a year. I told them I could not live like that, knowing you'd sweat as soon as you step outside. They say they couldn't live in the cold Minnesota winters. The right answer depends on where you were raised, I figure, but for me, better it be too cold than too hot.
-Sidenote to that: I have never seen so many windows with condensation in my life. It was almost surreal.
I should take a break. I'll blog more about Miami later in the day, probably when I'm doing my hospital stay.
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