Gator Country

Friday: Bok Tower Gardens, Sunset Cruise

Considering all the beer I drank yesterday, I don’t feel all that terrible this morning. I sit at the table and eat a bowl of cereal with Josh. He’s playing with his Power Ranger action figures, but he’s getting a little out of control with them. Rick tells him to put them away before he breaks something. He has a tantrum, but Carol and Rick manage to get him to behave. Josh is their adopted son. His birth mother used crack, so he’s got ADD. He’s basically a good kid, likes music, and kicks butt on video games. But he does need meds to keep his emotions under control. It’s too bad his mother couldn’t lay off the pipe for nine months, now he’s gonna have to live with the aftereffects for the rest of his life.

Carol and Josh leave for school. Rick says he’s going in late today, I think he’s a little hung over too. I make a pitcher of iced tea and gulp down a couple glasses, feeling much better now. I ask Rick if I can take one of the boats out after he leaves. He hooks up a fuel tank to an old pontoon boat that’s tied to the dock, shows me how to get the motor going.

After he leaves, I go out and try to start it, keeping an eye out for gators. Carol told me earlier about the time Rick was out on the dock when he spotted a gator in the water next to the boat. He went to swat it with a shovel and it lunged at him. Rick lost his balance and almost fell in the water. It was “Big Joe”, an old gator who is well-known to all the locals. If Rick had fallen in, he could have ripped his arm off.

I don’t see Big Joe or any other gators out here this morning, but I’m not having any luck getting the damn boat started either. I think I flooded the motor or something, and I’m getting sweaty, and bugs are buzzing around my face. Ah, the hell with it, I’m going back inside where it’s air-conditioned!

Back inside, I pour myself another iced tea and sit down to look at the paper. Shasta, Rick’s old Lab, walks over to the table to see what I’m doing. She lays down near my feet as I read the paper. It’s nice to be able to relax, unwind like this. Things seem to move at a much slower pace down here in central Florida; I could get used to this. The property’s cheap too, I could probably afford to buy a house here. Viv wouldn’t like it though, she doesn’t like heat, and she can’t stand bugs.

When I called Viv last night, she suggested setting up Instant Messenger to keep in touch, so as not to run up a big long distance bill. I reluctantly agreed. (I’m not big on chat; I never learned to type properly. E-mail is more my speed.) Carol said I could use Rick’s old laptop, so I boot it up. It takes forever to get online, and setting up the program is a real hassle. I think it’s a P166, 28K modem, 32 Megs of ram, really ancient. (It’s like cruising the information superhighway on a skateboard.) I finally get it to work, and talk to Viv and my son for a while. Viv tells me of the latest adventures of our insane neighbors. Nick gets into changing the font sizes and colors while typing to me, and we get into a “smiley’ war.

A little later I go take a shower. The water has lots of minerals in it, has a sulfury smell, but it’s refreshing. Carol gets out of school early, and we take a drive to Lake Wales. We stop at an old church; she shows me the ceiling she painted. She had to stand on a scaffold, like Michaelangelo, to do it. It’s very beautiful; she really is a talented artist.

Next we visit Bok Tower Gardens, a wildlife sanctuary nearby. Edward Bok, a wealthy philanthropist, created the sanctuary back in the 1920’s as a monument to world peace. The gardens are beautiful; it’s very relaxing just walking the trails, looking at the plants. I don’t even mind the heat that much. The tower itself is pretty impressive to look at; and it has a carillion that plays music every half hour or so. (A carillion looks like a very large piano, but it has different sized bells connected to the keys, instead of strings.)

Back at the house, I tell Rick that I couldn’t get the pontoon boat to run. Rick says he can hook up another motor he’s got to a small aluminum boat that’s sitting in the yard, we can take that out. We all decide to go for a sunset cruise, and I get to pilot the little boat, with Carol, Rick, and Josh up front. I set out to circle the lake, keeping the boat close enough to shore to be able to take in the sights, but far enough out so as not to hit any weeds or submerged dead trees. Josh keeps telling me to go faster.

In the beginning I hit some sticks and weeds, but I manage to keep the motor running, and get better at reading the water as I go. We spot a couple gators on the ride, but they aren’t very big. (No sign of Big Joe.) About halfway around the lake, I realize we aren’t gonna make it back before dark. I think about cutting across, but decide that might be even riskier. The little motor on this boat has a lot of miles on it, and sputters every so often. If it died on us in the middle of the lake, I don’t think we’d want to be trying to swim back in the dark, with all the gators out. I crank up the motor and continue to ride around the rest of the lake.

It’s getting pretty dark by the time we make it back, but I manage to steer the boat in without hitting anything. As soon as I cut the motor, I start getting attached by mosquitoes. I musta gotten half a dozen bites on my arms and legs in the couple minutes it takes to walk from the dock back to the house.

I want to get to sleep kinda early tonight; we’re going to Cypress Gardens tomorrow. But I’m still not adjusted to East Coast time, so I stay up and watch TV after everyone else is in bed. Eventually I’m tired enough to turn in.