Adios Florida!

Today is my last official day as a Floridian and tomorrow Dan and I embark on our cross-country road trip for California!  Coast-to-coast!!  Am I crazy?  Don’t answer. 

Things I will not miss about Florida:

1) Walking out the door at 7 am and breaking out into an immediate, full-body sweat.

2) I-4 and the five thousand toll roads I am forced to drive on to get in and out of the city.

3) Strip malls

4) Strip malls

5) Theme parks, all of them and everything about them.

6) Sunburns even after repetitive and liberal applications of sun block.

Things I will miss about Florida:

1) Redneck dive bars, specifically Kings Duck Inn where the draft beer is so cold there are icicles floating in it!!

2) Park Ave CD’s and their willingness to special order anything my heart (and ears) desire.

3) Mellow Mushroom Pizza (perhaps I’ll open a franchise in California) 

5) Jess Egan

6) Jess Egan’s food

Jess, if I give you my new address will you mail me Thanksgiving dinner?

You're doing what?!

In the summer of 2005 I moved from my rural home in eastern Kansas to the city of Orlando, Florida.  What did I know about Orlando? I knew it was hot, that it rained once a day and that it offered a wide variety of vacation options for you and your family.  I went there looking to broaden my horizons, experience new things and to see how people live outside the farm.  What I found was a bunch of white dudes from the northeast driving around in their big expensive cars, throwing parties in their big expensive houses and showing off their super skinny, expensive wives.  Alas, Orlando was not all bad.  I also found Park Ave CDs, Brian’s Restaurant, the Winter Park Farmer’s Market, and Jess Egan (the only known offspring of June Cleaver and Martha Stewart).  But then, Orlando, you went too far.  You built one too many strip malls.  You franchised one too many Starbucks.  You almost had me back when you opened two H&M locations, but then you put them at opposite ends of the city and nowhere near my house.  Orlando, I gave you five years of my life; you gave me some good times, some good friends, and probably skin cancer from all the sunburns, but that remains to be seen.

And so, I am venturing out again to find a new place to call home and to see how people live outside of strip malls.  My new home will be in the land of the Bay Area in California.  Or more specifically the East Bay/Oakland area, which is across the Golden Gate bridge from San Francisco.  (I'm poor and the price per square footage on rental units is much less there compared to San Francisco.)

Return here each week as I chronicle the epic move from coast to coast (LITERALLY!) and all my new experiences as a Californian!