My vacation is winding down. It was fun. The ultimate destination was Pensacola Florida.
I started out in Cincinnati, Ohio (where I live) at 1800 hours on a Friday.
I stopped by Louisville, Kentucky.
Then from there, it was Tennessee, by way of Nashville, one of my favorite places on Earth, though I took no photos or videos, and then took a long southward bound journey through Alabama.
Alabama is a beautiful place with very nice people, but it’s not a place I’ve spent alot of time in. At about the halfway point to Pensacola, Florida, my final destination, I decided to trek to Decatur, Alabama, as it was on the way, and, my mother and uncle lived there as kids.
I immediately got pulled over as soon as I got a few miles down the interstate. So, I’ll be back in June to address the tickets.
So, every vacation I take, there’s some big thing that comes up that almost ruins the vacation. This was it. As the officer was giving me the 3rd degree in what can only be described as a “not in my small town” style of interrogation, I realized I did not have my driver’s license on me. At this moment my priorities shifted from avoiding admitting liability to convincing a local deputy not to arrest me for driving without a license.
So, freeze frame for a minute: How did we get here? A week before my vacation I’d rebuilt my NAS server. After the rebuild I ended up with a 63 terabyte luks2 encrypted mount and a 20 terabyte unencrypted mount, each in a RAID6 configuration across 10 disks on a classical desktop system with choice components, a RAID card, a 10G nic, a great new motherboard, and some hotswappable raid backplanes with 5.25″ bay inserts. During the process I needed to transfer my CPU to the new motherboard and used my driver’s license to spread the thermal paste (yes, that’s stupid, but yes, it’s the best kind of card to do that with). So, when I did that, I put the ID back on my desk in my office, and never ended up putting it back in my wallet, because I’m a scatterbrain. Then, while planning and preparing for my vacation, I accounted for every detail. Every detail, except, of course, putting my ID back in my wallet.
So after some back and forth with Deputy McSharterfacer, who was quite eager to escalate the interaction even without the missing ID, I turned right back around and drove back to Cincinnati as a ball of rage. Keep in mind, I’d already been on the road for about 6-7 hours by this point.
Along the way I made layers of backup plans on what to do if my ID wasn’t in my office. I went through the list of places it could be, asking — “Who carded me today?”. It came down to my office desk, the gas station with the laundromat built in that I stopped at in town before I left, or the animal boarding place I dropped my dog, Luigi, off at earlier in the day. By the time I’d arrive everything would be opening again for the day, so my vacation wouldn’t be ruined yet because I’d left a day early just in case something like this happened. I’d thought of everything except to make sure I’d brought my license.
I made it home. By that point the number of hours I’d been driving was a blur, and I was already tired, and I usually stay tired anyway, hence the need for the vacation. I immediately walk up to my ID and put it in my wallet and get back on the road.
I made hella good time on the re-attempt. I arrived at Pensacola Beach at 0033 on Sunday, making the total trip time just over 30.5 hours. I was tired. I checked in without a hitch and immediately went to one of the beach island Irish bars, asked for a Guiness Draught on tap, and proceeded to chug the entire thing. I then walked my tired ass back to the hotel room, and slept great.
I woke up at the Hilton recharged but the burnout was showing.
So I decided to transform into a tourist.
I immediately see that I look completely like shit. I’ve egregiously overworked the last two years between $dayjob and my SILO efforts. It shows. I’m fat and out of shape. I have cubital tunnel syndrome. Both elbows are blown out. I’m balding. My breathing sucks and I chain smoke. Bags under my eyes. I immediately realize something has to change when I get back.
Of course, as is my custom, I bought a hat just for the trip to bring it all together. I was officially a tourist from that point on:
The rest of the trip in Pensacola was uneventful, really. Lots of drinks, lots of food:
Pensacola:
The grouper piccata and the Eagle Rare at The Grand Marlin were a nice treat.
After a couple days of stuffing my face and filling my gullet with drinks, and some interesting company, I’d had my fill.
The last night I was there I ended up paying for several rounds of drinks in two bars and everybody got pretty silly and wild. I myself had too much to drink that night, and woke up with my body telling me that something I drank was not okay to drink.
Then I proceeded to pay for it for the rest of the trip. I guess I’m too old for that kind of thing.
Moving on, I made my way to New Orleans as planned. A few hours drive along the gulf, and I’d arrived. This was the first time I’d seen New Orleans since it was submerged in water in 2005, when the levy broke during the flooding caused by two hurricanes, called Rita and Katrina. Nothing was the same. And, it was also the last time I’ll ever set foot in the place.
The hotel was nice.
After exploring that total shithole of a place in the French Quarter, I went by Biloxi Mississippi and spent an afternoon sipping some top shelf bourbon with a coworker. Elijah Craig and Buffalo Trace. It was nice but uneventful.
After Mississippi, it was back to Pensacola for a day, and then back home.
I stopped back by Decatur for a meal:
And, when the food arrived, I immediately realized why “Deputay Barney” was so grumpy when he’d pulled me over the other day. His mexican food looks like this:
That on the left, that sad excuse for food is what this restaurant calls two chimichangas. This is truly the saddest, most mid mexican food in the south. I hate saying that because it’s likely my grandparents and mother and uncle on that side of the family ate there as kids, but damn. Not a pinch of salt or seasoning. “404, mexican food not found”.
Anyway, at that point I was tired of traveling, and just drove straight the way through.
Made it home in good time, and slept in last night, and then just a little bit ago picked up the dog from the boarding place. Apparently he’d been chewing at the base of his tail while he was in there and now I need to spray it a couple times a day until it heals.
As I type this I see that Luigi is very happy to be home and at my feet as usual, taking a big long nap while I sip my espresso and document some pieces of my fun vacation.
So, it’s tonight, tomorrow, and the day after, and then it’s back to work at the dayjob. I honestly could use another week, but, I just can’t risk taking the time off without stuff blowing up, so, until next year.
As to summation and comparisons, Miami is a better beach city to vacation in by big measures. New Orleans, Mississippi were great for the experience but they’re unlikely to be places I ever go to again, just because there aren’t alot of reasons to. I’m not sure that Pensacola is either, but, that’s not really Pensacola’s fault, it’s just that there’s so many other cool places to go and Pensacola is a fun place to eat and drink, but that’s about it unless you have a boat, and, if I had a boat to take (which I haven’t ruled out), I probably wouldn’t take it to Pensacola. Destin seemed nice, but it was kind of in the same boat. Miami, Galveston, and most other beach towns start out as fishing ports and grow into tourist attractions — this place seemed more like it was created from a bare coastline for the sole purpose of entertaining our armed forces on shore leave and local retirees.
I will say this, though, as god-forsaken as New Orleans is, Louisiana in general has some of the most attractive women you’ll ever see. It made me miss living in the south a great deal. Not that Ohio is a terrible place, it’s actually quite developed, it’s just bland, and, there aren’t as many …suitable…options, and, women aside, the weather is not very hot either and I do not do cold well. I immediately noticed the cold as I hit the Ohio border. You’d think a guy who spent half his adult years in Maine would better tolerate cooler climates.
I guess it’s time to get back to work. I don’t wanna!