Big Baby Jesus I Can't Wait.

Some random notes about various stuffs. I’m in between campgrounds, haven’t had much access to internet, and just so you know, my next blog will include lots of Bob Dylan-style name dropping.

I am now in a different time zone and I have seen my first dead armadillo on the side of the road! Both of these things are very exciting to me (hence the exclamation point).

The first place I went to in Tallahassee was the public library. I had some things I needed to print out there. I parked my car, made sure I had all my valuables in my fanny pack and backpack, and walked towards the library. A homeless woman flagged me down from across the street. She was drinking something that looked like Kaopectate from a Gatorade bottle.

“Did you just drive all the way from Massachusetts?” she asked. She only looked about fifty years old, but she had a lot of white facial hair, especially on the area under her chin.

I told her I hadn’t driven the whole way in one straight shot. I’d been doing book readings at libraries along the way and camping out at night.

She said, “Oh, ok. That explains the facial hair then.” I nodded, and she said, “Let me guess, you’ve been on the road for a week.”

I told her no, I’d actually been on the road for over two weeks. I considered explaining to her that I was a late bloomer, that I hadn’t even started shaving until I was in college, that I couldn’t attend pool parties between the ages of 13 and 18 because I had no hair in my armpits, but I decided not to. I was worried that too much talk of facial hair would lead to us discussing her own crop of robust chin whiskers. But maybe she was proud of the facial hair. Maybe she took secret pleasure in the fact that her own beard was more impressive than mine.

In Baltimore, a friend of mine predicted that all my interactions with humans would become very memorable for me. He made a joke that I’d probably start including the people who ask me for the time in my blogs. He was pretty much right. Whenever someone talks to me, I find myself asking them questions about things I have no interest in just to keep the conversation going.

I also find myself leaving many things out of my blog in favor of including small incidents with strangers. For example, I’ve been hanging out in the woods a lot, cooking on fires, hiking trails, going to beaches, and exploring caves. But I don’t really feel the need to write about these things. I don’t know what to write about them. I sat alone in the woods yesterday for four hours reading Valley of the Dolls . . . that’s all I have to say about that.

Bugs are bigger in Florida and animals are noisier and everyone is always talking about how hot it is. It’s been in the upper nineties the last couple days. I don’t mind this kind of heat at all, but everyone who lives in Florida seems to hate it. I wonder why they don’t move.

Late a couple nights ago, there was some sort of animal waiting for me at my tent when I got back from going to the bathroom. Even with my headlamp, all I could see were its eyes. I yelled at it and told it to go away, but it just sat there next to my tent, watching me with its reflective eyes. I hissed and made kind of barking noises but the thing didn’t budge. Finally I picked up a small rock and chucked it at the thing. It ran away into woods. I hurried into my tent and rushed to zip up the door as soon as I was inside. There are alligator signs all over the park, but the thing wasn’t an alligator. Thinking about it the next morning, I decided it was probably a lonely housecat or something.

There are more churches in Georgia and this part of Florida than there are people it seems. And the churches are these huge expensive things while very often the homes are depressing, slapped together affairs.

Speaking of god, the other day I was almost killed by a metal cylinder that came flying off the back of a truck in front of me. Luckily the Odyssey is nimble and I was paying attention (I had just finished texting my bffff about Hannah Montana’s new line of edible cosmetics for fussy housecats. LMAO!) It was then that he carried me.

When I woke up the other day, I had a voicemail from a friend in Brockton. In the message he instructed me to call him as soon as I could. He sounded kind of frantic. When I called he told me that he’d dreamed I was killed. I’ve been getting a lot of these types of calls lately. It’s nice that people worry about me, but I’m really ok I think. As far as camping goes, I am an Eagle Scout and have done a fair amount of it. I can’t, however, really defend my city skills. I still get lost in Boston and I have to admit that I’ve let my street fighting skills decline in the last few years. But who’s gonna hit a guy with a fanny pack?

Speaking of the fanny pack and my general ability to defend myself, I have yet another fanny pack-related thought (sorry).

While most segments of society laugh at the fanny pack, I think old ladies get some comfort from seeing a young man wearing a fanny pack. They look at the fanny pack and then they smile at me and I get this feeling that if a tidal wave suddenly came and flooded the city, those old ladies would reach for my fanny . . . pack. They think I’m safe because of the fanny pack. They think no one dangerous would wear a fanny pack. So, for all the old ladies out there who read random travel blogs by unknown novelists, don’t think I’m a nice guy just ’cause I wear a fanny pack. I might be obsequious, but I assure you, when provoked, I can be very dangerous, ma’ams.