The Flat Tire in Florida

One evening in May 2017, my best friend calls me and says, “Hey Sush (that’s how she calls me), everything is so messed up. I feel so low and sick and I don’t know what to do.” I felt its one of those sad times which every one would have been through and have decided to catch up with her and have some great time together. When she heard I’ll go to see her, she got all excited and made a big plan to visit Florida. That’s how I ended up travelling to Florida despite the fact that I’m not a beach lover.

We had an amazingly messed up plan for the trip which taught me so many things.

The first rule: Never go with the flow when it’s not a solo trip. You got to have at least some places to visit on the to-do list. We did have some places on our checklist in advance so, we were good at this.

The second rule: You go to a place to explore the place. Never waste the time in getting ready or sleeping as if we are curled up in a cosy comforter at home sweet home on a Saturday morning. I and my friend were ok in following this rule though I felt we could’ve saved more time being quicker than we were.

The third rule: Never visit South Miami beach at night when you can’t stand the smell of Alcohol; leave alone the drinking part. I bearly tolerated the South Beach in Miami which usually drowns in the spirit at night. I violated this rule and thought I would be okay. We should have chosen Key West instead.

After landing in Tampa, I rented the car and started to Orlando airport to pick my friend up. I was super excited to see her after a really long time. From there, both of us went to the Airbnb house that we booked which was close to Universal Studios, our first stop the next day.

The house belongs to a 60 year old lady who lives with her mom and her son. I must admit that she and her mom are young at heart travellers. They were going for a hike in the mountains of North Carolina and they had a couple of other senior citizens accompanying them. They all drove from Florida to Smoky mountains. This inspired me to never stop travelling no matter what happens in life.

Universal Studios is the best place of entertainment if you are an Anime enthusiast. Though I’m not a typical one, I did enjoy the tour since some of the rides were fun to general public too. The simulation rides included various themes like Minions, Transformers, Harry Potter, King Kong etc. Did I forget to mention the length of the queues before the entrances of each ride which almost resembled the china wall? If not for my best friend’s company, I would have definitely not been one of those extremely patient people waiting for their turns. On this trip, we checked our levels of holdup endurance for a complete one and a half days as we couldn’t cover all the rides on the same day.

The next day around noon, we started off to Miami, The Magic City after lunch.

[The nickname Magic City comes from its rapid growth. Its metropolitan area grew from just over one thousand residents to nearly five and a half million residents in just 110 years. source: Quora]

The drive was very pleasant with the pineapple farms on both sides of the road. I have never seen a pineapple tree before. Unlike my imagination (like a tall date palm tree with bunches of fruits hanging from each branch), these particular ones turned out to be thorny bushes growing not more than 3 feet tall with massive fruits sitting between the branches.

When we reached Miami, it was almost 8:00 pm and searching for a parking spot near South Miami Beach took another hour. We started walking after parking at a public parking building. The streets had lovely live music coming from bars and nostrils turned active mode on due to the smell from delicious food from the restaurants. Looking at some of the clothing stores, it seemed like a mini fashion capital street of Florida.

When we finally reached the beach after walking a gazillion steps, crossing alarming police cars, I could only see the oceanfront bars and clubs but no signs of the ocean itself. I couldn’t even feel the music of the waves as it was washed away by the deafening noise from the nightclubs on the shore.

We found an oasis in the desert finally 🙂 The decent bar we could find after a great search was successful in making me feel a bit comfortable since most of the people were in their senses at this particular restaurant cum bar. We would have been mistaken for the hungry kids from Somalia if we didn’t eat the not so special French fries served there with forks. The night ended with lots of nostalgic emotions between my friend and myself. We enjoyed walking on the streets back to the parking.

The twist was we didn’t have reservation for that night stay. Then happened a magic, one of my friends called me and says he is Miami too. Now don’t get surprised how did he come to know that we were in Florida. I posted it on Facebook and I still don’t know how to add a check-in on Facebook. I added it as an FB post 🙂 We met him and other friends along the him and I felt very happy going back to old days. We stayed at that hotel for that night. Isn’t life so easy when you imagine it would be tougher?

The next morning, after visiting a lake and a quick brunch, my friend left to Orlando and I started back to Tampa. The scorching sun was in his angriest mode ever the entire day, trying his best to drain all the water off from our bodies. I was 30 miles away from the Tampa airport and then happened the disaster. The flat tire.

My half sleepy drowsiness got shaken away and I called road assistance and missed my flight and stayed there in an Airbnb overnight and booked the expensive next available flight and reached home in Houston. The trip never felt so long as this one before. What a trip though; could never forget 🙂