TEE OR WEED

Well, the movies, it really does look the way they always display it, but it’s reality on the screen, only slightly or heavily dramatized, sometimes with a shark. But as soon as you get off the plane here, you’re in the movie. And that’s exactly what I wanted, not a vacation, just to watch and then quickly leave again, no, to immerse myself. That’s why I decided to start a little north of Miami and booked a small, inexpensive hotel right on the beach on Hutchinson Island for a week. Hardly any foreigners get lost here, preferring to hang out in glamorous West Palm Beach or even Miami Beach, at the pools with cool music and even cooler pretty girls, and then blaring it all over Insta, or looking for Hemingway in the Keys – I didn’t want to go there anyway, because I was already at the 90-mile mark to Cuba. I wanted to feel this easy America, which isn’t so fine dine-y, and the hotel had mixed reviews, which was fine by me, I didn’t need a pool and fancy-pants high life, just a fridge for beer. Both was waiting in the room and did a good job.

And the movie adventure already began with the search for the car rental and I thank Europcar for this experience at a reasonable price. There was no counter at the airport like for the top dogs, no, there was a bus transfer that took two fellow travelers and me past junkyards, where the department usually searches for bodies, to a suburban garage, “at the airport” in this case meaning the planes thundering overhead. Happy to still have all my kidneys after the transfer through the suburbs, I entered the office after letting the couple go first, and the whole place smelled of grass.

But at this point I had been traveling for about 15 hours and still had over 2 hours of driving ahead of me, so what was to stop me from renting a car here, alright the next adventure awaits and Tee my POC accountant was insanely cheerful, „ Hey, uuh you are Europcar“, she said, meaning „the stupid who tries to save money“, a plan which she thwarted as quickly as possible. A few “initials” later, the price had risen to what you would have paid at the terminal, only without being able to tell a story. I prayed to God that I will find this place again when I return it.

Being awake for so long with the sun still shining  it’s getting dark in your body however and easy to make mistakes. Or maybe Tee made the mistake saying parking lot 29, where I happily went with my keys and extensive luggage, the car was parked backwards, which is why I wanted to pull forward a bit, but the car wouldn’t start… The grass I thought… has a devastating effect. On the way back to Tee’s office, I noticed a circle of empty plastic chairs right at the entrance to the garage, where I pictured  Tee and her colleagues sitting smoking weed during the break. Well it was lot 21, and I cheerfully opened the car door of my Kia, which was spotlessly clean inside and smelled of weed. As if it had been used to transport the last shipment from the Sinaloa cartel.

Dude, I thought, no sheriff should stick no curious nose in there, then they’ll surely take the thing apart; or it was a new disinfectant with that smell. Suspecting the latter, I heaved my luggage in, started my cell phone navigation system and entered the destination Fort Pierce, 2 hours and 50 minutes and 5 traffic jams on the way. After all, I had activated the toll roads with an “Inital” as Tee advised, no, I won’t let anything bad get to the lady. However, for safety reasons, in case it wasn’t a disinfectant, I decided to stick to the speed limits relatively closely, but I was the only one on the turnpike with this driving attitude. No one stuck to the 65 but sped past at 80 and more. It still was quite a distance and after the first two traffic jams I picked up the pace. The full tank started to empty, you never know what the range is like with cars you don’t know and, well, it was now 16 hours it was slowly getting dark and starting to rain. That’s when I began to question my venture.