Driving in Florida

I can write this piece from the relative safety of Mobile, Alabama. Once again I've lived through driving (or riding) in Florida.

Florida drivers are different.

The polyglot society there means that you have drivers from all over the world with different driving traditions, training and experience. Around Miami people like to tell of retirees who move from New York City, never having had a car or a driver's license, and whose drivers' education model is a New York City taxi driver. Their first purchase after the condo is a car.

The Latin drivers are thought to be saving their brakes by using their horns.

Then there are the tourists. Like me. Old, uncertain of how to get where I want to go, and trying to drive while reading a map or GPS and looking for road signs made for people with better eyesight.

And traffic. Always traffic. And road repair. In the cold country people say there are two seasons, "Winter and Road Repair." In Florida it is always Road Repair season. The tourism department arranged that so that the people who moved from the cold country would know it is always not winter in Florida.

After years of driving in Florida I have become convinced that many drivers there consider it a noble challenge to be the slowest driver in the left lane of the Interstate and the Turnpike. There are signs that read, "Slower traffic keep right," but in Florida the people in the left lane are certain that that sign applies to someone else. And, those signs are always posted on the right hand side of the road and the people driving slowly in the left hand lane never look to their right because they don't ever want to see the cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles and skateboards passing them on the right and waving a friendly, universally understood sign.

Yesterday in Florida I passed pickup pulling a trailer. It was in the left lane. The rig passed me when I decided to obey the speed limit in a construction zone near the Alabama line. When we crossed into Alabama where the slower traffic keep right signs are posted on both sides of the highway, he pulled into the right hand lane. Do you think Florida could cure its problem by posting that sign on the left hand side of the highway?

Monday's ride was both more interesting and more challenging because of a very large wild fire burning on both sides of the border between Florida and Georgia. The smoke from the fire reduced visibility so greatly in the Lake City area that the Florida Department of Transportation closed sections of I-75 and I-10. Naturally my route for the day was to take the Turnpike from West Palm north to I-75 and then take I-75 north to its intersection with I-10 where I would turn left.

A little work with my road atlas and my GPS let me plot a course along the bend in the Gulf Coast of Florida through Dunnellon to Gulf Hammock, Chiefland, Fanning Springs, Pineland, Perry, Hampton Springs and Eridu. One sign identified the area as "Florida's Highlands." It was certainly different from south Florida. There were some palm trees, but they were accompanied by pines. Judging by the aroma I'd say that cattle raising is high on the list of business activity in the region.

The winds that had been blowing the smoke south changed to blow from the east during the day so that when I got to Perry I put on a dust mask I had tossed in my tank bag knowing that where there's fire there's smoke. The smoke cleared as I headed toward Tallahassee.

The road repair worked on I-10. The road from Tallahassee to Mobile was the best on the trip so far. And if your vision of Florida is south Florida with its crowds, beaches and palm trees, you'd be surprised by the rolling hills and piney woods of the panhandle.

Just east of Pensacola, where the Navy trains its pilots, there was a fighter jet displayed beside the highway. Most static displays of old airplanes look about as exciting as the displays of old cannons, but this one was different. The plane was 40 feet off the ground and banked with one wing low as if it were in a hard turn. The support for the plane was a curved steel tube painted white to resemble the condensation trail a jet leaves when flying at altitude. The designer of the display had a strong sense of the drama of flight, and translated that drama into the structure.

My friend and J-school colleague Dick Moore is off flying around the country and blogging about it. He would appreciate the Pensacola jet display, and I'm sure you would appreciate his blog which can be reached through a link from the website of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications of the University of South Carolina at www.jour.sc.edu.