It's Been a While

I haven't been back to Cape Canaveral in a while, since when? Too long, anyway. The longest amount of time since we bought the place, I believe. It will be even longer with my surgery for a bunionectomy scheduled on the 20th. I'm missing it. There is a mental switch that gets flipped when I am down in Florida. I can't attribute it to anything in particular. I thought it was perhaps the weather or humidity, and there may be something in that -- I like vacationing down in Puerto Vallaraa, for example, and like PV more than I like Cabo San Lucas -- but it isn't solely the weather (especially the sunshine). I think in part it is the smells, the smell of the ocean, the smell of tropical foliage. The key is that in total, whatever the triggers may be, they take me back to my childhood.

A couple years ago if you had said that I would be buying a place in Florida, I would have laughed. I didn't like Florida. That's what I said to Jen. And there were good reasons for not liking it. There are bugs, cockroaches. One of the really nice things about Colorado is that there really aren't the creepy-crawlies nor mosquitoes. Yes, there are some - we've had our issues with mosquitos at times after some good rain and deal with spiders (most of which are great to have around for catching the stray mosquito) and the moth invasion that comes in late spring -- but not like the influx of ants and roaches amongst all the other flying and crawling things down in Florida.

The weather isn't even all that great down there. It rains a lot, just the sudden storms that blow in and blow right back out. Colorado has extreme weather changes, but they are pretty predictable by the forecasters. In Florida you can bet it will rain at some point in the day, just not when. Bring an umbrella. And it gets HOT! Okay, on the coast, it stays relatively mild. That was not something I really knew until visiting several times, though. When you step out of the Orlando airport in July, "mild" is not a term that comes to mind. Even then, in July, saying the weather on the coast is more mild is like saying habaneros are more mild than ghost peppers. Denver's convention bureau makes a big deal of the fact that Denver has as many sunny days as Miami.

I didn't particularly like the ocean. I'm not a fan of being cold and wet and to me, growing up in Michigan, being in the water means being cold and wet. Jen would say to me, "but you like being on the boat," and my answer was, "Yeah, because being on the boat means being warm and dry and not in the water where it's cold and wet." (And as an aside, I really do like being on boats. My wife, who gets motion sickness easily though, isn't such a fan.)

Jen was travelling down to Florida for work regularly and falling in love with being on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale. When the pandemic came, with the beaches open and relatively safe, Florida seemed good for at least a getaway. My mother and aunt share a condo on the beach down in Cape Canaveral. "Share" is maybe not the right word so much as "co-own", but perhaps that isn't a subject for here. Maybe the general maxim of "don't co-own condominiums with siblings" is enough. After a couple of visits in order to get away, I was hooked