Adventures on the Poker Felt

After a few weeks here, I thought I’d post my impressions of a few things I’ve encountered about the area.

It rains a lot.  I’d say it’s rained at least once a day maybe 70% percent of the time.  And it comes out of no where.  Twice we were out shopping and when we were ready to head out to the car, a downpour erupted.  Good fun loading bags in the car when it’s coming down in buckets.  I’m hoping this is the rainy season here and it dries up after a few months, could be wishful thinking.

We can’t use the jacuzzi.  It’s just too fucking hot.  Instead we spend time at the pool after dinner.  The water is still 75-80 degrees but it feels real nice after we get out and towel off.  We’re looking forward to using the spa this winter.

We went down to the beach after having dinner.  Tina insisted on walking down to the water to see what it was like.  Same as the freaking pool, 75-80 degrees.  Is there any relief from the heat you ask?

Well yes, yes there is.

Stay inside where it’s air conditioned.  I also noticed there were absolutely no waves with the exception of the occasional ankle slapper.  It’s like a lake out here.  The sand is white and soft.  Sand at CA beaches is a bit more course and tan.  I like the sand here a lot better.

Bugs!  Fuckin’ hell man, they have flying cockroaches which can run pretty fast as well.  They’re called ”Palmetto bugs”.  Imagine cockroaches on steroids.  I’ve only seen them at night.  And it’s not like there are swarms of them but we see a few just about every time we head to the pool at night.  Tina’s pretty grossed out by them, which I get to enjoy every trip to the pool.

Due to the heat, we run our air conditioning 24/7.  The thermostat is set at 74 degrees and there’s pretty much no way you can’t have it running.  When we were having dinner down at the beach, the hostess asked if we wanted to be seated inside or on the patio.  No joke.  But there were a few families sitting outside.  I’m hoping after some time out here we’ll get used to it.  But Tina’s brother told me “Dude, I’ve been here 15 years and I’m still not used to it”.

The first night we arrived, we ran into a guy at the sports bar across the street that lived in Chula Vista before moving out here.  He gave us a heads up on a few things.  One of which was the driving.  He wasn’t joking.  Just about every time get in the car, we see someone do something stupid.  The worst so far was some guy cutting us off making a right turn in front of us from the left hand lane.  Luckily, we weren’t going too fast and were paying attention.

The good news, we love our gated condominium complex and it’s in close proximity to a sports bar, movie theatre, grocery shopping and liquor store.  Strange they don’t sell liquor in the grocery store but grocery stores can have a liquor store parked right next door to the grocery store.  What’s the point?

And for the first time ever we stumbled across a pizza and martini bar called “Gio’s”.  It’s next door to the movie theatre that’s less than a mile from our place.  Interesting concept so we had to check it out, very nice restaurant and bar.  Definitely a place we’ll be having dinner before we hit the movies next time.

Oh and Snuffy aka (ScottC) directed me to a Sarasota poker room that’s less than 10 miles from our place.

But no trip across the country would be complete without dinging the trailer at least once.

Along with all our worldly possessions, our mutt and my car trailing behind, we made it safely across the country.  We ran into some rough terrain in OKC.  Driving hwy 40 thru OKC was like driving a horse drawn carriage across cobblestone.  There were also some rough spots leaving Arkansas and a wicked downpour as we past Atlanta en route to our last overnight stop in Macon, Ga.  I’m convinced some of the truck drivers think they’re driving mini coopers.  It’s the only way i can accept them blowing past me in pitch blackness with buckets of rain coming down.  Visibility was about 20′.

The drive from Macon to Florida was uneventful except for a bit of rain.  Which i’m discovering occurs around here like 70 degree sunshine filled days in So Cal.  Luckily for us, the rain didn’t show it’s ugly head as we unloaded the truck last Friday morning.  What took us almost 9 hrs to load took just over 2 hrs to unload.  It’s been such a long time since I moved, I forgot how much longer it takes to carefully place all your belongings on a truck so they all fit without crushing each other as opposed to grabbing boxes and going.

Over the past week, we’ve got mostly everything unpacked.  We picked up a new bookcase, night stand for our bedroom and a desk for me.  We stopped at just about every retailer that might have a desk we’d both like and after several days wandered into a small furniture store across from Home Depot just as they were closing.  They had exactly one desk on display and that was the one we both instantly agreed on.

Our place is in close proximity of a main blvd with more retail outlets, restaurants and bars than we could’ve hoped for.   There’s a sports bar across the street from our complex which turns out to be a Steelers bar.  It will definitely be worth it to deal with the terrible turds as I enjoy the Bolt’s on their big LCD screens courtesy of NFL Ticket.

We spent the 4th at Tina’s brother’s house grilling and watching the Yankees/Blue Jays game.  Tina insisted on stopping at a fireworks stand on the way and picked up some decent shit.  She bought some mortars that launched like 30-40′ feet in the air, blew up and came down with a nice shower of sparks.  No way you’d ever find anything like that in So Cal.  The fireworks there are pretty tame.  I was kicking myself for not stopping in NM to pick up some M-1000′s.

I’ve only played just a few sngs since leaving So Cal.  Hoping to bump up the volume now that we’re close to settling in.  Also a trip to Hard Rock Tampa is probably somewhere on the agenda.