You cant lose when the only opponent is you.

posts with chicks get 2x the
response, so if this is what it
takes...

Location: Two days in St. Joe Beach, FL
Pics: here.
Video: here.

Yeah, so I wake up in St. Joe's Beach at a little cottage that I have rented for a couple of nights through AirBNB. My host brings me hot coffee and home baked blueberry scones. So that's a fairly good beginning to my visit.

I'm looking for nothing to do, and I found it.

a rock.

What there is here is white sand and crystal clear water and stingrays that you can watch feed in the shallow waters, and dolphins moving up and down the coast, and egrets, and a shit ton of butterflies. It's called the forgotten coast. Dont forget that.

Monarch butterflies stop here during these months, load up, refuel, have a few drinks, and then haul ass to South America. So since I am doing all of that the sans the South America bit, I figure I'll join them and float around a bit and see what nourishment finds me.

an icecube...

My waitress from last night at Toucans in Mexico Beach told me I should go to the State Park which is out on the peninsula. Head south, turn right, and go till it ends.

For one, it’s a beautiful drive, like Route 1 in California but without all the douchebaggery (copyrighted), traffic, and smog. I drive as far as I can out through the park and when I come to the very end of the road which says no parking, I park.

So I'm all alone as I walk towards the water in this delicious white, soft, sand. I snap a few pics and just as I am focusing on the trail through the dunes a dude with a fishing pole comes into frame moving very quickly and swatting himself with his hat.

As he comes closer, I realize this dude is fucking caked in flies. Caked. Like Australia style caked. And he is freaking out and I think he is German and all I can make out is “fished for two minutes. Crazy!” And that is the last I see of him.

flies on bucket

And then I get attacked. It's brutal. And I think about the next time I'm going to answer a little differently when someone asks me what three things I would want on a deserted island.

But I want to push on, because it is inconceivable to be beaten by a bunch of tiny flies, and I try for about a hundred yards, but it's unbearable and I start to run the opposite direction because they are suddenly from every angle like roguish, hungry zombie ninjas.

But I am also trying to take pictures at the same time because it is so nice. So I'm the the self-flagellating dumbass on a deserted beach, running full speed while also holding his camera in the air with the shutter release set to continuous. I think I took about 30 absolutely ridiculous photos, and I made myself laugh pretty hard when I finally got to upload them.

gimme that conch, piggy...

Once I got out of the kill zone, I may have gotten naked and had a little run through the palms Lord of the Flies style. Just sayin. Wide open nature with no one around? Yes please....

When I get back towards the town of Port Joe I take some random turns for giggles and I come across this road that is simply straight and smooth and long and plush evergreens on both sides. And, there is no one on it. Hmmmm.

And I decide I'll click off a bucket list item, thank you very much. And that is to go faster in a car then I ever have in my life. The previous figure was 135MPH, and that was when I may have had a few drinks and my palms got wet and it was dark and it was all around a very stupid choice. But this was choice in a whole different way.

And when I floored it I didn't lay up until the speedometer read 142 or so. It's hard to pay attention to the speedometer at that speed, in addition to everything else that you should be paying attention to, but that's the last figure I saw.

Add caption

And I think I could have pushed it harder, but I ran out of road a little bit, and also I ran out of balls a little bit more.

These couple of days and nights have been perfect for me. I shifted down. And I can't say with any less sincerity that I am personally shocked at the amount of enlightenment just these 30 days has produced. I'm back baby.

The exodus tastes exactly as described.

And if you're still with me, the vid of the drag race with myself. Which I won pretty convincingly.