At the end of a long winter, the words "road trip" have a particular appeal, especially if you're headed somewhere that's warm and has listless alligators in fetid pens as a tourist attraction, which we'll get to in a moment.
So with gas cheap and hotels practically giving away rooms, my buddy Ed and I loaded the suitcases and golf clubs in the car and hurtled down Interstate 95 for a week of R&R in the great state of Florida.
One of the dangers of driving south on 95 is that you'll go insane from the mind-numbing parade of Shoney's and Stuckey's billboards that line the highway, not to mention the 4,000 signs for the ever-tacky Pedro's empire at South of the Border.
It was dusk when we rolled into the Mexican-themed rest stop just over the South Carolina line, with the 200-foot Sombrero Tower rising like a garish, neon-red monument to all that is schlocky.
South of the Border makes Breezewood, the kitschy rest stop off I-70 in Pennsylvania, look like Hyannisport, Mass. So after a quick bathroom break and a tour of a souvenir shop (where the Singing Bass mounted fish is still huge), we hit the road again.
A day later, we cruised down Florida's Highway A1A and into Daytona Beach, only to discover it was the last day of Bike Week.
This meant the streets were jammed with thousands of bikers on big rumbling Harleys. Every restaurant had a "Bikers welcome" sign, which may have been a testament to the sagging economy, because some of these guys didn't exactly look like the type you'd want coming in the door for the seafood buffet.
After arriving in Vero Beach and settling into our hotel, we spent the week watching spring training baseball and hacking around some of Florida's finer golf courses.
We saw the Orioles play the Mets in Port St. Lucie and all I can say is: Pray the O's get some pitching. Because the Mets hit two homers to win the game, and both those balls are still traveling somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.
Before a Mets-Nationals game in Viera, we saw something we'd never seen before: a singer blow the words to the national anthem - after just one line.
"O say can you see ... " was all this guy could manage before he lowered the microphone and shook his head sadly.
Then he tried again, made it through another two lines and forgot the words again.
Finally, the crowd couldn't take it anymore. So we all joined in to finish the song.
