A photoblog and other things

I need to see something happen here. My mind normally races at a million miles an hour, and I have some mechanisms built in place to filter out a lot of the crap that could come out. I do it for all you lovely people out there. If I didn’t of course, you probably wouldn’t be reading this because you probably would write me off as being ‘a bit of a weird wanker’. But, my mind is racing and I have nothing to occupy it with. I’m turning into a freaking psycho here. I’m going to turn into one of the performers at Key West, sprouting out mis-guided gibberish at harmless tourists passing by for measly tips.

As you may or may not have guessed, I’m running on alcohol at the moment. It’s nearly 1 am in the morning. Hurricane Frances has decided to park its flossy butt about 150 miles east of where I am. Not only that, it’s decided to turn into a bit of a wuss by downgrading itself to a category 2 hurricane. I don’t know what is going on with this hurricane, I ain’t used to them, but it seems the local weather presenters over here don’t have a clue of what’s going on either. Not even the guy on channel 7 who wears the pin-stripe suit and as far as I can tell, has not mispronounced a word so far, knows what the dickens is going on. It seemed like when it was first approaching the Florida coast that Frances’ vengence would be swift and harsh. Now it’s crawling along at 6 miles per hour and it’s wreaking havoc on the Bahamas. That’s pretty bad because the infrastructure in the Bahamas for this sort of thing is pretty crap, according to one of my civil engineer friends over here who frequents the place.

I think I would speak for a lot of people when I say that impatience is growing. Everyone is waiting for something to happen. 2.5 million people have evacuated Florida because of Frances. By now it was supposed to be half way over Florida, but the bugger has decided to be a prick and taunt us. Do nothing or do something Frances! Leave the Bahamas alone. Come and pick on someone your own size (reality check – it is as big as Florida state).

We can’t go outside. All the shops are shut for tomorrow and probably the next day and the next day after that. People want to return to their homes. People want to get out of their shelters. Personally, I can’t keep on drinking – do you know how expensive drinks are in a Sheraton hotel?

It’s now or never Frances. If you’re going to do something, do it now. If you’re not, stop prancing around and get the f out of here.

This thing is bloody HUGE with a 185 mile radius, which is quite unbelieveable. Coverage on this hurricane is on every channel there is, and at work yesterday the *only* thing I heard people talking about was the hurricane – where they were going to get enough wood to shore up their houses, making sure they had enough supplies, where their evacuation zones were. Theoretically, I should be at work today. However, the office has been closed down for today and possibly tomorrow. Given that it’s also the labor day weekend over here, that’s 5 days I’ve potentially got off. I have to find some good reading material I think…

I know that if it does hit this far south, which seems like a possibility, then I sure as hell ain’t staying in my apartment. I’m on the top floor (number 4) and am located right on the corner. I’m practically in the most exposed position you could get. Yes, there will be shutters being put up and yes the glass is shatter proof but I don’t know how much safer that really makes me feel up here. So, I’m going to shack up in a hotel with some friends for the weekend. Plus, they’ve got back-up power generators there (I haven’t heard about any for here yet) so that’d be handy for keeping up to date on stuff.

I’ve bought enough supplies to keep me going for a few days. That’s about half a supermarket, but hey. No really, I do have to go buy some more though.

Well, I’d better get going and sort some stuff out. I’ll see if I can fit in another update post before too long. Meanwhile, you can go check out this site for an image loop, and this site for an update on the expected path of Hurricane Frances (click on the link called ‘maps and charts’).

This category 4 hurricane (max sustained wind 140mph) has a few people in Florida a bit worried… including myself. 

Was fantastic, well for the most part anyway. Saturday night was an absolute blinder and I’m still trying to figure out what went on there. Luckily I was with a group of friends the whole time and they took good care of me.

We headed off to Key West at about 7am in the morning. Our first stop was for a canoeing trip and then snorkelling. The canoeing trip lasted for about an hour and was heaps relaxing. I must point out that from Key Largo to Key West there are no natural beaches. It’s all mangroves, so that’s what we were canoeing through.

Next we went on the snorkelling trip located about 5 miles off the coast . I haven’t been snorkelling before and I had an absolutely fantastic time. The people who had snorkelled before said it was one of the best trips they’d been on, mainly because I spotted one of these guys:



He’s a Hawksbill Turtle, and it was absolutely amazing to follow one of them around watching them eat. Apart from the turtle, I saw lots of different types of fish and coral. It was all very, very cool.

We had lunch and a couple of pina coladas and then decided we’d better get moving to Key West. We arrived at about an hour before sundown and decided to have a few more drinks. I had a couple of mudslides (I literally nearly sculled them) and because we were running late we had to get down to the main strip to see all the Key West freaks come out. We got there just after sundown and saw a lot of freakshows. Guys shoving swords down their mouths, other people getting out of straightjackets whilst dangling upside down, people jumping through hoops – it was all there.

After the initial perusal we headed back to the hotel to get changed for going out. I noticed a catwalk setup and I thought to myself “Hmmm… have to check out the people walking on that later…” Well, I did check out that catwalk later on and there was a swimsuit competition on. The models were later chucking shirts out to everyone and I was wildly jumping up and down at one stage trying to get one model’s attention. She threw a shirt straight to me. Booya.

We also checked out a ‘clothing optional’ bar. C’mon people, it’s one of the things you just have to do. I started talking to a few people up there. Oh, they were all clothed and pretty damn normal. I didn’t see many people who weren’t clothed actually. I don’t have any pictures by the way 😉

I can’t really remember what happened next, the rest of the night was a blur. I did wake up in our hotel room however in one piece. Take note people – if you’re going to go out to Key West, make sure you go out with a good bunch of people like I did. Things could get pretty bad otherwise.

We ended up having to head back home immediately because some of our group had to catch flights from Miami and Palm Beach. We never got one of the people onto the Palm Beach flight. Not to worry – we went back along the coast to Delray Beach. I saw some of the most impressive houses I’ve ever seen in my life. My god! We found a sports bar where I had some much needed pork ribs and then we all chilled out on Delray Beach. I’ve got some good photos from that – it was an absolutely fantastic night.

Anyways, I’ve just done some housekeeping stuff. I cleaned up the blog entry about the Ebay scam a little bit – it should make a lot more sense now. I’ve also edited some of the entries in my webshot account. I found the name of that little charger of a bird whose name I forgot. Oh, and photos from Miami’s South Beach are here.

Hooroo!