I earned my first University degree at Rollins College in Winter Park. I built myself three homes. I sold and built over 250 houses over fifteen years (I didn't keep track of how many.) I had dark times, and good times. I grew a lot, while I lived there.
I met my sweet bear, and we moved when he had a great job opportunity, and the move opened the door for me to go back to school and earn a doctorate in my field. I was ready for a change, and moving was the surest way of assuring change.
When people think of Florida, they think of sandy beaches and Walt Disney World. There is so much more to it. Central Florida is a complex landscape of pine and palmetto scrub. There are thousands of freshwater lakes. There is rhythm to the four seasons in Florida that is subtle, and unique. It took me a decade of living there to really understand the seasons, the landscape, the place.
Florida is crowded. Traffic is terrible due to poor planning and lack of infrastructure. I can't explain the rise of far right politics. And hurricanes were an annual concern.
I have to list Florida as a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there again.
Heat and humidity have never attracted me. I imagine old retired people from far north, locked away in the airconditioned apartments for most of the year, while infrastructure around them collapses.
ReplyDeleteIt takes a couple of years to get used to the humidity. And yes, you live indoors with the AC on much of the year.
DeleteI used to enjoy visiting and, later, my business trips. Now I don’t even want to visit. I’m sure I told you, but just in case I haven’t: I camped out one night in Titusville where we parked our van one night when I drove down for spring break with some friends in 1974. Across the water was Cape Kennedy and across a little road behind us was some small docks where people were shrimping. We had our own little cookout. I was with a bunch of macho, straight guys and they really got on my nerves. I went off to Daytona the next day with my best friend at the time (another macho straight guy). What a trip.
ReplyDeleteWith a few more details I could probably pinpoint where you camped.
DeleteI tried to find it on the map, but it’s so built up there now, I have no idea.
DeleteI was listening to a radio program on CBC the other day about the dramatic drop in Canadian tourism to Florida. Apart from regular tourists going elsewhere, quite a few snowbirds who have bought property are selling and getting out.
ReplyDeleteWith climate change, homes in Florida are becoming uninsurable, then there is the politics.
DeleteFlorida is beautiful, a great place to escape the cold winter, but I wouldn't live there. For the week that we visited, it was eye-opening how much time we spent in the car going from Point A to Point B. Traffic is horrible but sunshine and 70° temperatures soothed that frustration.
ReplyDeleteIn the early 1900's Florida had a land boom, and built thousands of miles of state and county roads in anticipation of all of the people that didn't move there. They passed a state law, that roads could only be built to meet current traffic needs that stayed on the books into the 1990s. By then the state was 10-20 years behind building infrastructure and in a "low tax" state they will never catch up
DeleteWow, the crowds at Walt Disney World look overwhelming. I haven't been in over 25 years. I was there for the opening of EPCOT. It was quite the celebration.
ReplyDeleteSomeplace I have a framed poster from the EPCOT opening. My middle brother worked for Disney, I attended a pre-opening opening of the Park.
DeleteThose last two paragraphs say it all.
ReplyDeleteThough I wonder if we'll visit our friends there or have them here ... even REd State South Carolina is better than Flori-duh.
I have friends and family that live in Florida and they are about evenly split between this being the best politics ever and the end of democracy as we knew it.
DeleteWhat a wonderful fair assessment of Florida, the hurricanes, politics and homeowners insurance will eventually make me move North . I love that at times you have loved Winter Park and inland Florida . Wonderful reading We live very near to Winter Park about 2 miles . Rollins is a very prestigious college school
DeleteI very much enjoyed my time at Rollins, undergrad the best 10 years of your life if you do it right.
DeleteBeen once and that was enough. My only hope is that the swamps and ocean swallow most it in the future.
ReplyDeleteThis weekend would be a good time.
DeleteWe visited Florida at Easter 2003. It was hot enough even then but by July and August I guess that the heat can sometimes be unbearable without air conditioning. I wish that we had had time to see more of the state.
ReplyDeleteWith the heat and humidity, the summers are unlivable without aid conditioning.
DeleteNever been to Florida.
ReplyDeleteI have only been to Idaho once.
Delete