Skipping Through the Confederacy to Panama City Beach

On April 7, Sarah and I said goodbye to the Chateau Dupre in New Orleans and headed back to New Iberia to meet up with Bill and spend one final night in the Bayou State.  We were planning to keep on a southerly route, but we ended up heading north towards Jackson, Mississippi because all of the hotels on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Alabama were either destroyed, gone, or housing people. This also puts into perspective the fact that New Orleans got most of the press, but it was by no means the only area affected. We met people who were from the coast of Mississippi who’d had an 18-foot wall of water surge through and wipe out their entire town.

There wasn’t really anything Bill wanted to do in Mississippi or Alabama, which was fine with us. We spent two nights in Jackson, Mississippi at the Jameson Inn, and we were the only white people staying there. Bill got another flat tire…I’m telling you, there seems to be some sort of curse going on with rear bike tires…Jackson was downtime for us; we were laying low and didn’t do much except visit the Lone Star Steakhouse for dinner…a Texas steakhouse in Mississippi. Go figure.

We stayed at the less-than-posh Best Western in Selma, Alabama. That was one of those nights that involved a long quest for food. The only place open was the Waffle House, and they only accept cash there (which Sarah and I learned the hard way) and we didn’t have any cash. There was also no ATM; the only gas station we could find was closed. At nine p.m. There wasn’t any semblance of a sidewalk on West Highland Ave, and there were cement drainage ditches every twenty feet or so that we had to climb down while semi trucks screamed past us like tornadoes of steel, blowing our clothes and hair. It was one of the scarier times we’ve had. Our quest for food that night was futile; I ended up excavating some old ramen noodles from the Suburban and heating them in our room. (I also keep a crushed, dented box of Honey Nut Cheerios in there for hunger emergencies…hmm…haven’t seen it in a while…hope I don’t get hungry.)

We pretty much only experienced highways in Alabama and Mississippi, but they were green and tree-lined. I have to say that it’s really nice to be out of desert lands and see actual trees again. Several times while we traversed the roads of Alabama, we passed a few seriously long flatbed trucks with logs loaded onto the back of them. Trucks with logs stacked on the back are one of the things in this world that terrify me the most; it always seems like one of those suckers is going to slide off and catapult itself into my windshield. I can VISUALIZE it. Now, the logs on these trucks were much skinnier than other logs I’ve seen, and they were almost twice as long as the actual length of the flatbed; they hung way off the back. There weren’t any flashing lights or anything, either; just what looked like orange-handled screwdrivers hammered into the ends of the logs with tiny orange plastic flags hanging off of them. These are vehicles to avoid, people.

We’re still listening to a real lot of country music, but I heard one song in Alabama that I hadn’t ever heard before. I was in the passenger seat, just mindlessly gazing at the trees passing by, and for some reason tuned my ears in to the song lyrics that were playing: “Oh if the South woulda won we woulda had it made / I’d probably run for President of the Southern states / The day young Skynyrd died we’d show our Southern pride” and I thought, hmm. Hank Williams, Jr. Gotta, um, respect the Confederacy…keep the dream alive, crazy people…but I’m a Yankee, what do I know…

We pored over Bill’s hotel coupon books on our way to Panama City Beach, Florida, and found a good deal on a place called the Sandpiper Beacon Resort. On April 11, we arrived again at the Gulf Coast. It was really hot that day, about ninety degrees. Sarah and I unloaded our stuff from the car while Bill went inside to check us in. I rooted around in the back of the Suburban to find my beach towel, found it, and by then Bill was coming back with our room key. “It’s room 405,” he said. The beach was lined with hotel buildings, and the Sandpiper Beacon was a huge place, so we asked Bill which building our room was in. “That one,” he said, gesturing to a gray cement structure off to the left of the main hotel building. We were going to stay for three or four days, so we brought more things inside than usual. Picture the scene: I have my backpack on, my laptop case over my shoulder, my black rectangular suitcase on wheels with the handle that retracts, my purse looped around the handle of my suitcase, and two plastic bags filled with beach stuff, socks, et cetera. (Side note: at this point the Suburban is not only a complete mess, it is a black hole for objects. Especially objects that you really, really want to find. Like Q-tips. We lost a box of Q-tips in there a while ago and I swear it vaporized. And I despise having wet inner ears after my shower. DESPISE IT.) As we begin to cross the street and slowly approach the building where Room 405 lay in wait for us, sweating in 90-degree heat, struggling with all of the luggage, my laptop slips halfway down my arm, putting painful pressure on my lower arm (I just may have bruised my ulna, or perhaps my radius) at the exact second that my purse became unlooped from the suitcase handle and started scuffing on the asphalt. I had to readjust everything as we struggled toward where we thought the elevator would be. There was no elevator on the closer side, so we ended up having to walk the length of the building to the elevator. Once we were loaded into the elevator, we sighed with relief and pressed the button for floor 4.

Of course, once we were on the fourth floor, we couldn’t find room # 405. It didn’t exist. We checked the key. 405. We checked the doors. They started with 418. We were in the wrong building. The building we had toiled to ascend was not even Sandpiper Beacon property. And so, heads hung, we readjusted our stuff, trudged back to the elevator, dragged everything back to the hotel, where we learned that our REAL room was several buildings down from the building that we’d originally gone to.

Bill rode past a construction site next to the beach and this time when he got a flat tire, he actually saw the nail. I have to say, it has been really, really, REALLY hot weather and I have to give him some kudos for getting out there and riding – he’s up to over 2200 miles. I don’t know how people can engage in rigorous outdoor physical activity in 90-degree, humid weather…I recall my younger days when I actually participated in sports that involved summertime practice…I was so strong then, and carefree…

We had to wear plastic wristbands for the entire length of our stay at the Sandpiper Beacon, and it annoyed me in all its bright turquoise glory. Whenever I took a shower I had the urge to rip it off, but then I would distract myself with reading the shower curtain, which displayed Spring Break rules for co-ed showering. (Don’t hog all the water, don’t let any llamas into the shower, etc).

Sarah and I really wanted to do something while we were at Panama City Beach, and it was really expensive to rent jetskis or go parasailing, so we decided to spend $30 on a boat ride that included snorkeling. It was a gorgeous day, and the crew consisted of great people, funny people. We walked onto the boat and were handed wet suits. It was like a sausagey black corset for my entire body, like squeezing myself into size 2 jeans. We all looked completely absurd, especially when we put on the flippers, masks, and snorkels. In the beginning, my snorkel leaked. I don’t think I ever really figured out if it was a leak where the rubbery mouthpiece connected to the snorkel tube or if my snorkel was crooked and water just got in from the top of the tube. It didn’t take me long to develop a technique to deal with the salt water drooling into my mouth; every three breaths, when a slight drizzle of salt water got in – I’d inhale and then exhale as hard as I could, which made an unattractive noise, but it worked. I was not out there to win a beauty contest.  I absolutely loved snorkeling and my suspicion that I would enjoy scuba diving was confirmed. Wearing the flippers was great too; I was just gliding through the water with flicks of my feet and it was amazing. We were out at a shallow spot in the Gulf, and the underwater world was magic: clear water over a bed of white sand with seaweed pointing up at me, sea urchins perched among the plants and brown fish. The sunlight filtered through the water to light up prisms in the clusters of mussel shells. The crew of the boat filled a bucket with water and told us to bring things we found up so everyone could see. After we’d all gotten back on the ship, everyone was putting live starfish on their heads and cracking up. It was then time for our deli lunch, which I was very excited for…I lined up for my miniature ham and cheese on a tiny dinner roll, my infinitesimal bag of potato chips, and my can of Sprite. The food was good but honestly…I could have eaten ten of those sandwiches.

We cruised past dolphins, gray arcs of their backs breaking up the crystal-clear water. The captain told anyone to yell if we saw a dolphin, and there was one point when there was a sighting off the port side of the ship. We all clamored over to see, and there happened to be another boat in the same area. The picturesque silence of the Gulf was suddenly broken with one of the guys on our boat screaming, “Hey, take a picture of the guy in the Speedo!” Sure enough, there was a middle-aged man on the other boat, standing up in all his glory, sunglassed, a thin black strip of material showing off his manhood. We all cracked up again, and then the guy sat down. I don’t know if he heard the comment or not, but either way I was glad that he sat himself and his Speedo down. It’s like a car accident…you are scared of what you may see…but you look anyway! And nobody looks hot in a Speedo, guys. Nobody. We ended our boating adventure with some disco tunes on the boat’s sound system, just sun and wind and water and the lilting melodies of the Bee Gees. These are the special times.

The beaches of Panama City are gorgeous – the whitest sand. The Sandpiper Beacon had wooden lounge chairs set up facing the beach. The first day we were out on the beach, Sarah, Bill and I sat on the lounge chairs and fed French fries to seagulls. The second day, we were told that it cost $25 a day to rent the chairs and get cushions for them. Twenty-five bucks a day? No way. I was wearing my turquoise strap, damn it. I was a Sandpiper Beacon MEMBER. We sat on the sand. The water there was so warm, like a clear, sunlit bath.

The ‘World-Famous Tiki Bar’ at the Sandpiper Beacon was unlike any other place I’d ever been to. It was a huge open-air bar that led right out onto the beach, with Christmas tree lights strung and coconuts dangling from the ceiling.  It was open until 4 am and there were some very comical people employed there, let me tell you. Some of the employees actually worked, and most of them were masters of appearing busy while drinking, hitting on people, smoking cigarettes and mixing their own personal favorite shots. (Dreamsicle shots. Dreamsicle shots.) We had some crazy, crazy times at the Tiki Bar…at one point there was a guy dressed in a banana suit… there were sixty-year old women with Harley tattoos and belly shirts, with menthols tucked into their waistbands…ice cubes spilled out all over the floor…a pair of guys with matching 90210 Brandon/Dylan hairdos…general delicious mayhem…

Our next stop in Florida was Tallahassee, where we stayed at a Howard Johnson’s. I didn’t even know they still had Howard Johnson motels. After the high energy of Panama City Beach, we didn’t really do much in Tallahassee. Within walking distance was one of those Chinese buffet places…their crab rangoons were thin, with a soupy, bland white filling…the orange chicken was succulent, however… heat lamps could have been a bit hotter…and my fortune was one of those cop-out ones like ‘a handful of patience is worth a bushel of brains’ or something. I could use a bushel of brains, though. Wouldn’t hurt.

And onward into the wilderness of Florida…

-stephanie

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