Finally, finally, I have time to write about last week.

Last Monday I meant to drive over to Jacksonville to see my old friend from Interlochen, Greg. He'd known he was going to be here for a month or two, and I couldn't help being really excited about seeing him in person again.

As it turned out, my brakes had needed fixing two weekends ago, and I couldn't afford to make the trip on Monday. So I waited until Wednesday, and after a tiring day of driving back and forth between Clearwater and New Port Richey, took off for the right coast at around 3:30 after picking up a copy of Scott Turow's One-L on audio tape, the only cheap and mildly interesting book on tape Books-A-Million had. Foolishly, I'd been driving around on a spare tire that my truck's seller had told me was new when I bought the truck.

So about sixty miles into the trip down I-75 there was a sudden thump from the back tire, and my entire truck started to buck and shake. I pulled into the emergency lane, got out, and my back tire was smoking. Literally smoking. In case you're not familiar with Central Florida, there's nothing if you're more than twenty miles away from the I-4 corridor. Sumter County has even more nothing than most parts. It was around 5 pm by then, a sunny, cloudless afternoon. I'd pulled over next to a vast field that receded into hills off in the distance; it looked a little like Tuscany, except without the villas. Big rigs kept whooshing by just to my left. I didn't have a spare or my tire-changing equipment; I guess I'd forgotten to put it back in my cab after the last flat. So after standing around looking confused and circling my truck like a buzzard for a few minutes, I walked a half mile to a call box, pushed the button marked SERVICE, walked back to my truck, and waited.

Normally I'd panic under circumstances like that, but for some reason I felt like no harm could come to me. There were hills, and crickets, and lazy knotted swarms of gnats that hovered over the curb, like they were patiently waiting to cross the highway. Eventually a huge truck pulled up and an overweight, hirsute guy with a huge red beard got out. His name was Wayne.

So I got towed to the nearest town (called Wildwood; a glorified truck stop) and got a new tire from Timmy's Garage. The mechanic was a short, greasy guy who didn't talk much except to condemn my old tire ("Someone put an inner tube in there! Ol' tire's nothing but tube!") and offer to save me two bucks by letting me dispose of the blown-out Firestone myself. By this time it was around 6:30, and I still had about three hours' driving to go before I got to Greg's parents' place between Jacksonville and St. Augustine.

When I finally pulled into Greg's parents' subdivision and drove around for half an hour, trying to find the right house in spite of Mapquest I'd sort of had it. I'd had a knot in the middle of my back for hours. But Greg's parents, who were still awake at 11:30 or whenever it was I got there, were warm and welcoming and friendly, and needless to say it was great to see Greg.

Greg and I stayed up chatting and playing poker (he is indeed ridiculously good at Texas Hold 'Em- I only won because we both got so tired we went all in blind on the last two hands). The next day we drove out to Ponte Vedra Beach, which reminded me of nothing so much as The Long Goodbye, the beach house that the Hemingway-type murderer lives in. All sea grass and whatever that wheaty-looking grain is that grows by the seaside and crushed shells.

It kills me that Greg lives so far away; I always have so much fun when he's around. I'm fortunate to be able to call such a compassionate, analytical, talented person my friend; however selfish it is, I'm going to keep nagging him to move out of SF until we're in the same place.

Anyway, on the way back to Greg's place from the beach we caught the tail end of Tropical Storm Bonnie; rain coming down in buckets full and scarily frequent thunder and then after that, nothing. The way home down I-4 was quiet and uneventful, but the radio chatter was all about Hurricane Charley.

I got back to New Port Richey in time for band practice Thursday night, but everyone in the band was just standing around Sean's lawn with their hands in their pockets. They all said they were really worried about me because they hadn't heard from me and I might be stuck somewhere in Florida during a storm. Which sort of drove it home. "Oh, yeah, there're 145-mile-per-hour winds heading straight for us." The emergency medical tech in the band wasn't taking it seriously at all- he wanted to go ahead with our Friday night gig, hurricane or no hurricane.

I stayed the night at Sean's because he wanted help moving his furniture around if necessary, and we weren't sure if I'd be able to get back into his neighborhood the following morning, since it is in the evacuation zone designated "leave early or you're fucked." I woke up to Sean and Teri muttering and moving stuff around at 5:30 am, and when I ambled out into their living room, the hurricane map had been updated: the line the eye was predicted to follow was heading right for New Port Richey. I mean, RIGHT for New Port Richey. People on the news were saying stuff like "And if you live in a mobile home in this part of Pasco County, you'd better start looking for new property..." After conferring with my Aunt and Uncle, it was decided that the whole family would hunker down in a spare apartment they're renting at a golf resort in Palm Harbor, because it was in the lee of a hill and we'd be able to put three layers of concrete between us and the weather, worst case scenario. So Sean sent Tanya, his daughter, and I down to Tarpon to help pack; it was a two-hour production. As usual, my family had done everything in excess, packing ten pounds of highly perishable beef, vodka and bourbon, a crate of blueberries, eggs, in short, not hurricane food. I had two cans of vegetable soup scrounged from my pantry, some wine and bottled water, an Entenmann's danish strip, and two days' worth of clothes.

When everyone got to the resort, it was packed full with vacationers who'd gotten stranded. The eight of us- my aunt and uncle, Christopher, Tanya, Troy, Sean, my grandmother, and I- barely fit into the apartment because the Management had taken a bunch of lounge chairs and beach furniture and tossed it into the apartment, taking it for empty.

I suppose comparisons with a certain French play are a little obvious, but after an hour or two my Grandmother was giving me career advice, Troy was bored (boredom being the only human emotion I can't really relate to- it doesn't happen to me often) and therefore bouncing off the walls, and people were taking naps on and off because none of us had gotten much sleep. So then around two the eye turned towards Charlotte County and we started packing our stuff. Sean was off like lightning, leaving me to put my Aunt and Uncle's hundreds of pounds of apocalypse goodies back in their truck.

As it turned out, Charley only nicked the very edge of Pasco County. I stayed up late watching the American Film Institute's 100 Best Songs just in case something bizarre happened and the eye turned my way; decided to both buy Singin' In The Rain and try to write a musical, and so far I've only made progress on the former. I have a few snatches of songs and a couple one-liners and that's it for the latter.