The End

One last barrage of pictures from the state of Florida...
These follow my trip down to Tampa (with a stopover in Gainesville) to visit some old friends and attend a Dave Mathews Band concert... as well as a few other random photos added afterwards of my immediate family: Mom, Dad, Jennifer...

"Okay mom..."

"... enough with..."

"...the pictures!" (love that barbie smile? ;)

St. John's River Bridge, along SR-13 South.

Um... Clay County Fairgrounds.

Starke, FL...

Yes, there is a town in Florida called Waldo. Yes, it sucks.

Welcome to Waldo. Probably as big a speedtrap as Gulf Breeze is...

Welcome to Gainesville!

Agh! They're charging me!

Look into my eyes... You are getting sleepy...

This is Greg, I've mentioned him several times throughout the trip.

William! Eatin' sushi!

See, I told you Don!

"Don't... take... my picture!"

Sushi... GOOOOD!

Pimpin' Will...

Fun...

With...

Blacklights.

Aren't...

We...

Eeeeevil?

Bombay Gin... Blacklight Reactive!

Cruising...

down to...

Tampa.

Into St. Petersburg.

Jason and Tara's pad.

I think this is the Tampa Bay Bridge...

"Yadda yadda yadda..."

Pretty sky...

Jason & Bonk (one of their cats)

Jason & Tara

Hanging out at Richard's apartment.

Tara, Angela & Rich.

See Food!

Rich, with dead man bits in his knee. (busted a tendon)

On the way to the Dave Mathews Band concert

Of course...

it's raining.

A Pelican gliding.

Gotta love Florida.

Dave

Matthews

Band Concert!

(Thanks Joella)

Robert M. Pirsig (the author I always talk about...)

Jason & Chris. We're eating at a local Thai restaraunt on their lunch break.

Rich's pain meds have kicked in with a vengeance.

Chris and a friend.

Rich's Soup.

Bowling! Jason, Tara and Kristen.

Jason, Jim & Chris.

Smile!

Kristen & Jim. Yay beer!

The alley - 50 lanes.

Me, Jim and Chris.

Jason and Kristen.

Cafe Risque - You can guess the sort of business they run...

Um... Camp Blanding.

My old index page graphic.

An index page graphic I never used, but thought was cool anyways.

Another of the same.

Jennifer on the computer.

This is Ashe.

She was my cat...

Then I moved to Iowa.

My mom has since...

fattened her WAY up.

Sleeping Fuzzy Fish.

This is Murphy.

Ashe eats all his food.

Koko again...

DEVIL CAT!!

This is Sam...

He's a Maine Coone.

Jennifer and I.

There's a lot of people I'd like to send a thank-you out to... to my Aunt Sandy, Uncle Ed, Tina, Dan, Gen, Brian, Kate and Jason for all the good times out in California. I don't think that my stay out there would have been half as interesting without all of you... and I can never thank you enough for letting me stay with you and get to know you all again.

Renee & Ryan for taking me around and showing me really cool bits of California just to be nice.

My co-workers at Hawkeye for putting up with me disapearing for 2 months to do this crazy trip. Roger, Rusty, Matt and Don... hate to tell ya but I am coming back. You can start mourning now. ;)

Alie, for putting the idea for this trip in my head and going through it with me. Good luck to you back in the Marshall Islands...

Pam & Jock for letting me stay with them in Chicago on such short notice... Molly, Mike, Jamie, Tuyen, Ryan and Jess for showing me the Windy City and hanging out with me. It was good seeing all of you again as well...

Jon and Diana for letting me crash with you and for giving me a couple days to chill out and recover from all the driving. And another thanks for all that cool live music...

Guy and Marie up in Tennessee for cooking me outrageous amounts of food and introducing me to the tomato sandwich.

To Julia, Steve and Dee for hanging out with me, and to the 2 former for a lovely cajun shrimp dinner my last night in Pensacola.

To Mimi, Papa, Uncle Pete, Terry, Dayton and Alison for letting me stay with them, and/or eat their food. ;) It was nice getting to visit with you all again...

Dr. Ullom, for being cool enough to let me go on leave of absence to take this journey.

Mom and Dad and Jennifer for the whole Jacksonville visit and whatnot.

Greg, William, Eli, Jason, Tara, Rich, Chris, Sarah, Kristen, Angela, Jim, and the rest of the Tampa gang for the good times and the concert.

Chris (in Fresno) to introducing me to the joys of Sushi. (it's like crack, dammit!)

To everyone who's been following my progress...

A BIG thank you to Chris(in Iowa), for giving me all the web storage space to showcase my pictures.

And I'm sure I've probably forgotten people... as I remember I'll add them here... along with whatever straggling photos happen to appear.

I guess now that it's all said and done, I have to evaluate the whole thing and see if it was worth the cost; this being not only the monetary cost, but other factors... the physically intangible ones. This will probably be something that will only be answered over the course of time. At this moment in time, I think this trip was not only worth it, but necessary for my continued sanity. I think there are times when you have to shake everything to its foundations and see what you end up with when you start building again.

I think in the end, I like to think that I will have gained more than I've lost.

Greg (from the pictures above, Hi Greg!) gave me a fascinating book to read, called "microserfs". It's about a group of IT workers who leave their jobs at Microsoft and realize that they don't have lives. This is of course a gross butchering of the book... it's like saying that Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a story about a man and his son on a motorcycle trip to the west coast... it really sells it short.

Anyways... there's a quote there by one of the characters, "Bug". It goes like this:
"I used to care about how other people thought I led my life. But lately, I've realized that most people are too preoccupied with their own lives to give anybody else even the scantiest of thoughts..." he talks then about where he grew up, saying, "A beautiful place as ever there was, but believe me... it's hard to be different there."

He continues...

"It starts out young- you try not to be different just to survive- you try to be just like everyone else- anonymity becomes reflexive- and then one day you wake up and you've become all those other people- the others- the something you aren't. And you wonder if you can ever be what it is you really are. Or you wonder if it's too late to find out."

I don't think I've totally found it out... but I'm close.

Another good quote that I had refreshed into my memory while watching "The Matrix" on Jason and Tara's insane home entertainment center(I'm still drooling guys, btw... ;) - "You're going to find out, that there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path."

It is with all this that I return back to work and school... and onto bigger and better things.

Signing off from Florida...