with a copy of the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy and a towel in my kitsack, i went with the family to daytona to pick up my brother from school. i learned a few things driving through the south. first off, if there was an actual land of thud, it lies somewhere between the delaware border and the florida border. there is literaly nothing stacked upon nothing between the two places. second the reason you never hear of any industrial or punk bands coming out of the south is because it just doesn't work. if joy division had come out of north carolina they would have shot themselves without putting out any albums. there's nothing remotely urban down there at all... the only music that seemed to fit in with the environment at all down there was a primus tape (gee...redneck music for a redneck country....) i got off my brother for the ride back and rasputina (it had that sense of stagnation). lastly i learned restaraunts in the south are funny. we were in a restaraunt in south carolina and i swear without any joking there was not a single dish on the menu that didn't have meat in it, including the soft drinks. although in their defence, you can't get grits anywhere in the north worth shit, and the waitresses down there are always so sweet you don't feel nearly as bad swilling down your pork soda after they deliver it.
 

        eventually we got to florida. it was an interesting experience crossing the border. for literal 1000 miles we had passed nothing but forest. the same exact forest. no difference in plants, tree, or animals. literaly all the same. don't get me wrong, i love em, but i like hiking through them not driving past them. it's boring as shit. the second we crossed the border literaly every thing changed. the foliage changed completely, everything looked different, and it sounded very different. also the temperature seemed to jump 20 degrees. anyway we followed the ocean most of the way along the coast till we got to daytona. beautiful stretch of road and i high recommend it to anyone. my first impression of the place is it looks how i'd imagine las vegas but with more water, more frat boys, and slightly less neon.
 

the picture above is of the ponce de leon inlet lighthouse. good view from up there. it's the first thig we decided to see after we got there and had a night's sleep. during the course of the day i learned a few things about florida. first off there are almost no goths and you never see them during the day. there is a reason for this. after trogging around all day i felt crippled. black doesn't go well with the flaming ball of hate in the sky down there. even less then anywhere else. something about vampires bursting into flame in direct sunlight. it works out though. when i was looking around the town at night there didn't appear to be anything but shitty rap/techno clubs anyway. the one place that looked like it could have been an industrial club was being torn down. it's appearance did live up to it's name though, "ground zero".

after recovering it was off to the daytona k mart to buy white shirts for the week. it was more tolerable dressing in white in the heat, but dressing like a mundane for the week wasn't fun. especially at night. i felt like a total tourist and it's a lot more dangerous that way too. i notice a lot of white boys who wish they were black, who would usualy give me a good amount of clearance, would tend to get in your way much more with their whole clockwork orange schitck they do. and in the event something had happened it would have been a lot harder to dissapear for me then normal. it's much simpler to use shadows to your advantage and dissappear dressed all in black.
 

one of the other major things i wanted to see was daytona speedway. the only sport i was raised with a half ass appretiation for and the abilty to tolerate watching is auto racing, so i'ld been seeing this place on tv my whole life. the tv does the track no justice at all. it doesn't convey the size of the place or the architecture there at all.

the next day we went to the daytona flee market after a morning of wandering the beach. neat place. good swords cheap.
 

the next highlight on the trip was nasa. it was a bit out of the way but pretty worth it. they've done some major renovations on their exhibits and their tour of the place has improved vastly over what it was a few years ago when i was ther last (ok so it was closer to ten....).. a lot of the equipment and rockets on display were badly in need of refurbishing and at this point most of them have been brought up to smithsonian standards.
 

as a part of the tour they let you look at the pieces of the international space station being assembled. the most noteworthy of which is the quickstop module being sent up by the residents of  leonardo, nj for their austronuats, dante and randall.
 

one of my personal favorites about daytona was pineland cemetary in the center of town. it had that great sense of decay you just can't find in cemetaries in the north, or as my brother says "that great pirates of the carribbean feel." i don't know if anyone in/famous was there, but it was cool.
 

after a good night of wandering around the graves, convienently enough there's a world famous biker bar, the boot hill saloon, right across the street. went there, seen it, had my beer, bought the shirt. ....and i didn't get my ass kicked :)
 

the last day we hit a few of the real tourist traps. first of which was the pumpernickle pickle, daytona's best head shop. the guy whole owns the place is cool as hell. if you ever wondered what happened to chong after him and cheech called it quits, he's working here now....or at least someone very much like him anyway.
 

the last stop was "custom classics." real tourist trap. the car museum was a front for a bunch of people trying to sell condos. on the bright side though they had the original batmobile, one of the cars from the blues brothers, and the actual dragula from the munsters.

 back?