Redlights and Redeyes

I did something the other night I haven’t done in a while.

Slept in my trunk.

I did that more than a few times in college for shoots, but that was when I had a Jeep with plenty of cargo room.  I have a VW now.  It’s a lot harder to do and a bit scarier.  Needless to say, don’t roll into Apalachicola at 2am and expect to check into the Best Western.  Or even the Poncho Inn.  No vacancy signs and locked doors greeted me after a last-minute call to drive seven hours to the oyster capital of Florida – Eastpoint and Apalachicola.  I did what I had to do.  I had a 5am call to meet some oystermen on the docks.  Which gave me three hours of so-called “sleep,” a Chevron spit-bath in the men’s restroom, and a nasty little crick in my back.

Eight hours later, I was back on the road seven hours back to Sarasota.

I’m surprised I made it to this blog post to be honest, but it was worth it.  I always enjoy exploring new towns – especially ones rich in Florida history, untouched by condos and/or Mickey.  Great little place that was spared a direct hit from the BP oil spill, but was affected nonetheless when some oystermen took off to gather BP checks to help with cleanup left suppliers struggling to cope with demand.  This adding to the dwindling oyster stocks when the race was on to beat the spill.

I only spent the day there, but it was really fascinating to see a community so dependent on really one commodity – especially when that commodity is scraped up off the floor of the bay.

Now to figure out how to expense “Hotel de Chip’s Trunk.”

This entry was posted on Friday, August 6th, 2010 at 7:36 pm and is filed under photos, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.