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Show -^g^^^iagif^i^^ Surviving the everglades Altogether, I probably have close to 45 minutes If you're looking to get away from civilization and experience the serenity that comes from being of experience driving a boat on actual water, so out in nature's wilderness beauty and having the you can imagine how competent I felt when I took vast majority of the blood sucked out of your the helm (or "forecastle") of the Spoonbill, which is body, then you should rent a houseboat in the the size of a standard junior high school, only not as maneuverable. The way you drive a houseboat Everglades. I did this recently with my son, Rob. We rented is, you turn the wheel to the right (or "mizzen"), our houseboat at a place called Flamingo, in then you go make a sandwich and take a nap. By Everglades National Park, waaaaay down on the the time you get back to the helm, the boat is just bottom of Florida. At that point, Florida has totally starting to turn right, which means it's time for you to turn the wheel back to the left. stopped pretending to be a normal United _____ State such as Pennsylvania, the kind of Using this procedure, we navigatDave Barry state that has been constructed in complied through a canal out to Whitewater ance with the Official State Building Code Bay, which gets its name from the fact on a solid foundation of dirt and rocks. that the water is brown. There we were Lower Florida looks like solid ground in able to really "open up" the throttle places, but it's actually a gigantic floating and get the Spoonbill moving at her top clotted mass of decaying vegetation and speed, which (I am estimating here) is shed snakeskins, drifting on a sea of arozero. We didn't care. We weren't out matic water and muck. You get the feeling there to get somewhere; we were out that you need to keep moving, because if there to experience directly the natural Barry's you stand still too long, you'll sink into the beauty of the Everglades, which look clot until the only thing sticking up is your today very much as they did thouWorld head, which a bird will come along and sands of years ago to the first Native build a nest on. Americans to arrive here, except that There's wildlife everywhere down there. Maybe the Native Americans didn't have a generator, clitoo much of it. For example, when we arrived at mate control, hot water, full kitchen, shower, flush the Flamingo marina, we drove into a parking lot, toilet, refrigerator and enough groceries to feed the which sloped down gently to a boat-launching Green Bay Packers for a month. ramp into the water, and lying on this ramp, watchThat evening, we dropped anchor maybe 100 ing us, were three major alligators. They were lined yards from a mangrove island, many miles from up parallel to each other, halfway out of the water, any sign of civilization. We stood on trie deck, and, as though a National Park Service employee had as the sun set, we experienced a sensation that I been in the middle of launching them, but then he will never forget: the sensation of being landed stopped for some reason, such as they ate him. on by every mosquito in the Western Hemisphere. I was frankly concerned about being in an alli- There were so many of them that they needed Air gator-infested parking lot, and it did not help that Traffic Control mosquitoes to give directions ("OK, Rob kept reminding me how fast alligators can No. 86,742,038, you have clearance to land on his move over land. Reminding people how fast alliga- left elbow, but make it quick, because he's almost tors can move is a long-standing Florida tradition. out of blood"). "Over short distances, an alligator can outrun a So we hustled inside the Spoonbill and spent horse," people will say. Or: "In 1983, the Air Force the evening admiring the natural wonder and tracked an alligator going 387 miles per hour." beauty of air conditioning. Meanwhile, just outside Fortunately, alligators don't corner well, so if the window, the mosquitoes formed a huge swirlone is chasing you-get ready for an Alligator Safety ing committee to discuss the feasibility of sending Tip-you're supposed to run in circles. I'm serious. a search party back to the mainland for a glassSchoolchildren are taught this in Florida, while cutter. But we made it through the night OK, and children in other states are learning to read. we ended up having a fine weekend, which was So anyway, by moving in precautionary circles, diminished only slightly by the fact that when we Flamingo, it had sunk without a Rob and I managed to get safely aboard our rental got back to houseboat, named the "Spoonbill." I'm qualified to trace. operate a houseboat because I have nautical expeNo, it was still there. But if you're planning to rience, consisting of owning a boat for a couple of go, you should call ahead, just in case. And ifan years. alligator answers, hang up. During this time, I learned the principles of navigation, because every week I had to navigate This is a classic Dave Barry column, that was first my car to the marine-supplies store to buy boat published on Nov. 10, 1996. parts in a never-ending effort to get the boat fixed up to the point where the engine would start. (c) 2006, The Miami Herald * - "My problems all started with my early education. I went to a school for mentally disturbed teach» - _ • * * • < "My school days were the happiest days of my life; which should give you some indication of tne - misery I've endured over the past twenty-five years." " ™a Mertone 1 speak twelve languages. English is the bestest. " S t e f a n Bergman •» » * This Week's Challenge If you can precisely identify the campus oddity shown above, bring your entry to TSC Room 105, with your name and e-mail address before Wednesday at 4 p.m. Duplicate correct answers will be drawn at random and announced in this space next Friday. LAST WEEK'S WINNER: Congratulations to Zeniff Jasso who correctly identified the graffiti on the north wall of the Fine Arts courtyard. My Quess: My E-Mail: |