2004-01-02-0153Z


What a day. Spent last night since about 7PM EST at the Ft. Lauderdale International Airport, drinking coffee, attempting some programming but mostly reading email and Howard Rheingold's Brainstorms forum. The flight came in on schedule just after 7 AM but she apparently wasn't on it. I waited about 10 minutes after the last stragglers cleared the gate, then left the airport. No buses till 9 something, so decided to walk in the general direction of Hollywood Beach.

When I came out to Federal Highway (U.S. 1), I noticed two things: it was getting ready to rain, and there was a nice stand of coconut pines I could set up my Hennessy Hammock in. So I did, and though I was wired up a little too tight to go to sleep, I lay there and listened to the drizzle against the tarp. Not too long later, though, along came two BSO deputies who, after filling out a sheet with all my particulars, told me I had to move along. They were friendly enough about it, even a little apologetic. They explained that someone had complained, and there was nothing else they could do. If I had been out of sight, I would have been OK.

So, eventually I got the bus to the beach, where I spent the rest of the day until now, and where I will probably spend the night as I have since, I guess, Friday or Saturday. My current strategy has been to stay up all night when I can, and sleep during the day; cops so far haven't bothered me when sleeping on the beach during the day, either in the hammock or just lying on the tarp. However, when in the hammock I do try to keep it invisible from the broadwalk... no sense in pushing my luck.

Woke up for the second time an hour or so ago, after downing a couple pints of Bass at BU's and crashing in the twilight behind the hummock facing the huge pink monstrosity of a hotel/condo complex at the end of Hollywood Boulevard. Walking here to the Haagen-Dazs where I am now enjoying a coffee after a single scoop of Belgian Chocolate Chocolate, a few guys passed me on bicycles, and some malcontent who insisted on walking in the bicycle lane started giving them a hard time about riding bicycles after 7PM. He even went so far as to chase after them, screaming that they had to get off and walk. I kept walking, while they argued. I hope they beat the living shit out of him. It's clowns like him who called the cops on me earlier today. Why can't people keep their goddamn noses out of other people's business when it isn't hurting them? Or is it perhaps that their pain threshold is set so low that anything they don't like, such as people sleeping in the trees along the road, causes them physical suffering?

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