I have been in a weird state lately, in which I can’t really find anything I want to read, I can’t figure out what music to listen to, and most importantly, I have no fucking idea what to write. I think I’ve been doing this for about a week, but in the bigger sense, I have been avoiding a new book – a real one, not a collection of shit – for about two years now. I think part of it is weather and part is diet, and there’s also the fact that I haven’t taken any time off since January, so I’m getting pretty burned out. So maybe I need a vacation. Maybe I need to find a way to pay for a vacation.
I went to JetBlue today and found that it would be fairly cheap to get down to Florida again. I had a lot of fun down there in 2001, on Treasure Island, driving to random places and taking lots of photos. I’m afraid though that if I go now, I will get deathly depressed. That area is a good place to go if you want to see a lot of nobody, because it’s a ghost town during the summer. I occasionally saw some teenager locals, kids that probably worked shitty jobs and smoked a lot of bad pot when they weren’t flipping burgers or mowing lawns. I related to them about as bad as I did the older folk that bumped around down there. I’m not saying I fit in with everyone here in New York, but at least I see people here when I’m walking around. I’m afraid I will start thinking about 2001 all over again and get into some heavy depression and piss away 3 or 4 of the 7 days of the vacation. And also, it would probably be like a hundred degrees when I’m there, and that might be bad.
I know everyone had the typical migratory path for winter vacations, of heading to Florida or some island or Mexico or whatever, so they can cheat mother nature and catch a few rays. But does anyone ever do the opposite? I mean, I don’t really hear of people going to Alaska for the summer, or Iceland or something. I’ve always wondered what vacation spots would work for this. It doesn’t seem like there’s as much air travel infrastructure going north as there is going south. Sure, Montreal is well-connected, but I don’t see many planes leaving for Yellowknife at JFK.
The other issue is I want to do something that basically involves a 200-some dollar ticket, a hotel that won’t bust my balls price-wise, and maybe a rental car. I don’t have thousands of bucks to fly to central america or rent out a fucking cabin in the mountains plus all of the gear I’ll need to pack out to cook my meals. One of my reasons I like Vegas so much is I can always find a cheap fare and a cheap room and slap it all together with minimal Visacard damage in about two minutes flat. Unfortunately, I am bored of Sin City right now, and the bug to go back won’t hit me for a few more months. I’m actually thinking of going in August, when the room rates will be like $50 a night and the AC will be blowing full-blast everywhere (which it won’t be in my apartment.)
I think I’m going to read some Hunter S. Thompson now.