Dumbass California cracker

That’s what I’m thinking when I discover I’ve overshot the Eddie Bauer outlet store by oh, 45 minutes driving time. “I see. Apopka-Vineland is a really long road.” But by then, all my bargain-hunting desire had been flayed from me by the cruel Orlando traffic. It didn’t help that my conference center was mere minutes away from the outlet store.

I’ll go tomorrow — after the morning session concludes but before I go to Gatorland to eat me some Gator for Corn Dog’s sake.

I ended up going to Orlando’s Millennia Mall. What a zoo! I’ve never had to park so far from a mall entrance (except in Silicon Valley at Xmastime). Don’t these Orlandoians have anything better to do on a Saturday night? But apparently not. Orlando is wall-to-wall commerce, one great mini-mall spreadeagled beneath its tumescent, leering, murine overlord. It’s Los Angeles without killer cops and Bald Britneys. It’s Las Vegas with lakes.

After much anguish, I found a present for Jake. No, I’m not saying. He’ll be pleased, I hope, and does he ever need something to cheer him up. He’s been sick with some kind of weird viral crud since the first of the year and I think he’s tired of being ill.

While at the mall, I picked up the nationwide Zagat to get an idea where to eat. I picked Amaya, a Japanese restaurant not far from my hotel (in Orlando-speak, that means, “Less than a thirty minute drive”). Reasonably good sushi, though not comparable to the Bay Area. I sat at the sushi bar beside a woman with livid red hair that might have been real. I tried not to stare, but she was SO BIG. Like an Amazon without the self-inflicted wound. So I ate my sushi and read erotica on my Blackberry and tried again not to stare.

Time to drink more gin. Alcohol at night is bad for sleep apnea but it has a protective effect for, oh, I don’t know. It’s in my syllabus.

And I found out that Medicare snuck in a 10% pay cut last year. This might just be for procedures; I’m not sure yet. But it’s getting harder and harder to tread water. Some docs like to figure out how many days per week they work to meet their overhead, but I’ve never been that masochistic. But it’s a good thing I’m going to be a bestselling novelist some day. We all know how lucrative that is.

D.

Alien landscape

Ever since college, and perhaps even longer than that, I’ve had a recurring dream of a rocky area set aside for hikers. Once, and only once — I was in med school at the time — I explored far enough that I found a cave. Something of great importance was in the cave but I never found out what it was. I’ve been trying to make it back ever since.

Back here in the real world, I think this is why I love places like Red Rock Canyon (near Las Vegas) and Vasquez Rocks (in So. Cal.)  Both places inspire the same feeling in me: the expectation that just around the corner, I’ll see the rocks of my dreams, and perhaps also the cave.

The older I become, the farther I get from that landscape. Last night, I tried making it up there on my ten-speed; but it was winter, and folks were telling me how treacherous the hiking had become, what with all the snow and sleet. I never even got a glimpse.

From childhood, I recall other places of power. A desolate road, a hidden beach. Walk a little farther and I knew I would find myself in another world, one that obeyed different rules. Back then, the idea of escape to another world fascinated me, asleep or awake. But with age comes contentedness, and maybe that’s why those other worlds have slipped away; I don’t need them now. I don’t even need the promise they hold.

They’re always to the northwest, these regions. Go figure.

D.