The impending illness turned out to be a stomach bug. An almost-certainly self-inflicted stomach bug. The way I look at it is, two months effectively living in the back of a van is pretty good going in terms of the healthiness-to-self-induced-poisoning ratio. There was no knowing consumption of spoilt foodstuffs, at any rate.
The impossibly poor timing of the bug, however, means I am going to miss out on my intended visit to the Kennedy Space Centre; basically the only reason I find myself in this part of the country. I had booked myself on the 'Lunch with an Astronaut' tour but, unsurprisingly, I didn't really want for lunch, and the prospect of two-and-a-half hours on a tour bus, with other tourists, well, lets just say it felt like an accident waiting to happen. It is gutting to be missing out. Literally, as it transpires.
Despite the inconveniences attributed to whatever foreign organism is in my stomach, I still have a couple of hours to move on back up the coast. Some meticulous route planning, hopping from beach-side car park to highway rest-stop, gets me safely as far as Tomoka State Park. However, the journey was anything but without incident.
I have now seen almost-Caribbean palm trees windswept and rain-lashed, as if lifted from a typical hurricane newsreel. In the chaos of the swirling rain and spray I also, sadly, found myself boarding the American 'killing things' bandwagon. A might-have-been-a-grouse-type-bird seemingly threw (flew) itself into the grill of the Nimbus from a right angle on the passenger side. If you have seen either The Machinist or Groundhog Day or Peep Show (Season 4, Episode 6), you will have no problem visualising the scene. Without wishing to belittle the creature, it was tantamount to suicide, although his vision could easily have been impaired by the rain. As clichéd as it sounds, there was nothing I could do to prevent hitting it, poor thing. At 45mph. It came out of the proverbial nowhere.
I have posthumously named the deceased Jack. This post is dedicated to his memory. May he rest in peace.
My apologies if you were a girl, Jack. Saying that, I do know of girls called Jack, albeit spelt differently. And also my apologies anyway, you know. For killing you. Though we never once spoke, or met, even, your face will live long in my memory. Your franticly gnarled split-second-before-death face. If only this were written on paper, that last sentence would be blurred by a single salty tear.
No comments:
Post a Comment