Travel Diary

Goes by so fast.

It was departure day, but also beach day. We’d been so close to Miami Beach, but not actually there. Despite it looking sort of close on the map, it’s not somewhere you can walk to. Well, not without a LOT of time. We opted to take a ferry to the beach as it was faster than a ride share and less traffic. Plus, it would be fun to photograph the sights from the boat. We bought some tickets and waited.

The boat was late, but arrived eventually. Most interesting was someone talking nearby loudly on a cellphone. Apparently, he lost his credit card and decided to take his anger out on the customer service rep and berate him or her to no end. Sad. Maybe part of it was to just try and show off to people nearby how “important” he seemed to feel he was. It wasn’t an impressive sight. Seemed like a real jerk to anyone in earshot.

On the boat, they sold beer, so I bought beer. Overpriced, sure, but hey, we were on the water finally.

The ferry ride was nice and slowly made its way to the beach. We docked there and they pointed the way to the beach. Take note: it’s another place that is NOT pedestrian friendly. The path to the beach was not clear and the roads required jaywalking through heavy traffic to reach the streets leading to the beach. And mind you, we got off a PEDESTRIAN ferry! Just insane.

But about 20 minutes later, we reached the famous beach. It’s pretty epic. Huge and stretches out for a long way. And crowded. Very crowded. The sand is perfect though and I made my way to the water, which was amazing. It’s quite shallow for a long ways and incredibly warm. I was mesmerized a lot by the awesomeness of nature there. Just a beautiful sight, though a little spoiled by the thousands of people crowding it up (me being one of them).

I could not stay long and time was pressing. I met up with Terry and we walked back to the ferry station area. There wasn’t time to wait for the next one, so we headed into a Burger King for a light meal. I was pretty hungry at that point. After lunch, we summoned an Uber and headed back to the hotel.

Terry wanted to make use of Steve’s shower, so we contacted him and he was fine with it. Plus, it would be one last chance to say goodbye. After that, we took Uber to the airport.

The drive was must faster this time so we had time to kill at the airport. There was a burger place with the name of a famous coach, Don Shula. I forgot the name and had to look it up as I write this. Turns out it has a LOT of poor reviews, but mainly because of the slow wait times. And yeah, that was our situation. The line was long and they took an interminable time to get our burgers. The plane had already started boarding then. I did save my burger for the flight.

Soon, we were up in the air. I had a window seat and was able to photograph the coast and the crazy cloud formations out there. Yeah, the weather in Florida is wild. After some time, I enjoyed my burger. It was cold then, but still hit the spot.

Finally, we were back in … Seattle. So yeah, I wasn’t home just yet. The only flight back went there and I just figured I’d crash in Seattle a night and fly home the next day. Thus, I hung out with my friends there and then departed Tuesday evening.

It was a fun trip.

Sadly, the final goodbye in Miami would be the last time we ever saw Steve. His cancer grew much worse over the next few weeks as the treatment had no effect. About a month later, he passed away.

I reiterate: it goes by so fast. Life has no guaranteed time period. This was another somber reminder of that. It was great to have one final trip, but alas, there won’t be anymore with the same group.

Afterwards, I decided to really try and travel more. It’s one reason so many more vacations have popped up since Miami.

Seize the day. Seize all the days.