Daily Archives: November 28, 2014

El Norte

There are few things in this world as comforting to this American as a Cracker Barrel Country Boy Breakfast, over easy, no gagoos, although our Costa Rican friends would smile and say “we’re Americans too” but well, you know to the best of my knowledge they don’t have any Cracker Barrels. So after some very welcome news from my doctor, as in he doesn’t want to see me for three years, we were determined to immerse ourselves in our very own culture.

Maybe diving headlong into the maw of something called Sawgrass Mills Outlet Mall may not have been the wisest re-introduction to “American Culture” but we escapees have never been timid toe dippers so a swan dive into the deep end seemed appropriate. After all, we haven’t seen anything more than a couple of dissimilar lonesome items on a dusty shelf for a very long time. We weren’t at all sure how we would react. Were we susceptible to good old targeted American marketing?

At first, dear Escapees, I admit the sea of shiny cars in the endless car park amazed me, but we’re on a mission so I drove around until we were in the area of some technical clothing outlets and parked next to a construction sight. Is it possible that they’re actually expanding this place? I was worried that finding our little Chevy Spark rental again in this sea of SUVs might be difficult so we marked its location on an iPhone navigation app. Swinging open glass doors we were swept up with the energy, dazzled by the lights and the rows and rows of goods stacked floor to ceiling, crammed with stuff that we didn’t need but plenty of it. There were people wheeling large suitcases around with them, stuffed with stuff they were buying. Amazing.

We soon realized that going from store to store just to see what stuff they had would take more than a day but we were having so much fun that we had to stop for a restorative Haagan Das ice cream just to recover our wits. Feeling rejuvenated we re-read our mission statement and focused on actual needs and soon had a few bags with technical clothing in them. I said let’s get out of here before we do something stupid.

We came, we saw, and we escaped. It’s all good but next up was a visit to a real ship chandlery. I may not fare as well with this stop but we may have access to a discount card later on so this will be an exercise in delayed gratification.

As we accelerate onto route 575, if you can call what a Chevy Spark does accelerating, I suddenly noticed the roads. They’re beautiful. I mean they’re temples of American civil engineering. So smooth, so wide, so well painted, so…beautiful and in another point of pride, not one speck of litter or trash. Good on ya America, amazing what one crying Indian can accomplish! The conscience of a nation. So far the amount of trash we’ve had to wade through in otherwise truly beautiful islands has been really disappointing.

Well it’s Thanksgiving with family in snowy New Jersey and we have much to be thankful for so dear Escapees, we wish you a joyous day.

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