I’m writing this from an extended-stay hotel studio suite in Miami Springs, literally across the road from the Miami International Airport. I decided to make the ride down here so I could have breakfast with Jeff Pulver and friends from the social media space Thursday morning, and got a steal on the price of a hotel studio suite for the night here in Miami. I don’t think I’ve taken an actual vacation in a number of years, so this is kind of a treat for me, even if it is riding down to Miami one day and going back to Lakeland the next. The ride down via Florida’s Turnpike was very nice, except for the section of SR-60 where it became one lane each way and there were the trucks’ air wakes coming the opposite way to contend with. It did take about five and a half hours instead of the planned four, because I stopped at every service plaza along the way to stretch and walk around (and grab something to drink at the second-to-last one, skipping the final service plaza near the end of the ticketed portion of the Turnpike). The roads here in Miami are rather confusing—nearly every major road in this area has two names (NW 36th St. = Duval Rd., for example); thankfully the GPS navigator I got for the scooter did its job and I’m finding my way around without too much difficulty.

For dinner I scooted the 11 miles on I-195 over to the Lincoln Road Mall area in Miami Beach after checking in at the Homestead Studio Suites next to the airport. It’s twenty-six square blocks of shopping that’s definitely an “interesting” area, and not one I’d recommend if you’re struggling with sexual addiction—lots of exposed cleavage, barely covered bikinis, and many with nothing else underneath their tops and not leaving much to the imagination. There were also a lot of interesting people, like the elderly white man wearing a “Jamaica” t-shirt balancing his backpack on his head while dancing, or the apparently gay couple with one of the guys wearing fluorescent orange shoes that could be spotted by satellites. And, if English is the only language you know, you’d definitely feel out of place as I did. Nobody followed the traffic rules; people cross against lights when they felt like it, cars and scooters alike were parked in commercial loading and no-parking areas, many didn’t have the required parking receipts.

It was also the first meal at a Burger King I think since I moved to Florida in 2000.

After walking around Lincoln Rd. for a while I headed back, dropping by the Starbucks closest to my hotel, which happens to be inside Miami International Airport. It turns out that the airport has designated motorcycle parking areas in the Short Term Parking sections, and that said parking is free (one doesn’t even go through the regular parking entrance; it’s a small turn-off from the main road around the terminals). I headed back to the hotel after wandering around the airport for an hour or two, scoring my addictive Frappuccino in the process.

So Thursday, I head to Jeff Pulver’s social media breakfast bright and early, and then start the ride back toward home on the Turnpike. Right now, since I’ve settled in and started relaxing a bit, my wakefulness is fading fast.

A last-minute item on my calendar: I’ll be attending Jeff Pulver’s social media end-of-year breakfast in Sunny Isles Thursday morning.  Here are the details if you’d like to join us: