Florida is very toll road happy. In addition, maps, both on our GPS and on Google, are decidedly unreliable here. I’m unaccustomed to needing to keep spare change in the car in case I have an unplanned trip or find a misbehaving toll machine, such as the 2nd to the left west bound lane on the Pinellas Bayway (falsely labeled “exact change” in this case), which took about $1.00 of change before deciding we’d paid the 50 cent toll. From their websites it looks like if you don’t pay, they photograph your license plate, ding your driving record, and send you a bill for somewhere around $175, depending on the road.

For those booths that are accepting the correct amounts, here are the charges:

• Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority Toll Calculator for the Selmon Crosstown Expressway (Hwy 618)
• Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise Toll Calculator for everything else

Buying a SunPass transponder (prepayed) saves you a quarter to fifty cents on the larger toll amounts compared to cash.

This is not complete, but here’s a map of some of Tampa Bay’s toll booths:

View Larger Map

On the 12th we planted seeds of: watermelon, yellow squash, tomatoes (red robin, black krim, quarter century and early girl), parsley, thyme, lettuce, sweet pepper, basil (purple and last year’s genovese).  Of those, only the genovese basil, sweet pepper and parsley have not pushed up at least one seedling.  Today we planted chives.  The package says to wait 4 months before harvesting.  That seems like an awful long time.

We also bought two tomatoes from Home Depot, a bush goliath and a husky cherry red.

On tomatoes:

*Note on the Red Robin maturity date: For having such pretty plants, the red robins we tried to grow indoors last fall/winter must have never been that happy. We had them for around 120 days, and not even one successful flower.

We’ve rented a house on the west side of the bay.  We have a yard.  The landlady seems garden friendly.  There are a lot of blue jays, mourning doves, squirrels and little lizards.  There was a frog on the first night, but we haven’t seen him since.  We’re already using the AC.  I haven’t been bitten by any mosquitoes yet.

In less than a week, we will be on our way across the country, with nearly everything we own in our two vehicles.  Mike’s already done a modern day Oregon Trail journey, from NC up to me in WA, but he’s also been hopping across the continents for nearly 15 years, so I think the move is a bigger deal for little me, who has never lived outside of the state.

It’s a great shocker at work when asked how I’m doing, how is the new position going.  They ask why we’re moving, and I list out our reasons (population density, beaches and wildlife, cost of living, climate for Mike), and they appreciate our mobility or say that I’m brave, and then tell me about all of the alligators and hurricanes.  Florida seems a world away to most of them, exotic, a destination fit for vacationing.  But a permanent move?  I may as well be switching hemispheres.

I don’t know yet if I’ll like Florida.  But that’s the point, that it’s not like here, since here is not working for us.  It’s almost taboo it seems to say you don’t like living in Seattle.  But oh, the public transportation! (with the freaks and perverts in your face or worse), and nature at our doorstep! (so popular that it’s a rather long drive before you can find any peace and solitude with your nature), and culture! (with little to no parking to be found, or which costs enough to significantly increase the overall price for your evening).  Not that everything is bad.  I’m going to miss my easy access to Odwallas and the goodness of Trader Joe’s.  And on clear days, the surrounding mountains are really beautiful.  Most of my complaints are around forced interaction with too many people, and in that respect, Tampa will probably still be too big for me.  But perhaps we can find something of the feel of Bellingham in one of the surrounding towns.  Downtown Dunedin looked inviting.  It is a trade off anywhere.  We hope that the mix will be more favorable to us where we are going, and if not, we’ll try somewhere else.

I had forgotten what it was like to not be overwhelmed with disgust the moment the president came on the television.  Not that I watch that much TV.  But even better, I actually want to hear Obama’s thoughts and direction.  “On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord” — a statement that in so many other moments would come across disingenuous and leave me cynical, in this instance rings true.  My faith in general humanity has not yet been restored, but tonight is one to celebrate for being a small part of one of those rare transformative events that are full of possibility.

The snow that fell on Thursday a week ago took 9 days to melt off the roads.  This morning was the first time either of us drove our vehicles since last week.  Only this morning did any snow plows even touch the side streets near us, and then only to clear the slush at the base of the hill right before the arterial.

At most we had about a foot of snow.  I saw one person cross country skiing along the side of the road and one mother and son pulling their groceries home on a sled.  Those who chose to (attempt to) drive provided amusement as they did mostly all the wrong things to get themselves unstuck.

We had our last (outdoor) homegrown tomato, picked mostly green and brought inside a few weeks ago, on Christmas.  The indoor red robins look fairly happy but have not bloomed yet.  There are a couple of small and completely green tomatoes on the poor, gangly early girls.