Stormwrecked in Lakeland

Meeting Friends and Waiting out the Freeze

I left from Jacksonville and headed briefly into Orlando. I’ll go into more detail about Orlando later in the story, as I did Orlando Megacon (Spoiler) later in the journey. Orlando is an interesting combination of a small town and a park attraction. There are parks everywhere, not just disney world. Even Las Vegas doesn’t have a lot of just those kinds of attractions. I’ll give more about Orlando later.

There I met the incredible TowM8r. I’ve known him for years on discord, and it was swell to finally meet him in person. He’s a chill dude, who loved my essay on tribalism. We caught up and measured each other before I asked him if i could stay. He contacted his wife and got the nod, as we began the drive to Lakeland.

Lakeland is kind of a small getaway from Orlando. It’s still a large city but it feels like the place that people live to escape the tourism. It’s a nice place. There I got to hang out with Tow and his wife. For the next few days I watched the rain fall.

People have asked me what the two worst things to be caught in outside. Fog is the worst by far, but rain is a close second. It’s cold, wet and unforgiving. Snow for what it’s worth is solid at least. Ice sucks, but that comes later, and for the most part I’ve been able to avoid it this trip. Rain is the worst. I watched the rain fall for days.

I got all the reports above with the snow. I got to watch the winter wonderland up north and thank people I wasn’t apart of it. I’m happy about that at least.

So we waited, and I worked from Lakeland writing my substacks about Canada, and got to eat at some real cool places. There are a quite a few variations of hooters in the states. I got to see a couple of them, but also got the chance to eat some good food along the way.

It was a nice recharge. I got to look up the comic creators on discord. I knew quite a few creatives lived in Florida and wanted to meet some. Travis Gibb and I agreed to meet and hang out in Melbourne. That was my next stop.

I really want to give a shout out to Tow and his family. They were incredibly kind letting me get through the storm while I was there. Lakeland was just nice. I got nothing terrible to say about it, as it was a good port for the storms in front of me.

I got to go and meet Travis, and after Travis, the Florida curse got me. But that’s the next entry. I won’t forget that here was nice. and thanks to all that made that possible.