The Mean Streets Of Cocoa

Florida's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Persona

The next day I wandered to Cocoa. Cocoa and Cocoa Beach are not the same space. Cocoa is the town adjacent to Cocoa Beach. It’s a small town is literally buttcheeks beside Cocoa Beach. It’s a little poorer, but it’s not without its charm.

Riding into town I met a pretty cool security guard. We talked about his job, and I talked about my adventures and we were just chatting as I had an incident on the bus with someone mad I was staring in his direction. (For the record, I wasn’t. I just had a bag so it made me tilt diagonal on the seat. The guy didn’t like it.) When I mentioned it, the guard knew who I was talking about, and we just hit it off. He told me to see him when I left the city.

Speaking of Cocoa, let’s talk about the bad stuff first. I always believe in opening with bad news. My first day there I hit the Dunkin Donuts to work, writing substacks like I’m doing now in Redding. Here, it’s a Starbucks, but I digress. Finding a place to sleep in Cocoa was a challenge. I’m not able to sleep in a hostel, and there are no homeless shelters in the neighborhood. I would have to go back to Melbourne if I wanted to sleep, and maybe in hindsight I should have.

I was getting iller. If you listen to my episode with Bjorn to hear how the cough was evolving. I did the interview that day in the dunkin and I knew I was getting worse. This cough wouldn’t go away and all the wonders I went through the day before was making it worse. My bad news grew worse as I was losing money faster than I could accrue it. My resources were starting to get low.

I realized at this moment that Florida and I couldn’t be friends. And you know what? That’s okay. One of the things about a journey like this is not every place is for you. I was here, dragging my three legged cart and learning how to balance the damn thing. Me and the three legged cart would last quite a while together. Longer than I would have wanted to, but I was stuck. I couldn’t buy another luggage, and this one was what I had.

There’s a lot of people on the street here. A lot. Every city along this coast has a decent population of homeless. Now, it pales to what I saw in Tallahassee (we will get there, I promise) but I have to say, Cocoa had its share of people out there. Of all the states, Florida and California are the two I’ve seen the most people on the streets. Just the way I saw it.

The next day I went to the food clinic. There was homeless help in the city, but not a shelter. It was good as it offered free showers, and I was able to get some supplies that were quite useful. I can’t complain about any of that. I will give this to the state of Florida: good people overall. The place? Not for me, but I cannot help but be respectful to the people that did what they could to help. These guys included.

I ended up wandering Cocoa and got to see it from one end to the other. The further north I got the rougher it got. I was doing that looking for a laundry site, and here’s where I saw my first outdoor laundry place. I had never seen one like this ever, and thought it was pretty cool, even if I had to stand around and wait. There was no visible service, but all the tools were there if you had it. Met a cool father and son duo. The son was about six years old and was doing his best to try to talk his dad into spinning him in the dryer. Both the dad and I warned him it wasn’t a good idea.

The dad and I started to talk. It’s always cool to talk to people. One of the things I haven’t taken for granted this whole journey is the ability to talk to anyone. We just shot the breeze for a bit, and talked about our lives. The father had a pretty cool life, with his wife and kids, and just enjoying the little things. Sometimes, that’s all we have.

Now the great thing about Cocoa is old towne. They have a historic downtown that’s actually quite amazing. The coffee shop was especially gracious. I got so sick that day I ended up napping all of it. The cafe closed early that day, and could have asked me to leave. They let me sleep it off. When I got outside I continued sleeping for most of the day. When I came to, the cough had started to disappear. I made headway.

The next day I almost felt like a new man and knew it was time to go. The last cool thing about that whole side of florida was that the transit system linked all the way from Palm Bay to Titusville. I had seen most of this, and Titusville was my last stop. I had two days left to Orlando, and wanted to spend the last two in Titusville. I ran into the Security guard, who did me a solid and gave me some bus passes.

I may not have gotten along with the place, but I cannot say bad things about the people. Little bits of kindness were everywhere, and honest, that’s my biggest lesson traveling the whole country. There is kindness everywhere, if you’re willing to look for it. I know America is getting a bad rap, but the truth is, they still have a very generous spirit. Outside of Maine and Redding here, Florida was among the kindest. I’m grateful. It helped me through this.

I left on the bus, and headed to my last stop on the tour before megacon. Titusville, here I come.