Howling At The Sunrise (USA Day 173)

We woke long before dawn and stumbled across to Deerfield Beach’s beach (known as Deerfield Beach, but really should be known as Deerfield Beach Beach, to be clear) with Maria and Piero, our hosts. With a handful of other ‘hippies’, as Maria called them, they gathered there every day to watch the sun rise, and we joined them for this one.

It did, I’m glad to say, and prettily at that. Piero encouraged Amy to do some wolf-howling, which she performed with aplomb. She even did the “rewrewrew” bit towards the end of the howl, with a little coaching. On the way back we met a jolly fellow who our hosts already knew, and whose superpower seemed to be to deliver philosophical soundbites on demand. Today, he told us about how fast earth was moving through space, and how fast our lives pass, and how few days we had left. “Easy does it,” he said. “Take it slow.”

Over breakfast, Piero shared a few wise lines of his own. “Investigate your emotions,” he said, “play with them, invite them in for dinner. Then you address them by nurturing them.”

Both pieces of advice should have set us up for today pretty well, if only we’d remembered to heed them. The first twenty miles were an obstacle course of terrible drivers and floods (this county had more rain yesterday than any day since records began, apparently. That doesn’t excuse the drivers, though.) We grunted and squeaked as cars pulled out right in front of us or cut us up on a turn, as a woman in a wheelchair trundled in our path and made us emergency stop, then gave us the middle finger, as an ankle-high lake blocked our road and to go around it would mean cycling through an actual ocean. By twenty miles, we’d had it. Traffic lights came five times as often as ocean views. It was time to call in the big guns: my uncle’s brother.

No, not my dad. He doesn’t live in Miami.

We phoned up Nick, who had just this morning agreed to host us when we get back to Miami, after the tour’s over. Today, we weren’t even supposed to stay there but head further south towards the Keys.

“Help!” was the gist of my request.

“Yes,” was the gist of his response.

We managed at least twenty more miles of this awful day, in which time six thousand terrible Miami drivers had managed to make our lives a misery. Honestly, I haven’t seen such a bad city of drivers since Cairo. Eventually, a bike path made itself available between the backs of the enormous Miami Beach hotels and the empty beach itself. The sky hung grey and heavy as elephants as we nipped past pool parties, trendy bars and full-on dance clubs in the hotels’ gardens, populated by the vile, moneyed youth of the East Coast. At first glance, you might see this and image-conscious LA as two peas in a pod, but there’s a huge qualitative difference. LA is obsessed with how it appears to others. It’s constantly on show, desperate to impress. Miami is obsessed with its own reflection. It just wants to make sure that it’s aware of its own importance, and that’s it.

Luckily, my uncle’s brother but not my dad shares none of this vanity. We met him outside his tower block and took our bags upstairs, then pottered down to the southernmost point of the island, in the rain, to look at the rocks where he used to dive for lobsters. He’s been here since Miami Beach wasn’t a posh place. Once, it was a quarantine island. The island where he used to live, Black Beach, was where they kept the African American musicians, because they sure as hell couldn’t stay with the white folks. This city and its islands track an uneasy history of segregation. I’d like to say that was all over, but judging by the guys we saw gardening and the kids we saw partying, there’s a lot of work still to do.