The Hunt Begins

For those of you living in Ohio, you know that the last two winters here have been brutal. While the entire rest of the world is warming and posting record annual average temperatures, Ohio is smack dab in the middle of one spot whose mercury is moving in the opposite direction. By the time March rolled around this year, I found myself telling a friend (and somewhat to my surprise) that I had reached the end of my winter rope. I needed to get out of Ohio during the winter from now, and I didn’t mean for just a weekend or a week. “I’m over it,” I said, “and I need to start looking for a way to spend a couple months in Florida every winter.” I had mentioned to Mark many years back that at some point, this day would come. I just didn’t realize that it come had until the words were coming out of my mouth.

So, after a surprisingly short discussion, Mark and I have decided that for the foreseeable future, I will plan to spend six to eight weeks exempted from Ohio’s ice and snow. Thus, I’ve flown to St. Petersburg to spend the weekend with our friends, Dan and Alex, and start scoping out places that I might rent. This is the view from their sunroom today.

This is likely to be a trip filled with new things. Well, half-filled, I guess. I’m going to look at renting places through Airbnb, about which I’ve heard good and bad things, and I flew on Allegiant Airlines out of Rickenbacker Airport.

I’ll have to keep you posted on the Airbnb, but the Allegiant/Rickenbacker experience wasn’t bad so far. The airport is tiny comapred to Port Columbus—only 2 gates, and easy parking—so navigating it was not too tough. Ask Mark, and he’ll tell you that the worst part of traveling with me is the actual traveling. No matter how many times I fly, I almost always find airport layouts to be confusing and airport and TSA policies to be arbitrary and capricious. “Take your shoes off, sir.” “You don’t need to take your shoes off.” “No drinks through security.” “Only clear drinks through security.” Generally, Mark knows not to speak to me in an airport until we reach our gate unless it’s absolutely necessary. (For example, “That gate goes to Gambia! Come this way!”)

Our plane today was clean and in better repair that I’ve seen with some other carriers—no torn fabric or broken tray tables (Who thought up the term, “tray table”? Is it a tray, or is it a table? Make up your mind.”)—and the staff seemed nice and helpful. It may not have been a good idea for one of the flight attendants to announce over the PA, “Trey: The captain says come to the front now. Flight attendants: Put on your seatbelts now” right before we hit some unnerving turbulence, but otherwise, they seemed competent. The seats could have been a bit more generous, but these days, I could say that about any airline. Except Korean Air. Ahhh, Korean Air.

So this afternoon or evening, I’m going to drive by a home owned by my sister-in-law’s mother to see if it will fit my needs. She has been hesitant to consider renting it to me, but I haven’t given up on her yet, and I want to get a sense of where in the city it is in case I can convince her. Tomorrow, I’ll find some places through Airbnb and drive by them to see if I will be comfortable in their neighborhoods.