No matter how hard you try ....

I succeeded in getting to the beach today but not without having to take work with me. I had a lot of homework to read and there was the matter of getting to the bottom of an incident that turned out to be most inconvenient for a lot of people. I will leave the details out but just say it made Memorial Day memorable in the wrong way.

Once I sat down in my beach chair, I closed my eyes and listened to the waves. The waves' rhythm helped clear my head of all the noise that rattles around in there. I dozed a little and then read my take home papers.

Central Florida has been mighty dry and brush fires have played havoc with road travel. Today I was returning from the beach and just as I was approaching my I-95 exit to head west to Orlando, I could see huge plumes of smoke blowing across my intended route home. Needless to say, the highway patrol closed the westbound road. Then they closed I-95 southbound too; which left me with two options: return north and find another way west or head east towards the intracoastal and find a way south to another westbound highway, the BeachLine, site of a 26-car pile up last week. I opted for the BeachLine figuring it must be all burned up by now.

I worked my way through the local roads to find the BeachLine and navigated home pretty fast but, I have to say, I got through all that mess in the nick of time. Closures, backups and detours on an interstate are never pretty and I would probably be still sitting there; or maybe sitting on the beach waiting out the fires. 500 acres of fire.