Wednesday Oct 16
Now I’m sitting on a surprisingly comfortable cot in a giant tent in the parking lot of whatever water park–Adventure Island– is across the street from Busch Gardens in Tampa Florida. So I got to Miami Friday evening then saturday a couple hundred of us Red Cross volunteers met in a ballroom and basically just got signed in and then they sent us out to wait. They gave us hotel rooms at this place right by the airport, the Marriott. I did have a roommate for the first two nights. Then they didn’t assign me to anything, so Sunday I walked around the town. This whole time sampling all the spanish restaurants that I reasonably can. I walked for over an hour to a shoe store because my current ones were falling apart, which is cool I like walking but I should have just bought a bus pass first thing. Monday morning rolls around and still no assignment. So I bought a bus pass and rode to the waterfront in my brand new white New Balance and immediately bought a speedboat ride from one of those kiosks of people pushing tourist adventures. The speedboat was real cool of course. Then I almost immediately turned around and went on a slower more casual but cheap hour and a half cruise, ate fish and chips, rode on the big ferris wheel to try and help with my fear of heights. Rode the train back to the airport terminal, (I”m kind of impressed with the design of that terminal right at the airport that connects to multiple buses, and long and short distance trains) and walked back to the hotel. I think I’ve averaged over 20k steps a day in Florida.
So yesterday Tuesday morning and STILL no assignment, so I say no sense wasting time in a fun city I never been to, so I rode the bus to Miami Beach and attempted to rent a bike from Citi Bike and oh boy did I have a poor user experience. Had to call customer service. Eventually refunded my money. Never did solve my problem. Had to walk to a second station. Then finally figured out that I had downloaded a Citi Bike app for some other city or something. I needed Citi Bike Miami app. Totally different freaking app.
How they didn’t think to build in any sort of mechanism to tell the user they’re in the wrong city is freaking beyond me.
One of these days after I do part two of my career story, I want to go on a software usability rant but today’s not the day.
So I got the bike and accidentally rented the powered one, which was kind of cool just to try out, though technically I think I was breaking the law by riding it on the boardwalk–the boardwalk that doesn’t have any boards. It’s all paved brick and sidewalk. To be fair, it is really nice. It’s beautiful actually. I rode from the very south point all the way to the north but didn’t go over the bridge to the next island, then rode back to Lincoln rd mall, got rid of the bike, ate fifty dollar fajitas–damn that place is pricey and over the top extravagance that is off-putting to me with those sports cars that are so extra that make you wonder what you could actually do to make the world a better place with that kind of money.
But I did get a text about Shelter Resident Transition Triage work and so I responded yes I could do that. I had no idea what that was but I would feel super guilty about turning down anything. Was starting to wonder why they sent me… though not that I’m complaining of course.
So then this morning they shipped all of us up, carpooling in our rental cars, up to Tampa. We went to this giant new food bank sort of place “Feeding Tampa” or something. I did training for Shelter Transition Triage which now I know is our process of interviewing the shelter resident and figuring out how we can best help them get to more stable housing given their situation–well, all I’d be doing is interviewing, taking notes and entering them into the system. Similar to what I do back in Pittsburgh for house fires except there I just hand them a debit card with some money on it, blanket, toiletries and a packet of information and send them on their way–and then others follow up with those folks the next day during working hours to help sort their situation in more detail.
But anyway, I don’t think I got selected to do the transition triage. My name wasn’t on the list anyway.
Anyway, then we carpooled over to where I am now which is Adventure Island!
I was hoping to go to Busch Gardens while I was here, which may happen because it feels like they just don’t have enough work for us. Which, you know, is actually a good thing. I guess that means there wasn’t as many people displaced by the hurricanes as we thought there would be. Maybe people are finally waking up to the fact that climate change is causing these things to get worse every single year, so people are finally saying “okay, we need to be even more prepared than we were last year.” maybe. I don’t know. I can hope anyway.
Anyway, now I’m in this great big tent with like 40 cots and it’s actually rather cold out and windy, the tent squeals and screeches like it’s gonna collapse. But the cot is oddly comfortable. I think they’re bigger than the ones we use back in Pittsburgh. Though I’ve never lay in one of those but I’ve folded a few.
Hmm, maybe I should get a cot like this and try sleeping out in my backyard during the summertime.
Anyway, so now I’ve decided that whenever I visit a new city the first thing I do is get a bus pass. So that’s what I did here in Tampa. I didn’t get settled until like almost 7PM so I didn’t have time to go far but I rode down to Riverside Fish Market restaurant and back. I ate a feast of fish and shrimp and beans and slaw and
I just realized this is what, it’s not a boring entry but it’s just kind of what happened. Which that’s fine. It’s okay if it’s not always deep and shit.
Anyway, someone said “thank you for your service” to me the other day and it made me feel real guilty the next day when I was riding the bike up Miami Beach Boardwalk and realizing I haven’t done any real service to anyone since I’ve been down here.
One of the other volunteers was going on about how it might be a conspiracy and maybe there are no actual shelters and now that I write that I realize it sounds even crazier than it did when she said it. There’s only a handful of us, like a couple few dozen who have been left without assignments out of I think a thousand or something like that but I have no memory of the actual number so I pulled that out my ass.
Sometimes it feels like this tent is gonna collapse.
Oh I forgot, speaking of deep, the other night I had a dream that has been messing with my head. I freaking kicked a dog because I was mad at its owner for being a Trump supporter. Then I lied about it. In my dream. Don’t no one take this out of context okay, this was in a dream where I kicked a dog and then lied about it.
But I felt super guilty about it and it took a few seconds waking up for me to realize it was a dream. I kind of wanted to write a bunch more about it because it’s so rare that i remember my dreams and this one had so many different layers to unpack. But I don’t know if I’ll get around to it.
I was really putting off writing–
Oh Gosh yes I also forgot I finished a bunch of audio books since I’ve been here: Instinct by Rebecca Heiss, Unfuck Your Brain by Faith G Harper, The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt (I had a ton to say about this one but again so little time. I highly highly recommend this one especially if you have kids) The long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder and also Little Town on the Prairie, and finally The manager’s path by Camille Fournier about software company management.
Looks like I’m about the last one to go to sleep here. I’d better stop now. I’m gonna post this after I get home.