This time, Jack’s corner is in a topless Ford Mustang en route to Key West. Featuring Jamie.  
Some days, life isn’t fair. Your girlfriend breaks up with you. You don’t win your tennis final. Your pet Jack Russell dies. But some days, you’re driving 100km/h in a mustang over a sea of glistening turquoise, with the top off, and your favourite Hawaiian shirt on. And it’s moments like this where you realize you’re right; life isn’t fair at all. Why? Well Josh had left yesterday, and the poor kid was missing one hell of a trip.

So, to make you feel a bit better Josh, here is a brief account of all the shit things that happened (everyone else, feel free to skip to the next paragraph).

– There was no Chipotle there.

– You know that statue of Jesus underwater? We couldn’t go there. Turns out you have to catch a boat out there. And turns out boats trips aren’t cheap. 

– It got cold on our trip home so we had to put the roof back on, which meant I couldn’t stare at the stars any more.

It’s funny. There are some places you always hear about. People rave about the likes of London, Paris, New York, Cinque Terre, Las Vegas, Tokyo, Ubud, the list goes on. But the one thing you never hear of is the Florida Keys. Which makes no fucking sense at all. Not just because Las Vegas is a glorified, over-rated concrete jungle full of white trash and strippers. And white trash strippers. But because Florida Keys is amazing! 

The place has such a cool vibe. It’s the opposite of everything you expect from America. Here, bigger isn’t better. There isn’t a Starbucks on every corner. It’s not littered with billboards. It’s littered with amazing street performers and even if they weren’t amazing, it would still be amazing because, well, look at that view. 

  
But as I write this, I realize our day trip wasn’t perfect. And that was the exact problem: It was only a day trip. How could we be so stupid? How could we not realize that this place was going to be so spectacular that a 12-hour road trip wouldn’t suffice? But maybe that’s exactly what we needed. For most of this trip, we had been able to go at our own pace. Take our time to enjoy things. After all, we had 2 months! But things were so fast paced on this day that there was never any dead time.

Even on the long drive out to the keys, there was always something to keep you interested, something that felt new. Felt different. Felt interesting. Like the turtle hospital we drove past. Which was surprisingly large. How many sick turtles are really out there? And what do sick turtles get sick with? Is there a turtle-born Ebola strand? Anyway, it was just nice to know we had a place to send Platty if he got sick. 

I sincerely hope I get to come back here one day. And I hope you can join me. Yes, you. You know who you are.