Sunny St. Petersburg FL - murals and munchies at Love Food Café = many smiles

On a beautiful mid-February day, it was cool outside and besides we didn't have enough time to hit the beaches, but definitely wanted to see the Salvador Dali Museum and the murals all around this town. There's beaches all up and down the Sunshine State, right?

I don't know when it all started but there are dozens of murals everywhere (map) and even though I know they are everywhere around Chicago too, I simply never get tired of exuberant street art like this (another map).

We'd covered a lot of distance for a couple of days to reach St. Pete, and had another big day of driving ahead (to Labelle FL to surprise my folks), so mural-gazing made for a fun and relaxing day. All afternoon it sounded like we were watching fireworks: ooh... ahhh... what the... More often than not, the work is mind-blowingly creative. A lot of them are around the lively wheelchair-accessible tourist drag on Central Avenue, though we covered a wider area by staying in the car.

Like when you're watching fireworks, it helps to have some picnic along. Our picnic was carryout from Love Food Café, 2057 Central Avenue, St. Petersburg, FL, 727-317-2034 lured by great reviews on Yelp.

What a lunch. The reuben sandwich packed a spicy black pepper-type kick behind each bite, and came with a side of dill potato salad. Mab's fiesta salad was the daily special with avocado slices, black beans and a lot of other good stuff. It and the potato salad tasted so fresh. It was packaged in cardboard cartons. So satisfying for $10 a plate, and we showed around our blissed-out post-lunchtime grins to the rest of the murals and then to the Dali Museum. Wonderful day.

Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg FL - Brilliant art & wchair access (& Janice)

1 Dali Blvd, St. Petersburg, FL, (727) 823-3767, $10-25.
Website

5/24/20 Update: Still closed due to COVID. Call first, (727) 823-3767.

First I'm going to give you a name. Janice. Now remember that and read on.

If you like art, go. Here is the largest collection of the surrealist artist's work in America. Located on the marina waterfront of a city filled with incredible street murals, this building features a twisting belt of domed windows that bring to mind blue fly's eyes, definitely strange but not very interesting or evocative of the work inside. (Although there is a cool concrete spiral staircase that rises into the domed skylight. Of course Mab had to climb it. She sent me up alone in an elevator and I met her up top. It's the simple pleasures.) The building looks better on the website but try as we might, we never saw it from such a flattering angle. Maybe it's from a boat? No matter, what's inside will set you on fire - and the staff is exceptional too, as you'll see.



The collection includes some of the most famous works, including several enormous wall-sized paintings, and offers a number of supporting resources like apps and self-guided tours. The museum was built in 2011, so it is modern and accessible. Someone with the museum followed up with us while we were parking and transferring, telling us about the museum and the half-price tickets starting at  5 p.m. on Thursdays, their late night. ($12 instead of $24 per person.)

Mab and I were in awe seeing the works we'd loved for so long, and what enhanced our experience and made it even more special was our tour guide, Janice. I've got no knocks on the other guides and I'm sure they're all sharp, but everyone, especially if you are in a wheelchair, call in advance for Janice's tour schedule. She is both a walking, talking art encyclopedia and a fairy godmother of accessibility. Not only was she incredibly knowledgeable after 22 years of doing this, even traveling with Dali's widow in Spain (this is definitely someone you'd want to buy dinner for), and renders all the background and mystery to these mindbending work. It's like experiencing The Da Vinci Code - Dali Edition. But then she also gave me in my wheelchair the prime spot of the tour. While she talked, rattling off info to the group, she would also be cueing me with her eyes, fingers, flashlight where to park for best viewing or where to maneuver on the way to the next painting. She moved the group along at my pace, or backed them off, or made room so I never got stuck at the back of the pack staring at other people's rearends. Afterwards it turned out she was parked next to us, and she explained that there was someone in her life who used a wheelchair. I don't know how she did it all but I've been in a wheelchair for 27 years now (holy crap!) and I can't tell you what how great this was and she was. How good? A couple hundred miles away we camped next to David and Nancy from Maine, totally cool people, and they're like, "If you're ever in St. Petersburg go to The Dali Museum and there's this incredible docent named Janice…"

"We know, we know!"

Disappearing Bust of Voltaire

The online collection will make for a good evening of quarantine viewing. 

Next blog, the murals of St. Pete and a sweet vegan lunch at Love Food Central.

Gatoring

The Mighty Mab is training for the Big Virtual Climb, so we've been working out together, which probably sounds funny because I'm quadriplegic. But actually she works out, and I "gator." What's gatoring? Here's what I wrote about it a while ago:

A friend wrote me about an article I published.  Reading it, she was all pumped about getting back to the gym.  You bet I was flattered, and happy she was taking care of herself.  I may have thrown on some sweats and worked up a little sympathy lather myself.

A few months later, I heard from her again.  What was I thinking, she said, I'm no gym-rat.  I really tried, she said, really I did.  Maybe she'd get back to some sort of exercise, the letter continued, but thanks, at least your words were nice.

I was a little bit bummed, a little bit let down.  But also relieved: how could I tell her I'm lucky when I can get myself to exercise!  (Wicked columnist.)

I'll never set work-out records.  Even though it's good for me, even though I feel great afterward.  It's just that physical exertion, like doing the taxes or visiting the dentist, is infinitely easy to put off.  For most of us, any old excuse will do. 

But I wonder if it's how you frame it. Like, you don't have to start working out. We don't have to begin exercising every day.  We don't have to get cut and sexy like the moody underwear models are.  All we have to do is move, today, right now.  We can just have a good time.  We can even gator.

When I was a kid, we gatored.  Walking along, without warning we would drop to our backs and begin shaking and convulsing.  Sort of like the players that toppled over in the very old electric football games, remember those?  Those games with the little sponge footballs, where the entire football field vibrates?  Those fallen players you watched spasming in front of you?  They were gatoring, like I used to do. 

Remember David Byrne in the Once in a Lifetime video, cuffing himself in the forehead?  Early mass-market gatoring.

Gatoring was funny, it was unpredictable, it was fun, it was necessary.  The weirder the place, the better.  Best of all, there were no rules, you couldn't do anything wrong.  You just gatored. 

At a stoplight, sometimes it were a time fer a-gatorin'. On the sidewalk, on the lawn, on the hood of my buddy's Camaro (LIE: He would have killed me).

Wearing our black tails, we gatored at the senior prom.  God, the people there hated me.  They stopped on the dance floor and scowled, like "you freaks are ruining our prom memories." But we were making perfect memories for us.

I didn't learn gatoring technique from a book, or rent a gatoring exercise video.  I just did it, because it came naturally.

Now it's 20 years on, and we don't gator anymore.  We're too stiff and serious to gator.  That is part of the problem with maturing, you freeze up.  You become inflexible, you calcify, upstairs and down.  You get fat.  Forgetful, too.  Everything scheduled.

But I was listening to one of my favorite radio shows, called "Brain Brew."  It's about exchanging ideas between entrepreneurs, inventors and other creative types.  One of their weekly segments is called The Thirty-Second Guru, where a guest describes his philosophy in 30 ticks of the clock.  The guru who caught my attention was a Scottish fitness consultant (I can't make this stuff up, people) who spoke like he had a caffeine habit--he made Billy Connolly sound like Lurch from "The Addams Family."  But what really got my attention was that he was talking about gatoring!  Not the word gatoring (he couldn't possibly be that cool), but the concept. 

He said, Right now, start flailing.  Do it for 10 minutes, no rules, just go ballistic, kinetic.  Dive on that couch.  Flap around.  Do your best Mick Jagger, or at least Joe Cocker.  Shake your tail feather.  Windmill your arms.  Hop up and down.  Tumble.  Scream.  Squirm.  Twirl.  Spin your head, Linda Blair.  Shimmy, shake, rattle and roll.  If your spouse might yell or make derogatory comments, or you'll be embarrassed, then wait until they leave: screw 'em, they're missing out!  Do it until you are laughing, then rinse and repeat.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is gatoring.

People don't exercise because it requires this huge amount of effort every day, getting ready, getting the motivation and energy to do so, taking the shower afterward.  Myself included.  We don't need to do all that.  We just need to be active.  We just need to gator.  It is so good for you, prolonging your life and making it better, keeping the sex drive going strong, all kinds of rocking things we don't even know.  Did I say yet that it's funny?

My friend would sometimes find someone to watch the kid for 20 minutes.  Then she would pay for a carwash.  While the car was going through, she would scream her fool head off, and gator like there was no tomorrow!  She can scream, too!  If it was especially good, she might go across the street to Dunkin' Donuts for a coffee and cigarette.

That's it!  And guess what?  Gatoring is part of the new food pyramid they released this week--it's true!  So, gator, baby!  Gator for your life!

Go Mab!

Everglades National Park - Shark Valley and Gulf Islands Visitor Centers

In the morning, Shark Valley VC was crowded inside and out. Must mean it's good, right? There is a guided tram tour that I think is accessible, but the wait was a couple of hours and we nixed it. Out back leads to a boardwalk trail taking you through thick trees and swamp brush. Like the Anhinga Trail, it is solid, straight and easy-going for anyone in a chair. There was a small alcove patio where we saw a short ranger program. What can I say, I like rangers, like I like astronauts. Wholesome Wheelie.

Then we hit a paved trail that literally went for miles along a tiny canal with some water life to see. The highlight was a mother alligator and her nest of babies on the trailside, all clearly visible and only a few feet away. The Park Service recommends at least 10 feet distance from alligators and other wildlife, but this was right beside the path and you couldn't help but gape. There were at least a half-dozen little ones, really amazing.

Baby alligators there, I swear.

The trail itself was in decent shape and as wide as a street, with plenty of room for all the walkers, cyclists and strollers coming and going. The mother and baby alligators were one of the most memorable sights on the trip. Otherwise, without the tram tour we could have skipped Shark Valley. There were very cool things waiting elsewhere.

We drove to Gulf Islands Visitor Center at the northeast corner of the park, and only 10 miles from our campground, Trail Lakes Campground in Ochopee (more below). Yet here you drive US Highway 41,which if you take it all the way north, turns into Lake Shore Drive, so Chicago and the Everglades are on the same street. (Maybe that explains Chance the Snapper.) There's a 20-foot wide channel running most of the way. Its waters, tall grasses and mangrove trees were thick with waterbirds like ahinga and hurons and especially alligators that were visible to Mab even while she was driving. 41 runs through Big Cypress National Preserve, which looks like the grassy marshlands that we all think of as the Everglades. Mab thought it was funny that most of what we saw of the Everglades looked like prairie and forest. But you won't see but a fraction of it: It's a million-and-a-half acres. Along the way are dozens of tourist traps, gator shows and also the iconic airboats. You know I was scoping out those airboats! Most have bench seats or individuals seats that wouldn't offer the side support I'd need with weak upper-body strength. There were a couple with armrests that I might have been strapped into, but we didn't have the time to check them out.

From Gulf Islands VC, 90-minute boat tours leave every hour. They cost $40 and are wheelchair accessible. The concessionaire was surprised to learn that the one operating out of Flamingo Visitor Center doesn't offer accessibility. We got a few people to put in word about accessibility with the Park Service. Anyway, the crewmembers gave Mab and me the Leo and Kate I'm-the-king-of-the-world spot front and center. This part of the Everglades is called the Ten Thousand Islands. On a cloudy and breezy day we set out on a course between dozens of keys or small islands lining the southwestern coast of Florida.

Up ahead flew a bald eagle, the first we've ever seen in the wild. And then we found a pod of dolphins - or they found us. They were everywhere, including one that popped up right up below us. The ranger onboard said that dolphins are so smart and agile that they rarely get struck by vessels, they only like playing around. They were smaller and darker than their presence on the open seas, because they eat smaller fish and swim in murkier waters here. Ride was a blast.

The wind kicked up and the temperature dropped as we headed back. There were shivers on deck, but I was into it: I lowered my head into the wind and let it scratch my scalp which I can no longer itch. Anybody watching would be like, wheelchair boy's got a roly-poly head. If I had a hind leg like a dog it'd be kicking. Worth the cost of the ride alone!

Once ashore we hiked a little shoreline path through some woods to a timber observation tower - Mab needed to do some stairs! It turned out to be only three stories for $2, but it was fun watching her go after it. She doesn't mess around: you'd think there was a pot of gold at the top! On the way down she recited Juliet's monologue to Romeo watching down below. (They sure don't make Romeo's like they used to.)

Back on US-41 it's impossible to miss the Big Cypress National Preserve/Oasis Visitor Center. The huge deck along the front is lined with people, and since it's the Everglades you can guess why: there's gators aplenty in the canal just 10 feet below. A gangway of gators, shall we say, great big ones.

Here's where we also found out that dozens of panthers had already been killed on 41 in January and February alone. Drivers, slow down! By the way, we also drove an extra loop looking for sights just north of off US-41, and while we passed a few Panther Crossing signs that looked promising, we saw nothing and wasted an hour on the slow, rough gravel road. OK, have another gator:

We ended the day driving around Chokoloksy and Everglades City, a couple of small old seaside towns with a bit of history in them.

Everglades City

Trail Lakes Campground in Ochopee, FL, 239-695-2275, is a private campground, a bit rough and run down, but finding an open site this close at this time of year is something. Our site beside a tiny pond was gravel and grass, and not quite level. The Everglades mosquitoes are here in force, which makes the way you enter the toy hauler (where an entire wall flips down for a ramp) crucial. Technique: Turn out the lights for a minute or two beforehand, then drop that ramp and rocket your wheelchair inside. We were so busy and tired by the end of the day that we didn't even check for TV reception, but I think I remember a decent Verizon cell signal. (Didn't even journal it. zzzz) Nor did we make it into the Skunk Ape Museum at the camp entrance. Mr. Skunk Ape is the stanky swamp cousin of Bigfoot. There are a couple of life-sized Skunkers at the site, which I would love to have outside of my house, and there's a dinosaur too. Check-in was a little bit strange, but that was the tempo of the place. Electric, water, I don't remember if it was sewer but dump station, for the low $50's. It's not great, but the location definitely is, and here met the coolest bunch of folks of our entire trip, some of whom stay here every winter. For them we might come back.