Follow Me Home
06 - 11 June 2024
This bit was supposed to be easy.
After an all-day drive from Savannah, two bouts of decompression were the plan.
A few days in Port St Lucie was as effortless and relaxing as the last time I was here, two and a bit years ago. Early dinners in the good local restaurants and top-notch cheffing from my host, the highlight of which was a butterflied leg of lamb, served with a big Aussie red, Astralis 2011. This was as memorable as when we last shared a bottle in December 2016. Richard had kindly saved the last bottle in his cellar to celebrate a successful end to my tour.
Throw in a trip to the beach, the inevitable sunburn and a visit to the wonderful Conchy Joes and it really does feel like a holiday. With hindsight then, it was tempting fate to book a flight from Fort Lauderdale to a tiny island in the Bahamas to see a longtime friend and his partner.
The forecast was that the Rainy Season would start on Monday. Usually, this takes the form of a refreshing downpour most afternoons, after which the sun comes out again before night falls. Bright mornings then follow. This cycle goes on for about a month.
12 - 13 June 2024
Wednesday morning. It’s hammering down with rain and implausibly looks like staying that way all day. First thing, the flight is delayed by an hour and by the time I get to the airport, it’s been put back by another. And then another two before finally cancelling it. It’s hardly surprising as the airport apron is a sea. It takes another hour to queue and rebook only to be told there is no seat availability until Friday. They agree to a full refund but only about 70% comes back on my card. “Not our problem” they say, “It’s the company who run the website. I understand your frustration, sir. Is there anything else I can help you with today, sir? Well, have a nice day.”
Inwardly I seethe: “How can I have a nice day after this shit-show, you fucking moron.” but any outward displays of aggression will probably land me in hot water so quickly book a basic, $200-a -night airport hotel, while I can as they are bound to fill up, given the chaos. I then wait another hour while the courtesy bus sloshes its way through two feet of water to the pickup zone and back again.
I try and find alternative bookings but the airline pricing algorithms have been doing their grasping, inequitous work and the cheapest return is now showing as a laughable $3,085 for two, hour-long flights. I’m on the point of binning the trip when I get a text from my pal’s partner who is an expert at playing these extortionists at their own game.
Biding her time, she’s spotted a flight from Miami, leaving at 10:20 the following morning and getting me back to Orlando on Sunday evening as originally planned. At $700, it’s still steep compared to the original one but I do want to see them. They are splendid company but rarely in the UK, having developed a taste for the Caribbean lifestyle.
The meter starts running again (literally) the next morning as an Uber gets me to Miami Airport at 06:50. The scene resembles the scramble for the last flight out of Saigon. Every square inch of space is fought-over in the rammed check-in area and departure lounge. I only just make the gate…
The arrival airport looks like something from that Carry On film where Sid James is the lecherous, addled, explorer Bill Boosey. An elaborate, solemn immigration process gives way to a free-for-all baggage reclaims charade on the Tarmac. You give your name to a porter who wanders through the perimeter fence to find your bag and carries it to a taxi for a $5 tip. The fare for the 1.2 mile to the dock is a high-speed, bumpy, dusty affair on unmade roads and costs $10, plus a $5 tip.
I’m being coy about the location and the names of those involved. This island is where 0.000004% of the world’s population, those with a net worth north of $100 million, go when they want to get completely off the grid and surround themselves with others in the same, fortunate situation. No one has consented to be written about and many will have understandable concerns about security for themselves and their families. So it’s only fair I keep the picture a bit blurry.
I’ll refer to my host only as Sir Henry as, some years ago, he started to assume some of the same characteristics as Vivian Stanshall’s, cantankerous, sozzled, comic masterpiece, Sir Henry Rawlinson of Rawlinson’s End. To give but one example, he was once spotted striding purposefully around his acreage at 03:00 AM naked, save for a pair of Wellington Boots, a deerstalker and brandishing a hunting rifle to try and rid his land of a predator that has developed a taste for his Koy carp. I promise you I’m not making this up.
Sir Henry’s is a modest island estate comprising a main house, guest house, boathouse with another bedroom and private jetty, pool with dining area and bar. It’s an achingly beautiful property, respecting local styles, materials and landscape but with top-notch bathrooms, kitchens and plumbing that works. More impressively, he designed it all himself despite having no formal training as an architect. There’s the odd idiosyncratic touch such as the palms that frame the view of the ocean from the main house have been planted to look like those on Tracey Island from Thunderbirds, a nod to the owner’s vintage.
He rents it out some of the time and it’s well worth $16,000 to $20,000 a night if you fancy it. Yes, you did read that correctly. And there are plenty of people happy to stump up for this level of exquisite, restrained luxury. One example is a recording artist, scarcely known outside of the US but a major domestic name, who has laid down tracks for her next album here. Another is a sports star who is taking the place for most of August.
So having been collected from the jetty on his boat and whisked over to the tiny island, I’m given a quick tour in what looks like a golf cart with chunky tyres and long-travel suspension. It’s soon clear why these carts are the preferred methods of transport as most roads are dirt tracks. Nominally, one should drive on the right but this seems largely optional.
Drinking and driving is tolerated insofar a laissez-faire government acknowledges that having a whale of a time is part of the culture and is part of the island’s appeal. The slightly messy compromise is: To avoid the attention of the law; avoid accidents. It probably also helps that there is only so much trouble you can get into on a golf cart and the dirt roads act as a form of traffic-calming.
But amidst the easy-going, chaotic thrum of the small town, is a beautiful bar overlooking a crescent of fine sand where we’re tucking into superb tortilla chips with cubes of sashimi, washed down with iced beer. A gentle breeze blows off the Caribbean.
After a mid-afternoon snooze on air-conditioned, 1000-thread count sheets, we meet in the pool bar before heading out for the evening’s event. And there is an event every evening and it looks like everyone is invited to everything. This one was organised by the local yacht brokerage who have recently redeveloped the harbour. They’ve invited their Florida clients and organised three days of partying for the flotilla that has sailed from Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Palm Beach. People they know on the island (and their house guests…) are also invited.
From a writing point of view, the easiest thing now would be to pen a couple of spittle-flecked, envy-green paragraphs about what arseholes these people are and if they were, I would. But they’re not. Everyone I’m introduced to is charming in their own way, albeit deflective of even small-talk questions. A man who has read some of my pieces has bikes and asks me what business I’m in that allows me to take four months off. I explain that I’m now consulting, part-time and ask if he too is retired or retiring
“Not really”, he explains. “I help out in the family business from time to time.”
Sir Henry later explains this man’s ‘family business’ is a major public company in which they have retained a notable stake.
A lady asks if I’ve been in the ocean yet as the temperature is perfect. In innocence, I say I’ve only paddled in it. She has a naughty schoolgirl demeanour, a wicked laugh, and provides a more outré definition of ‘paddling’, cackling at my evident shock. She also tells me of a pecking order on the island and will ask me in a couple of days at the party on Saturday if I’ve figured it out.
This will be difficult as they all seem nice people, enjoying their obvious good fortune but extending a genuine welcome to a relatively impoverished stranger into the world he is only tangentially connected to.
At about 20:00 when the reception is winding down, our host decides it would be great fun to go for an impromptu early evening cruise. We clamber onto a recent trade-in from a European sporting figure who has just upgraded to a bigger version of the same thing. It’s a glamorous but tasteful medley of Gun Metal grey hull and bodywork with British Tan upholstery, accented by hardwood decking and expensive-looking stainless steel fittings.
Champagne corks pop as we embark on the hour-long voyage. Sir Henry insists we moor at his dock for more drinks at his bar before returning to the harbour, having burnt a shameful 120 gallons of fuel on our little pleasure ride.
Sir Henry is next to me as we stagger up the steps to a harbourside restaurant for dinner.
“So”, I ask him. “Can you point to a specific moment in time when you realised your life had gone horribly wrong?”
15 June 2024
After a late breakfast and beach walk. I summon up the resolve to reflect on the motorcycling element of this odyssey, that already seems a long time ago. So after the requisite afternoon snooze, I install myself in the beach bar with my laptop.
The two different realities are difficult to reconcile: the constant riding, day after day, of challenges of one sort or another next to this, idyllic, nothing-to-worry-about, parallel universe. And maybe I shouldn’t even try as they are just different sides of the same coin or different cards I’ve fortunately been dealt.
The overall tour experience has been nothing short of fabulous: a one-in-a-lifetime, epic exploration of a simply magnificent country with the greatest of natural sights and symbols of human achievement.
In ‘Travels with Charley’, Steinbeck correctly warns against generalising national characters, dismayed by friends who, having spent two weeks in Europe, then feel qualified to characterise THE English as having bad teeth, THE Germans being humourless, THE Dutch being nosey and so on. Apart from the Dutch, of course, this stereotyping is profoundly unjust.
Likewise, it would be palpably laughable to summarise the characteristics of 330 million people into a few sentences, given the cultural and racial melting pot that the USA is. But I will go as far as saying the traits of openness, helpfulness, positive-thinking and good humour are common denominators. When these interactions have been more intensive (BMW dealers being the most prominent group…), these values have been turned all the way up to eleven.
With hindsight, I’ve been lucky to escape the biking bit unscathed. The only wounds that have needed licking are financial and these will heal. But it’s the weather that has been the one factor - this sojourn into the Caribbean also - that has been the recurring issue.
I tried to recall how many good versus bad weather days I had between 01 March and 06 June but that misses the point. More salient is I’ve never been more than 72 hours away from weather or traffic that can kill you. On any return, this will be top of mind.
It isn’t possible to tour the US the way I did, in one continuous three-month episode, in anything resembling comfort or safety. I suggest it needs doing region-by-region, when there is a better chance the weather will be favourably calibrated for the area you’re in. It may have been just possible once: I say that as I did look at historic average, high and low temperatures for each route but most of them were way off in practice, so next to useless as a planning resource.
US cities and motorcycles also just don’t work. Anywhere in the sphere of influence of a major conurbation is the stage for the same brand of myopic, seething rage that infects most UK motorways. In the early stages, I got seduced into thinking that the good folk of Texas, Colorado, Utah and Arizona must reflect the entire country but they don’t. Miami, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Detroit, Boston and Atlanta in particular are hellish on two wheels. Any reprising of stages from this tour will aggressively exclude these places.
The sixteen Sonos speakers around the pool and bar area are precisely tuned to allow music, even when played at low volume, to be heard with perfect clarity. Writing this, I’ve got Dire Straits’ sophomore album from 1979, Communiqué, playing in the background and understand now why this collection sounds so different from all their others. It’s as if the soft, lilting rhythms and rich, sultry production absorbed the swaying palms and sound of the ocean lapping the shore while the cicadas chirp away. Listen to the final track, close your eyes, and you’ll be there. It’s everything they say. The end of a perfect day, distant lights from across the bay.
“Oh well the sun go down
Celebration in the town tonight…
Follow me home”
After a delicious buffet dinner at the marina (lobster surf & turf; no rubber chicken for billionaires…), the naughty school girl asks me if I’ve figured the pecking order out.
“Partially,” I venture “In terms of economic clout, I think I’m slightly above the wait staff but below everyone else here.”
Seriously, I haven’t worked it out. Apart from the chunky watches, it’s just a bunch of casually dressed, friendly, middle-aged folk enjoying themselves enormously. I’m flattered that a few have even remembered my name, but well-mannered Americans all seem to have mastered this skill.
16 June 2024
It’s a complex journey back to Orlando. Boat, Taxi, flight to Charlotte, North Carolina and the jeopardy of US Immigration process before an internal flight to Orlando. So plenty of scope for things to go wrong.
The airport building is so small, it can only allow check-in or passport control for any one flight at any one time. And the aircraft can only take fifty passengers or less. So after an hour’s wait in an airless room to check my bag, I’m out in the street again in the 95º heat along with all the other passengers for the Charlotte flight.
Eventually, we make it through to the ‘Departure Lounge’, a Portacabin that does at least have air conditioning. Sir Henry had told me how he once needed to guide a baffled and increasingly intemperate Robert Plant, he of Led Zeppelin fame, through this arcane process. It ended with the former preening sex-god grumpily slumped in the lounge, refusing selfie requests from two Victoria’s Secret models of Sir Henry’s acquaintance. I thought it hilarious that anyone could be quite so petulant, but having experienced the same torture first hand, La Plant now has my sympathy.
If we can just get off the ground, all will be well, I tell myself. And we nearly did.
With everyone on board, 30 minutes early, the aircraft taxis out and I nod off. Awaking forty minutes later, I realise it wasn’t an unusually smooth take-off as we’re still on the runway. A few minutes later, the Captain announces a braking system is showing a fault and an engineer will need flying in from a neighbouring island. This being Sunday afternoon, he cannot say how long this will take.
All passengers troop back to the now hopelessly overcrowded departure Portacabin. Two hours later, there is no news but there are a limited number of spaces on a flight operated by a rival carrier to Fort Lauderdale for anyone prepared to pay for another ticket.
There is a war-zone evacuation stampede back to the check-in area with me in the leading pack. It’s not a simple case of first-come, first-served as weight distribution within the aircraft and total weight (including luggage) are factors as these propeller-driven aeroplanes are so small. I’m the last passenger allowed to book just as American Airlines announced the delayed flight has been scheduled for 04:30 the following morning with a nine-hour layover in Charlotte. Had I waited, I would have missed my flight back to London the next afternoon, despite allowing a full day of contingency.
So feeling fortunate but $500 poorer, the little plane takes off. I can just see Sir Henry’s pool and terrace, overlooking the ocean where we were having coffee this morning as we bank westward, away from the island towards the Florida coast.
17 & 18 June 2024
Twenty-four hours later, there's no queue at the Virgin Atlantic check-in at Orlando. I’m whisked through security to the lounge they share with Delta.
The flight leaves bang on time and a...
Oh, I can't be arsed to write the same tedious account of premium class air travel any more than anyone has read one needs to read another. Some things just work and over 30 years, I don’t think I’ve been badly let down by Virgin. Winningly, the cabin crew have always been on-the-money, regardless of what class you travel and so there is nothing untoward to report here either.
But boring predictability teamed with competence is what's been missing in my life these last few days so when VS92 touches down, to-the-minute on time, the relief is tinged with regret as I’ve come to almost enjoy the different challenges that have been flung my way, nearly every day.
The shiny, newish Elizabeth Line is full of visitors and commuters all the way into central London. In stark contrast to public transport in the USA, that’s always buzzing with various tongues, it’s like a library. London commuters are a stoical bunch (they have to be…), and are used to hanging on in quiet desperation so this new line is much-loved already for its calm, air-conditioned, reliability and speed.
After Stratford, the Central Line emerges from its burrow and clanks its way through what’s left of the green belt to Epping. A rattle-trap taxi drops me off a few minutes later.
I put the key in the front door I locked 123 days ago. It’s over.