Tourist Town Makes My World Go Round: April 2011

Traffic

Getting place to place in Panama City requires a lot of driving as everything is stretched for miles down the coast line. This is a problem for most who do not know their way around the city as the street names and directions are random and lack a logical order found in most street systems. You could be totally lost looking for Dolphin Street off of Pompano while at the same time driving parallel five feet away from a street you just turned off of. Sound frustrating? Try following behind these hopelessly lost people going 5 mph in a 35 as they miss their turn because they were looking at the beach while all at the same time your late to a job where you will probably have to serve them. You simply have to laugh to keep from running this minivan driving family off of the road as every year they turn the secret back roads into main roads and main roads into parking lots.

Drowning in a Kayak

As most of us know ocean waters are generally pretty calm in Florida during the warmer months so kayaking seems like a safe fun activity to participate in at the beach. However, if you were from another state reading local headlines you would be convinced that gulf kayaking was as dangerous as mixing sleeping pills with alcohol. There were multiple cases that happened right where I go to the beach almost every day, one of which happened while I was surfing one hot afternoon. Me and a few of my buddies were out surfing for a good five or six hours so we were oblivious to why there were two police trucks and a black CSI looking van down on the beach pointing out towards our direction. After catching our attention I immediately put together the reason for the commotion as only a half an hour earlier we had all seen an empty kayak being swept down the beach thinking nothing of it until a body was being pulled from the water 30 yards from where I was catching waves. Those crazy tourists, trying to ride those kayaks upside down.

Cooler Down

While never seeing an actual balcony fall I have see the next best thing when it comes to gravity driven tourist take downs. Beach access staircases can be very big and steep and are hilarious to sit by and watch people try to make it down them with their huge coolers. Once in a while you will strike gold and see someone fall from the top, as people, beer, and ice water hit every stair, eventually landing at the bottom dented and beat up. The first instinct is to be concerned and ask the person if he or she is ok. However, upon my experience those who fall that hard are usually numb drunk and do not notice the blood running from their ears as they answer yeah and offer up a beer as a bribe of silence. The funniest thing to me is the people are more worried about the coolers than the people as anyone who sees this natural phenomenon runs and starts to clean up the contents of the cooler before the person who fell even returns to their feet.

Balcony Falls

While people dying or getting hurt is no laughing matter you do have to laugh to keep from crying when you read in the papers of another tourist going down due to their own stupidity. There are so many headlines of people falling off of balconies that it has dehumanized the victims making it ok to crack a laugh now and again. Who would have thought that a balcony is a real risk to hotel dwelling tourists as the this is the most commonly reported cause of death to these people. There are even dozens of annual balcony fall survivors who go unreported and sometimes you actually run into them and hear their stories. Never adds up though as the people’s stories always consist of I was wasted….. I woke up in the hospital, providing no clues as to how so many people make it over a four foot balcony safety rail while in blackout trashed mode. Nevertheless it happens more than occasionally and there probably could be some money made if it were turned into a nighttime spectator attraction.
For a special on balcony falls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXlh1-dLoQw&feature=player_embedded

Alcohol abuse

I have never seen more drinking in my life outside of PC. The people who pay my wage are a bunch of closet alcoholics and it is so funny to watch these people set up their beach party one afternoon then party all the way into the next week where they continue for rounds one through seven in the hot sun. The best personal example of this was near my home while surf was up one weekend during spring break 2007. Early that Saturday afternoon I met a group from Alabama while checking the waves at a nearby beach access. The first time I saw these people they were setting up their beach party at around 12pm and as I left I simply brushed the meeting aside until I returned the next morning around 6:30 am to get on the clean morning swell. As I walked up the access again I noticed that the spring breakers, some still partying while other face down in the sand, were still going hard like no one was watching. I was shocked at the mess they had made and immediately lost my composure and started laughing when one guy filled up his beer bong then passed it cross eyed to his passed out friend laying on his back. With no one to catch the beer bong it fell from his hand onto the other guys chest, beer spilling everywhere and the guy on the ground didn’t even move a muscle while his friend proceeded to call him a light weight and a pussy. While out surfing I watched as I waited between sets and after about four hours in the water the people who had been up all night were finally collapsing and the people who went down last night were rising towards the coolers. Soon after paddling in everyone was up again hitting the beer bong in the am hours just to get ready for the drinking that lie ahead that afternoon. Their heavy binge drinking caught my interest and I watched this cycle continue from the first Saturday afternoon until their departure one week later, never seeing any of them sober for a minute.