If you take Brightline expect to see some tourists from New York. The train got a great plug in yesterday’s New York Times Travel section, which told its readers that the drive from Ft. Lauderdale to Miami takes one hour. As we all know, it can take one hour, during morning rush hour for instance, but most of the time (barring any accidents) it takes considerably less time. Weekends, when I tend to go, it’s usually 30 minutes. Lately I’ve been driving down on Wednesday afternoons, sometimes around rush hour, and it’s taken me 40 minutes (using the express lanes). That is only a little longer than the train trip.
The story didn’t mention the tickets until the next to last paragraph, noting that they cost “$10 to $30 each way.” Another not untrue but misleading statement. It made it sound like, if you go for the cheapest seats, the trip is eminently affordable. When we tried to take the train to Miami one Saturday morning back in December the fare was $20 one way, which meant two roundtrip tickets would have set Hania and me back $80. I met a Brightline executive at an event a few weeks back and told him that it just didn’t make fiscal sense for us to take the train to Miami. He admitted, “We’re not for everyone.” Perhaps, in the interests of comprehensive reporting, the New York Times could have mentioned that.
A tragic day in the history of Florida, yet one whose aftermath has made us proud to say we live here.
South Florida vanities come to dust on I-95.
As I listened to the news this morning it occurred to me that I never want to live in a city that has "warming stations."
After buying a card at Grand Central Stationery yesterday I decided to continue down Las Olas and see if I could find Roger Stone’s house.
I drove slowly past the “isles,” looking down each dead end street for local news vans. None were visible. Eventually I turned into a street to check the house numbers – I had noticed Stone’s in the background of one of the TV interviews – and saw that I had at least picked the right side of Las Olas.
A man was backing out of his driveway up ahead and as he came toward me I rolled down my window and put out my hand. “Do you know where Roger Stone’s house is?” I asked a bit sheepishly.
“It’s the next isle over,” he told me readily, which concerned me a little as I wondered if I looked like a friend of Roger Stone. But a friend, you’d think, would know the address.
I got back on Las Olas and then made a quick left onto Stone’s street. No news vans were parked outside the house – I would learn later he had flown to D.C. – but a large portrait of someone covered the glass of the second entrance door. At first I wondered if it might be of Stone, but on my way back I thought it looked more like Richard Nixon. Either way, if it was up last week it would have reassured the FBI agents that they had the right address.
Woke up this morning to find the news dominated by the story of the pre-dawn arrest of longtime Trump associate Roger Stone at his home in Fort Lauderdale – a few miles from my condo. Makes me long for the days of rowdy spring breakers.