Navigational Anxiety
At the conclusion of Trawler Fest in Stuart, Florida, I drove south to visit a couple of companies on my list of interesting opportunities.
I decided to drive down Route 1, the venerable highway sometimes referred to as “Old Post Road,” which slowly winds from Florida’s Keys to Maine. It is a historic route long ago supplanted by Interstate 95 on the U.S. East Coast. It would take four times longer than the interstate, but it would meander through Florida’s coast towns, up close and personal.
Passing through Jupiter, I was dazzled by the luxury and new construction–and the turquoise clear waters of Hobe Sound. Farther south, I began to notice the occasional evidence of last year’s hurricanes. A sign would be conspicuously missing here, debris piled over there. And, as I inched my way south, from stoplight to stoplight, I became aware of a surprising fact. This was the end of January 2006, fully three months after the last hurricane ravaged South Florida.
I could not believe my eyes as I approached West Palm Beach along Route 1. There was damage everywhere, indiscriminate of church or store or residence or commercial building. There were sign frames all along the road, but not a sign in sight. Every company building was missing at least one letter of its name, whether it was Ta–o B–ll, Pe–si Co–a, or Su– Tru–t Ba–k. It was surreal, punctuated by a disproportionate number of people walking the sides of Route 1 with garbage bags over their shoulders.
I stopped at a gas station, sensing I had better get fuel while I could find it, and within seconds, a young, grungy fellow appeared, asking for money. I shoved off in short order.
Along Route 1, I saw boarded–up windows, blue–tarped roofs, and businesses simply gone, replaced with sandlots surrounded by yellow police tape. I continued southward, and building after building lay empty, its former occupants out of business or forced elsewhere. Gas stations seemed to have vanished from the landscape. Even a luxury condominium high–rise building had a telltale sheet of plywood over a window. I saw stucco ripped off in large sections of homes and buildings everywhere.
By the time I reached Ft. Lauderdale, I also found I had trouble navigating even somewhat familiar roads. I have a GPS and an onboard navigation system in the car, as well as all sorts of paper maps from my repeated trips south. Unfortunately, the lack of signage for directions and street names made it exceedingly difficult to navigate my way west through town. And finding a location I had not yet visited reduced me to one very confused navigator. A road that the computer considered Local 828 might be shown on the paper map as University Road, although a newly installed street sign indicated the road as SW 16th Street. My various electronic devices proved worthless in the new world of South Florida, where there has not been enough time or resources to combine multiple names of the road into one sign.
It reminded me of a cruise last season, where we were forced to use varying (and not complementary) navigation information to figure out where we were and determine our course. It forced me into a state of mind that somehow combined all input and sorted it by relevance, spitting out useless information and trying to resolve and understand the conflicts in the information.
Have you ever seen a series of bright lights between you and the coast, lights that may or may not be somehow together or in close proximity? Have you ever had trouble determining if they belonged to a cruise ship, or a fishing fleet, or maybe even a resort town on shore? If so, then you know the feeling. And it is humbling when one thinks he has all the gear, but has no clue where he is.
Another lesson learned.
Bill Parlatore
Editor in Chief