Miami, Day 1

The first flight was a small-ish jet from Omaha to Chicago. A large New York Yankees fan slept in the row behind us the entire flight, snoring. It sounded like a 7-ear-old aggressively trying to extract the last bit of chocolate malt, through a large straw, from a large paper cup which perpetually had two tablespoons of chocolate malt left in the bottom. How I wished that was an exaggeration. Somehow Doug managed to sleep quietly through the whole affair. I practiced writing unit tests in NetBeans in an effort to stifle my urge to giggle.

When we got off the plane in Chicago, there was an announcement over the loudspeakers about how the threat level had been raised to orange, and how we were to all be extra vigilant in some way that yellow did not imply. Though the second flight was delayed, it was uneventful. More unit tests.

Our lodging is Don Shula's golf course, not too far from anywhere in Miami. Doug loves to golf and chose this place so that he could squeeze in a few holes on Sunday morning. The first thing we noticed about the place was how all of the artwork on the walls are sepia-toned photographs of angus cows: eating, bathing, standing in the shade, being watched over by a rugged rancher, etc. This is in Miami, recall. Perhaps the scenes seem faraway and exotic to the owner. Or maybe they just have a cow fetish. (I later discovered that the rugged rancher is someone named Mr. Graham, related to Bob, whose family owns the entire area.)

Last night, after arriving, we drove down to Miami Beach and walked around Lincoln Mall, which was a great place to watch people. This pale, geeky Nebraska boy was awestruck by the abundance of amazon women and alpha men, all dressed in a way that indicated either affluence or a willingness to go into debt, parading each other about. It was cartoonish. Indeed, there is an entire ocean of fish out there.

Doug just got back from golfing. It's 65 degrees here and the locals were complaining about how cold it is. Doug, wearing shorts, was telling them about the temps in Nebraska to help them appreciate the here & now.