Category: Driving

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Driving History

Monday Night Countdown

This week’s countdown is only of interest to those of you who are my fellow citizens of Homestead Florida. For the rest of you I’ll have something special for you later.

Here are my TOP 5 favourite east-west streets that I drive on a regular basis:

5.  SW 344TH St. / SE 24TH St. / Palm Drive
If Homestead had a perimeter road or a loop or a beltway then this would be the southern segment of it. Every Johnson that I know lives within several yards of it. 😀

4.  SW 304TH St. / NE 15TH St. / Kings Highway
It’s the ‘less-stressway’ alternative to the Campbell Drive concrete jungle, and it’s how I get to the church office from the movie theatre.

3.  SW 312TH St. / NE 8TH St. / Campbell Drive
It’s the new Kendall Drive. It’s our ‘Strip’. It’s the modern commercial downtown district of the city. If you’re in a hurry then avoid it.

2.  SW 288TH St. / NE 31ST St. / Biscayne Drive
I bet that you didn’t know that Biscayne Drive marked a small portion of the northern city limits of Homestead and is our NE 31ST St. just north of the Waterstone Plaza. This is how I get to work every weekday morning.

1.  SW 328TH St. / SE 8TH St. / North Canal Drive / Lucy Street
It’s the road that I’ve travelled on more than any other road here in the city. It’s been my personal ‘Main Street’ for the past 13½-years. At its widest point Homestead is six miles across, and this is the only street that you can drive at that wide point.

South Dade County In January 1947 - Goulds To Florida City
South Dade County In January 1947 - Goulds To Florida City
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Animals Computers Driving History Life Music Radio

Saturday Night Retro

1997. It’s the year that I turned 30-years-old and celebrated my 10TH anniversary of living and working here in Homestead Florida. I ditched my longtime 1989 Geo Spectrum (bought brand new) after over 96,700 miles, and I joined the Saturn family by buying my first of three fine cars from the company. I lost my original 486-SX desktop computer system due to a catastrophic hard drive failure, and when that happened ‘MANx CAT BBS’ died after four years. That original classic bulletin board system spun-off ‘MANx ON THE NET’ which evolved into ‘MASSIVESMASH.COM‘ which inspired my MySpace blog of 2007 which morphed into this WordPress blog that you know and love right here.

Boots was my feline buddy and roommate, and I was a loyal and devoted Y-100 TOP 40 radio listener at home, at work, and in the car. Last Saturday night on the ‘Retro’ I presented Reunion’s “Life Is A Rock (But The Radio Rolled Me)” from 34 years ago. Tonight for your ‘Retro’ review I present to you one of the biggest smash hits on the radio from 1997, and it’s kind of like a modern update to Reunion’s classic track from 1974. It’s “I Want You” – the debut smash from the multi-Platinum-selling Australian duo known as Savage Garden.

Check it out:

Categories
Animals Driving Food Health Holidays Home Shopping Television

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

1.  It’s Veterans Day all across the great United States Of America, and it’s the Federal Holiday each year that means the most to me personally. I stopped everything that I was doing at exactly 11:11 AM this morning. I checked out the big three cable news networks – Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC – and not a single one of them had LIVE coverage of any Veterans Day ceremony anywhere. What a shame.

2.  On both Saturday and Sunday I drove more than 80 miles each day. That’s about 4 times my daily average. It was an exhausting first-half of my long holiday weekend, and a more peaceful and quiet second-half (yesterday and today). I actually felt a real subtle hint of a possible 8TH cold in 12 months coming on this morning. I took an extra 500 MG Vitamin C tablet to fight this fight because I don’t have time for another cold this week – or next week.

3.  This morning I went to Publix – where shopping is a pleasure – about 10 minutes after they opened for business shortly after 7 AM. I did my grocery shopping for the next couple of weeks. After that I went to McDonald’s to pick-up breakfast. You get faster service when you actually get out of your car, walk in to the joint, and order the food face-to-face to an actual human being (rather than a drive-thru speaker).

4.  I did a little mini ‘The Major’s Walk-A-Thon’ this morning. I walked to and from the clubhouse near the main entrance of my neighbourhood. That’s a little more than a half-a-mile round-trip. I had to do my annual vehicle registration there. Prior to last year a lazy me would have driven it. Nowadays I see a mile or two and think ‘Walk-A-Thon’. I saw a new cat during this mini walk. The feline looked at me from afar and sighed to himself or herself, ‘Friend – Not Foe’.

5.  Ford Championship Weekend is just two days away at our Homestead-Miami Speedway, so you just know what that means – tens of thousands of out-of-town tourists and NASCAR fans galore descending on our home turf spending their hard-earned money in our stores and restaurants. Show them respect. Be nice to them. Welcome them to our fine city. Invite them back for more fun.

Categories
Driving Food God Shopping

The Major’s Walk-A-Thon / Saturday Night Retro: Special ‘Mash-Up’ Edition

TODAY I took the walk on-the-road, and it was just like old times:

1.  I drove over 80 miles today over the course of 8 hours, and my first stop was Miami Beach. Last year I missed it, but this year I went back to the South Florida International Auto Show at the Miami Beach Convention Center. This is the only annual event that I attend at the Convention Center. It’s the one place where all of South Florida’s automobile dealerships come together and show off their new goods. My visits through each of the exhibits are rather brisk, so I can typically do a round-robin through it all in about 2 to 3 hours. You can easily spend the entire day there. It’s a lot of fun for the whole family !

2.  I spent more time with the Hondas than with most of the other car exhibits. My next car will probably be a Honda Civic Si Coupe. Or maybe I’ll get a Mitsubishi Eclipse. I’ve been driving around in a Saturn for nearly a dozen years. That’s over 131,000 miles of driving. (I’ve been keeping track.) Back in 1997 when I bought my first Saturn they were hip cars from an innovative car company. Nowadays they appear to be a shell of their former selves. They don’t even make any of the three models that I’ve owned anymore. Their exhibit at the auto show was really lame too with a small footprint. That tells me that the’re struggling as a company.

3.  One of my favourite games at the auto show is to try to guess the colour of the car. What looks red or green or blue isn’t really red or green or blue. The actual names of the particular colours are much more complicated than that. A lot of cool car colours have the word ‘copper’ in them. I saw three spectacular car colours in particular that were named ‘urban titanium’, ‘polished metal’, and ‘black cherry’. The first two colours were essentially dark variations of bluish-gray while black cherry looked black to me until I got up real close to it and noticed a hint of maroon. I can see myself driving around in an urban titanium coloured car.

4.  After my tour throughout the auto show I took I-395 to U.S. 1 straight down to The Shops At Sunset Place. It was my first visit to one of my former playgrounds here in South Florida in a couple of years. I watched that joint get built exactly a decade ago, and when it finally opened for business in 1999 it was the place to be. I planned entire Saturdays around that place with the Virgin Megastore, the Barnes & Noble, and the AMC-24 being must-stops. Walking through that mall nowadays is like walking through time and remembering the way my life (not capitalized) used to be. The more things change the more things stay the same. Many of the original stores are long gone and replaced with something different, and the mall is definitely showing its age – perhaps quicker than it should be. It needs a good pressure washing and a paint job !  But if there ever was a mall here in South Florida that I ‘grew up’ at it’s this one – even if that growing up occurred during my wild and crazy 30s. As I walked through that mall this afternoon I got the chills here and there. It was my first visit to this mall as a born-again Christian.

5.  After a movie at the AMC-24 I ate dinner at Splitsville. What’s Splitsville you may ask ?  Think Dave & Busters or Gameworks – but instead of video games it’s an upscale bowling alley along with an upscale restaurant. It’s brand new at the mall, and I had never heard of it until I saw it there (located right next door to the AMC-24 box office on the second floor). I enjoyed a MASSIVE dinner there, and I can tell you this. I will be back for more. The customer service was great. The food was awesome. The ambience was perfect. I can see my Singles Life Group hanging out there sometime in the near future.

Ever since I found myself on God’s fantastic journey back during the Summer Of 2006 I’ve been somewhat protecting myself from the evils of darkness that exist in the outside world. I’ve been unfairly holding myself hostage in my own home to keep myself away from all of those places that I used to visit and all of those things that I used to do. It’s as if I’ve been denying that the past ever existed at times. As time has progressed my faith in God just keeps on getting stronger and stronger. I’ve realized that I am so far into the goodness of daylight that there’s no going back now to where I’ve come from. But it’s OK to get out and mingle with the world again. I am strong enough to know that with God guiding and directing my every move and my every decision I’ll be just fine going ‘Retro’ – even retracing former steps – and enjoying my Life (always capitalized) out in the world today.