Non-fiction / Driving Paradise Roads by Karyn Elliott (Analysis)
To every driver there is a season, and in Sarasota Florida there are two seasons that must be experienced, to be understood. Many have been brought to fits of dashboard thumping while navigating this fabulous city. To drive on these paradise roads one must be prepared for the myriad of auto progression interuptus that avails itself on the Sarasota driver. Knowing the seasons of this driving paradise will help you to relax and enjoy the ride.
When you think of Sarasota Florida, the usual seasons-winter, spring, summer, and fall don’t often come to mind. Everyone thinks that South Florida has only two seasons: the sunny season, and the rainy season. The latter of which never really lasts long and it seems to refresh absolutely everything. That’s two of our seasons, now the other two seasons are the ones that make every person brave enough to get behind the wheel with a desire to travel from one place in Sarasota to another look down at their white knuckles and question their very sanity.
If you arrive in Sarasota in the beautiful month of September, you will be surrounded by the undeniable eye candy of high end luxury sedans and sports cars strolling thru the streets. We locals love to show up dressed for the occasion, and what better way to dress the streets of a growing Arts and Humanities community than in a just Johnny’s Car Washed car of your dreams. This time of the year is the short lived time of road rage freedom, where the streets belong to the locals who are rested and relaxed after the summer. Sit back and enjoy the open road where time is on your side and even if you had someplace to be there is plenty of time to get there. But don’t get too relaxed, because before you turn the next corner, another Sarasota season will begin, and this season will sneak silently up your taillights in the form of a car loaded transport carrier.
Oh yes travel loving companions, now is the season of discontent. It is the time of year so affectionately referred to by Florida residents as the Snowbird season, and it begins about two weeks into October. These Snowbirds are happy escapees from the north that have had a taste of the cold wet white stuff and took off for the south at lightning speed. They follow the migrating path of the freckle-breasted thorn bird. They escape by sense of instinct, smelling the salt air, soaring south on giant silver wings. Leaving the driving, for the time being, to those tired and weary transport drivers that invade paradise roads like love-bugs in their season. Once settled in, all snug for the winter, these happy escapees from the north come not just for rest and relaxation, Oh no! They come for the shopping, the food, the theatre, the symphony, the opera, the arts, the beach, the people and the daily dose of heliotherapy that locals so often take for granted. They fill the roads like a gaggle of early birds after the last shrimp on the barbie. The statistics, if any exist, would say that the instances of non-verbal vehicular communications in the city of Sarasota raise ten fold during this season. This truly is the time of year when the young grow restless and the old get even. It is also the time of year when mirrors and turn indicators become optional equipment and not everyone can drive a Mercedes. So, if you manage to get through this long season of DWIP (driving while in prayer), and wishing you had eyes on the back of your head, yet through it all, you have managed to maintain some form of politeness and dignity, you will soon be rewarded.
Most people question the Easter Bunnies existence. But not in Sarasota, Oh no! He definitely exists here; and he comes in the worlds largest transport carrier picking up all the cars with northern plates through the night, sending the snowbirds flocking to the airports, plucking at each others tail feathers for the next flight north. Ahhh! Let the festivities begin you say. That’s right, it is that hard earned reward mentioned earlier, so for the next six to eight weeks its go gently into the night, for the roads of paradise belong to the locals once again. But don’t take your half of the street out of the middle just yet. There is one more season you’ll soon be aware of.
This season comes in the form of a convoy of minivans. You’ll need to brush off those eyes in the back of your head, because as we all learned in drivers ed where there’s a ball there’s a kid. And when June brings the season of Summer Vacation to Sarasota Florida, all eyes have to be kept on the bouncing balls. As well as the beach chairs, the towels, the sand buckets, the kites, the little brothers, the little sisters and the numerous lost parents, miss-placed driving directions, potty stops, teasing, crying and the inevitable untied shoelace that reveal itself while smack dab in the middle of the crosswalk. So, I urge you to relax, once more, and try to remember what fun it was watching your little brother or sister trying to get out all that sand you put in their swimsuit.
Besides, school cant stay out forever, and when August arrives, those darling little creatures return to their learning institutions and the streets once again glow with the intensity of purring Porches, BMWs, Audis and the like. Freshly shampooed, and playing the roads of paradise like the finely tuned piano, that sits in the Van Wezel, almost lonely, once again waiting for the seasons to roll around again, and the standing ovation of those who in their season come to share our Paradise Roads.
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