A pacy day, but everyone's in bed by 9.30!

Naples 2 March 2009

The waitress at the Inn on the 5th's Irish pub brings me the menu for breakfast and I study it as I observe my fellow early risers. I am, by about 30 years, the youngest there.
The menu is mouth watering, extensive and somewhat overwhelming, by European standards. Pancakes traditional, blueberry, banana or strawberry. Waffles with pecans, strawberries or blueberries. Steak and egg, corned beef hash bloody hell!
I ask the server to direct me to the toilets. I raise my eyebrows when I think she says it's around the block. In fact Monica, who is Columbian, is telling me that they are behind the bar. It's not the first time I have had language difficulties while in the US. A few days ago, one of my hosts joined me for breakfast, so I offered her a drink. I thought she replied, 'I'm just up', so I asked her if she wanted the full works. 'No', she said. 'I am juiced up.' It seems to mean, no thanks, I am full.
If only we hadn't taxed the tea, none of this would have happened.
As I am enjoying my eggs benedict, Cathy Christopher, the Inn on Fifth's director of sales and marketing joins me. Cathy, who was raised in Jamaica, but is of Irish/Scots ancestry, gets me chattering away about genealogy and heritage, American and ours, and before we know it, I am in a frantic rush to make my 9am appointment. But she kindly drives me the few blocks to my trip round Naples in a Segway.
This is a very different Segway trip to the one Sarasota. No grumpy demands for credit cards and a genuinely enthusiastic welcome by our guide, Christina. I am impressed with the very thorough safety brief, which includes a video and plenty of practice time before we set off.
Christina is fun to be with, chatty and friendly. One of her lines is 'Naples is basically a drinking town with a fishing problem!'
But we have a great 90 minute tour around on these incredible $5300 gyroscopically-stabisised machines. at Naples Pier, free to use and 1000 feet into the Gulf of Mexico. On the beach, I find a lady with a metal detector. I ask her if she has ever found 'buried treasure'. 'No', she replies, but I once helped a lady find her engagement ring.'
I need to get the spring on my watch bracelet fixed and have some laundry to do, so I head off to get the domestics sorted. The concierge at the Inn on the Fifth has told me where the laundry is, which is easy, then I set off for the Coastland Mall to get the watch strap fixed.
Unfortunately, I then forget where the laundrette is, but I am only a block away and I am soon reunited with my smalls.
I have an important job to do. Kristina, my helpful bank manager in Michigan, has been sending new credit cards round the world, trying to catch up with me. I get a call from Howard Levy, the boss of the branch almost adjacent to the hotel. Not only has my new card arrived, so has the pin number. I am now able to give a current card to any Sarasota Segway franchise which demands it!
Howard kindly presents me with all sorts of Fifth Third Bank-branded goodies, including a travelling tool kit, a CD holder, a lint remover (was he looking at my clothing?), a device to take lids off jars and a freezer clip, which I shall treasure. Pens, too, which I certainly need.

I have somehow been 'volunteered' to do a 20 minute slot on Naples' main chat radio station, WGUF. Cathy has somehow volunteered to drive me. Presenter Dave Elliott knows an old radio pro when he sees one and the time flies by. My main theme is that the US has a history going back thousands of years, but Americans don't tend to embrace anything pre-Columbus. I have joked with several Floridians that the King and Queen of Spain were here in Pensacola to take the State back, as the money will help their ailing economy, but nobody seems to think that especially odd. I have, for weeks, scoured the hundreds of TV channels and radio stations trying to get 'real' news, but I have to go back to the good old BBC World Service for anything of real relevance.
I think it will be nice to have a WGUF souvenir to take home, because it's not every day you are interviewed on 'foreign' radio stations. So helpful Bryan Dates from advertising sales sets off in search, as Cathy and I wait in reception. Moments later, we are aware of an altercation in an office adjacent to reception. The rather large guardian of the t-shirt stock is clearly miffed that his precious cupboard is being rifled by an alien. 'I don't care who he is, you can't just come in here and get a shirt.'
Cathy and I exit stage left. I now am the proud owner of a WSGL FM t-shirt, one of the four stations that operate from the same building, but not the one on which I actually broadcast. I must tune in some day to hear what I am promoting. I shall wear it with pride, despite the fact it is clearly a black market item and possibly not the real thing.
Cathy kindly runs me to my next appointment, to see some old friends from 'up north' who become 'snowbirds' in the colder months. The ever-generous Wayne and Darlene Williams are, as always, the most generous of hosts and it is lovely to be entertained in their 2000 square foot, 7th floor 'condominium', before heading out for a lovely dinner with three more of their friends in the north of Naples.
Tomorrow, I have to meet Cathy for breakfast, have a bicycle to ride, JoNell and Angela from the Paradise Coast Convention and Visitors' Bureau for lunch and Everglades City for tea.
Frantic? You bet! What day is it?
No idea.