First Impressions of Florida
On bug bites, neighborhood dividers and insurance rates
The Sunshine State. How you capture me from afar with your incredibly beautiful beaches, sunny weather, people with beach bods, and overall southern charm. What Florida failed to show me are the bugs. No, I’m not complaining. It’s just part of life here, something I’m trying to get used to. I’ve already gotten at least one bug bite, but luckily we have anti-itch cream and a well-maintained neighborhood, which means that the bugs are minimal.
The cicadas, however, are plentiful here in Orlando. They buzz and hang out around us like skin on our bodies, as if to say, “Hey, we’re here. Get used to it.” I don’t mind cicadas so much. Nor do I mind the seemingly hundreds of geckos that flit by and disappear quickly into the bushes whenever my husband and I go on a walk around our neighborhood. They’re almost adorable, unlike the enormous ones I grew up with in Vietnam. The ones from my country of birth are the ones that appear in the shower stall with the same quick movement, except they look more sinister. Or perhaps that’s just how I remember them.
“We landed in a good spot,” I declared a week ago, after we had driven to another part of town where a large shopping center resided. We passed by the “normal life” version of Orlando, and then came home. I looked at what was around us and knew that we had lucked out. We were scared of choosing the wrong part of town again — at least I was — when we were trying to decide where to live in Orlando. Choosing the right place would mean a better experience overall; choosing the wrong one would mean everything can fall apart. The stakes were high.
A ten minute drive can put you in an entirely different area, even when it’s technically the same street. This fact became evident to us a few weeks in, and the evidence is in the freeways. Here in Orlando, there are a lot of freeways (although some may be considered expressways), and the junctions that connect one freeway to another could mean a transition from a “good” part of town to a not-so-good part.
Aside from the freeways being dividers of class and opportunity, there are clear divides in the communities themselves. Orlando is famous for condos and gated communities. Once you reach a gate, you know you’ve arrived at a different place, perhaps a different mentality altogether. This is a stark contrast to our previous hometown (Portland) where there are practically no gates or dividers separating one neighborhood from another. You wouldn’t know that you’re in a different neighborhood economically speaking if you were new or unfamiliar to the town. It all seems to blend into one another.
One thing seems to ring true thus far — people here are nicer, although you wouldn’t know it from the way they behave on the road. In Portland, people practice courtesy with religious zeal, pausing at intersections and all-way stops (“you go” “no, you go first,” “no really, I insist. That’s why I’m waving you through right now, you weirdo.”). Here, someone can roll into your lane without a signal just two feet from the hood of your car and if your reaction to sudden movements are poor then you might be in trouble. Driving on the roads in Orlando forces me to be vigilant and use my peripheral vision more than I want to. My eye doctor would be proud. Again, something I’m trying to get used to. Very slowly.
The other day, I received one of the biggest shocks of my life when I got on the phone with our car insurance company and learned that our rate was going up by about 50%, with everything being the same.
“Why is that?” I asked the agent.
“Well,” she paused for emphasis, “do you ever see those billboards or ads for personal injury lawyers when you drive around town?” She asked. Suddenly, visions of all those billboards we saw while driving through Atlanta for lawyers appeared in my mind. They were blatantly large, most with pictures of the lawyers themselves smiling as if they were promising to end world hunger if you called them right away. I nodded and said, “Yeah…”
“You’re in a very touristy city,” she added. “There’s a lot of rental car drivers and a lot of uninsured drivers too.” In other words, a lot more risk. People get injured here and they call a lawyer rather than their insurance company or their personal physician.
I figured she knew what she was talking about but I refused to accept the truth. So I went online, hoping to find evidence that my insurance company was wrong, that their stats on risky drivers in Florida were based on false data.
Sadly, I found no evidence of it. What I found instead was this Reddit board, where people complained about the high insurance rates in Florida. “Best insurance rates: leave Florida,” someone wrote. I laughed out loud when I read that.
I will not be leaving Florida any time soon but I will stop writing about car insurance now because it’s putting me to sleep so I’m guessing it might be putting you to sleep as well. I will note that we’ve been having a lot of popsicles lately, thanks to yours truly who can’t stop making popsicles. I found these adorable popsicle molds on Amazon after coming across smitten kitchen’s berry yogurt popsicles recipe and the rest, shall we say, is history.
My kids are now demanding that I make “cookie dough” popsicles which I have no idea how to do, so I will utilize my powers of googling and go search for a recipe rather than lament about my higher insurance rates. Food, especially sweets, is always a much better topic to think about, don’t you agree?
In case you missed it
In my last two posts, I talked about how I diverted to what’s comforting to me — baking — when I was rejected for some jobs and the tough act of letting things go when you make a big move across the country.
The popsicles look delicious. Need to make some. Food is definitely a better, less frustrating topic than insurance! 😆
Do you miss the mountains and tall trees? There is always a tradeoff.