Indiana Hoosier Hound in profile at the beach.

By Jim R.

My wife loves the beach, I hate the beach. I love race cars, my wife doesn’t. She told me that she was going to St. George Island for a week before school started and if I wanted to join her that was okay. I called her bluff and decided I’d give the beach another chance since I hadn’t really been since our honeymoon years ago. My last beach vacation I almost died from food poisoning and dehydration so you can understand my reluctance to go back. I’m pasty white and inclined to burn, I hate being hot, and I don’t like sand. Other than that I figured it would be fun. She left with the dogs on Saturday; I had to work for a few extra days and planned on leaving mid-week.

It’s about 6-7 hours from Atlanta to St. George Island and the quickest route there reads like a treasure map. One of the 24 steps from Map Quest says “Turn left on Bob Bodkin Road”. I was running a bit late since looking out for all these goofy little roads meant I couldn’t make good time. Map Quest was also decent enough to be off on their mileage by about 10 to 20%. They say go 55 miles on GA27/1 South, they really mean 63-ish. This didn’t help improve my mood as I hunt and pecked my way through rural Georgia. Then I found a hidden gem of a road called FL65. Its 60 miles and straight as a ruler and flat as a board, it’s in the middle of a national forest and has no real place for cops to hide. SENTENCE REMOVED ON ADVICE OF LEGAL COUNSEL... you can do the math on why that road might appeal to a guy that races cars for a hobby...

SGI is a pretty nice place, and it really wasn’t that bad. I actually had fun. With my wife there to remind to wear sunblock I didn’t get burned. The wind, I can’t really call it a breeze since it was quite strong, coming off the gulf kept the temperature around mid-80’s which after spending years in Georgia passes for comfortable these days. Our little rental place even had its own pool so I only had to suffer the beach sand when we took the dogs down to do their ‘swim’ in the morning before the families arrived.

The last day I decided it might be cool to charter a boat and see the rest of the island. If you wiki SGI you’ll see that only a portion is available to regular folk. There is state park at one end, and a gated community that is rumored to house Kid Rock and Hank Williams JR. among others, it even has its own runway so you can land your private plane. Since we couldn’t get past the gate I figured we’d go Omaha Beach on them. Unfortunately the weather conspired against us, but “Capt. Jack” was cool and said lets try and do it before you leave on Sat.

The rain let up just as we were resigned to cancelling the trip altogether that morning. Capt. Jack met us at the dock and we loaded up the dogs and headed out to sight see. We quickly saw dolphins up close and personal which for some reason Indy started to bark at thinking he was going to play with them or something? We saw big houses, and then on the way back saw a shark feeding frenzy. That was pretty wild. Jack said in his years growing up and working on the water he’d only seen it once before. My words won’t do this bit justice, but thankfully I have some shaky and poor video I’ll put up eventually that got the dolphins and shark stuff.


Look I'm a dog on a boat!

I should have suspected things were going too smoothly at this point. As we pulled into the dock Indy decided he would jump out of the boat and be the first on land. Thankfully Jack was close behind and was able to drag him out of the water before he hung himself on his leash, drowned, or was crushed by the boat smashing him against the dock. As he sputtered and coughed we noticed he was favoring the leg that he just had surgery on. We had been watching it lately since it seemed to be getting worse, and sure enough it was bleeding / weeping again just like it did prior to the antibiotics, crazy fungus medicine. I hosed him down to get the fish cannery smell off for the trip home and we started the easter egg hunt in reverse.

We made it about 5 hours into the trip when on 85, construction caused traffic to come to a stop. I was following Christine in the Lexus and had to jam on the brakes to keep from hitting her. Unfortunately the dude behind me wasn’t so lucky and hit me doing about 20-30 mph. We had to drive about 5 miles to find a safe place to pull over and the GA. State Trooper was waiting for us to fill out the paperwork. As he was completing the forms I went over to the truck to talk to Christine and see the dogs. Rubbing Indy’s head I noticed his ear was swelling up again too. So he was right back to where he was 2 months ago.


Nissan 0 - Lexus 1


Anyone know a good insurance agent - @!$!%!!#$ State Farm


Today we took him to the vet, and they knocked him back out sewed his ear up and took another biopsy so we know if he needs more / different antibiotic, or more / different fungus medicine, or if its something else entirely. I called our great insurance company since the Trooper assured me all I had to do is give them a call and give them the report number and they would take care of the rest. State Farm said they’d be happy to take care of it, minus my $500 deductible. I questioned this since I was clearly not at fault. The chuff girl on the other line said I was welcome to sort that out on my own with the other guy’s insurance company. When I questioned what exactly was the value they added, she again stated they’d be happy to help if I wanted to claim it on my own. Needless to say the first thing I’ll be doing after this gets straightened out is change all of my insurance over to someone else, that will probably be equally unhelpful and incompetent but at least different.

In the meantime I should have stayed home and worked on the car. We have a race at Road Atlanta this weekend and my car is in pieces in the garage and I’m not very motivated to put it together.

Shark Week video and Road Atlanta race report next week, stay tuned..

Labels: Bad Attitude, Dogs, Wrecks