Getting to the point

It's time for another retro post from the Kodak era.  This time, it's Atlanta, Georgia, and the Florida Keys. I made my first and only visit to Atlanta in January 1996. On the same trip, I also visited Florida for the first time. This included time in Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, before driving down the Florida Keys to Key West.

I was flown to Georgia by Scientific Atlanta, a leader in cable television technology that’s long since disappeared. The company flew me in business class for an intensive week of training and face-to-face meetings with its marketing team. At the time, Scientific Atlanta was bidding for a nationwide Optus Vision cable telephony contract. My company was handling its technology public relations activities and I was the account’s lead consultant. 

Scientific Atlanta was based in Lawrenceville, a northern suburb of Atlanta. As a result, it booked me into a local hotel, located more than 50km from Downtown Atlanta. However, without transport, I didn’t get to spend time in the city proper, aside from an expensive evening at an inner-city nightclub. To get to the club, I hired a town car and driver for the evening which cost more than USD75. It was a lot of money for a 30-year-old back then and there weren’t any rental car outlets in the immediate area.

My trip got off to a rocky start. A week before I flew out, my company laptop was stolen. Opportunistic thieves had noticed a window ajar in my first-floor apartment. They'd climbed onto a nearby roof and broken in. This resulted in an 11th-hour scramble between Christmas and New Year's Eve to secure a replacement device before my flight departed on 3 January. 

Years later, out of the blue, I received a call from Five Dock Police Station. They’d caught someone trying to pawn the stolen Digital HiNote at a secondhand shop. I attended an interview with a police officer who agreed that, thanks to the passage of time, the laptop was worthless. Its technology had long since been superseded. It's good to know the police maintain a stolen goods register long after the initial crime was committed.

Once my week of training and meetings was done, I flew to Orlando. Gary, an American friend from Fort Lauderdale, collected me from the airport. We spent three days exploring Disney World, the Epcot Centre and Florida’s Space Coast. At the time, the Space Shuttle Endeavour was on the launch pad undergoing final preparations for launch. A few days later, while in Fort Lauderdale, we saw it power into orbit on television.

Gary offered to extend our time in Orlando to watch the launch in person. However, I decided to forgo the opportunity as I didn’t want to pass up a planned visit to the Florida Keys. I quietly regretted the decision for years until I finally witnessed a live shuttle launch a decade later.

Seeing the best of American space technology up close and personal was a dream come true. Visiting the Kennedy Space Centre had always been a childhood obsession. I recall watching a live broadcast of the first Space Shuttle launch in 1981. Unfortunately, the launch was scrubbed as the countdown approached the five-minute mark. Television New Zealand didn't broadcast its successful launch a few days later.

In the years since I’ve been lucky enough to return to Kennedy on two other occasions. For this inaugural visit, Gary and I booked a bus tour that drove past the launch pad and stopped briefly outside the towering Vehicle Assembly Building. Beyond Kennedy, I loved riding Space Mountain at Disney World. Sadly, the Epcot Centre proved a real letdown. I doubt I'll ever return.

Gary and I drove from Orlando to Fort Lauderdale to spend time with his friends. I don’t recall much beyond a string of nights out on the town. Although we enjoyed an afternoon visiting the fabled Miami Beach, We stopped for a late lunch at Compass Café. At the time, it was located on the ground floor of the Waldorf Towers Hotel, a beautifully restored Art Deco building on the Miami Beach beachfront.

A few days later Gary drove four of us down the Florida Keys for three fun-filled, alcohol-fueled, nights in Key West. Driving over the Seven Mile Bridge was a real highlight. I'd seen images of this extraordinary structure in an old National Geographic magazine. As the name suggests, it spans an extended stretch of open water linking Boot and Big Pine Keys. There's something undeniably surreal about driving for miles over the open sea.

Like all good tourists, I had my photo taken with Key West’s iconic monument marking the Southernmost Point of the Continental U.S.A. It's the image that opens this post. The colourful concrete buoy, erected in 1983, immortalises the city’s geographic claim to fame. As the sign says, it’s a mere 90 miles to Cuba from here. In hindsight, it was probably the only real touristy thing we did in Key West.

My strongest memory of my time in Key West was an outrageous drag performance I saw one evening at 801 Bourbon Bar. I later discovered that the show, starring RV Beaumont, was considered one of the USA’s most iconic drag shows. Beaumont’s portrayal of Bette Midler, and Mary Poppins, including an outrageously suggestive performance of "A Spoonful of Sugar”, was truly legendary!

My summer vacation in Florida finally ended after landing in Sydney on the early morning of 21 January. I hope to return to Miami and the Florida Keys someday.  While I’m there, thanks to a childhood spent watching Gentle Ben, I'd love to take an airboat ride through the Everglades.