If Florida is America's wang, Tampa Bay is the dirty draining infected abscess on the swampy underside of said wang.
I've been having fun planning my vacation month -- so far I've got a week in hometown Portland, including a weekend at the beach and later in the month, my wife and I will spend ten days in Florida. Four or five of them will be on the Gulf Coast just south of Tampa and the other will be in Orlando, where my wife has to attend a conference. I, on the other hand, will be learning how to golf -- a charmed life, to be sure. Thinking about going back to the Tampa Bay area is interesting for me -- I spent over a year there in my early twenties and while I could go on and on, the gist of my experience remains that I followed a girlfriend who probably didn't want me there in the first place to Tampa, all the way from Portland , Oregon and we arrived a few days before 9/11 went down, which was a very different experience on the East Coast compared to the relatively insulated burg of Portlandia. I viewed my surroundings, relationships and experiences while I was in Florida thro...