South Florida, Crummy Drivers and Good Food: A Quick Trip to Palm Beach County

I am sitting in Florida as I write this. I have a Scion event here on Tuesday and came down a couple of days early, well, because I could.

It was fun watching the Steelers spank the Bengals with fellow Steelers fans. I don't get to do that very often. I also had dinner at the new-and-improved Boston's on the Beach. No longer a beach bar; it has gone the way of most joints on nearby

Atlantic Avenue

and gone up-market. Despite its foo-foo attitude, the food was good and the service attentive.

Today I am heading to my favorite Florida Chinese place for lunch. Too soon to tell about dinner, but Talia's in Boca seems to have the inside track.

Ten minutes after I got behind the wheel of the Lexus CT 200h at Palm Beach International that Lexus provided for this trip, I remembered why I don't miss driving down here. In fact, I hate it.

What happens this time of year is that the Snow Birds begin flocking to South Florida. On the surface, that shouldn't be a big deal. However, most of them are from Canada and New York. Canadian drivers are slow and indecisive; New York drivers as a group are rude and impatient.

No the real problem with Snow Birds is that a majority of them are old. Well even that they are old isn't the fundamental problem, but it contributes to the bigger issue, which is that you have people driving streets they don't know, in rental cars with which they are unfamiliar.

For some odd reason, they seem to think it's perfectly OK to drive 10 mph looking for whatever restaurant they have decided to descend upon for the early bird special. They drive for blocks and blocks with their turn signal blinking away searching for the $8.95 special.

 Moreover, they blow their horns at the slightest provocation. I can go a week in Greenville, where I live, and not hear one horn honk. In South Florida, you hear them at every intersection. No, really, every intersection.

Best thing to do is to hold up somewhere and avoid the jerks in cars on the street. It's a South Floridian's best defense against obnoxious, hesitant, I-lost-one-of-the-tennis-balls-off-my-walker out-of-state drivers.