Projo Offbeat Blog

On the plane, a nice woman from Tiverton, who spends winters in Florida, warned us about the danger lurking in the waters of Florida's Gulf Coast.

She wasn't worried about sharks, stingrays or snakes.

"It's too cold," she said.

At the beach the next day, it looked as if everyone in South Florida had heeded the nice woman from Tiverton's warning. Plenty of people sat in chairs on the sand. A few beachgoers even walked along the edge of the shoreline, bravely letting the clear Gulf water splash on their ankles.

But only a few people were actually in the water, even though the air temperature had reached the 80s and the water temperature was around 70 degrees.

The actual swimmers must have been new arrivals, visitors who'd flown in that morning from ice-caked spots like Canada, Greenland or Burrillville.

I assume everyone else was suffering from the Florida Effect, a condition where your body quickly adjusts to the Florida heat, so that 80 degrees feels like 70 degrees and 70 degrees feels like 60 degrees. If the temperature somehow drops below 70 degrees, you reach for the wool sweater and long johns.

(Unfortunately, the Florida Effect doesn't prevent old, out-of-shape men from riding their bicycles in nothing but their bathing suits. These guys are a regular sight, and they make you wish you'd packed some wool sweaters to hand out during your trip.)

Ignoring the nice woman from Tiverton's advice, I ventured into the "icy" water and went for a swim in the empty ocean. I even managed to avoid frostbite or hypothermia. Our visit to Florida earlier this month was too brief, but I'm confident that if we'd stayed longer, I would have soon found myself huddling on the beach in a wool sweater.

 Tags  Florida

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