My prize: an Egg McMuffin bought 40 miles away in Tampa. Breakfast was cold, greasy and unhealthy — a tasty portent of our impending return to civilization. I almost ignored our pact but saved a third for Alan.
Finally, we took the vote to see who would leave the island. Pabst tried telling us who to vote for — shades of the real show. "It'd be funny if you each vote yourselves off," he said.
In truly low, Western white male fashion, mere hours before we were to leave Poo Island, I voted off the one guy who had caught a fish. I did so because I wanted to win, but also because he spaced out on the hunt for the stuff Pabst had left behind.
It made sense at the time. It's not like you have to know what you're doing to vote in Florida.
Alan held up the paddle and I saw that he'd scrawled: "Alan — he's a jerk."
Hell yeah, boyyyyyy! I won. Tom Petty was right: Even the losers get lucky sometimes. It meant absolutely nothing, of course, since we still had to paddle back together. And there was no prize money. But still. I won.
In a little while, Pabst was gone, and at around 11 Alan and I paddled in a fog so thick we were disoriented in minutes. After about 30 of them, we came upon a guy in a kayak.
We told him what we'd been doing the last couple of days. It sounded ridiculous: "Yeah, we had only Froot Loops to eat, and no tent."
"That's — pretty cool."
We were about to paddle off when he said, "Hey, can I ask you guys a stupid question?"
Sure.
"Do you know where the boat ramp is?"
"We're looking for it too," we said. It was a real icebreaker, like if we discovered we were all at the White House to shoot at it.
The islands off Fort De Soto all look alike, with swift currents going through Bunces Pass. In fog, it was easy to get, and stay, lost. The kayaker had been going in circles for two hours.
Alan and I argued over what direction to head. Too many captains on this vessel — I should have voted him off the island when I had the chance. Oh, wait. I had.
Then the kayaker said, "I see the bridge!" as if he'd seen the light.
In a way, he had. The fog was fizzling out. The kayaker kayaked off, and we lazily fought the current, the shallow bottom and each other, just to see my family on the boat ramp, my wife waving and my baby girl flapping her arms as though we'd never left, as though it had all been a dream.
Contact Weekly Planet Survivor David Jasper at 813-248-8888, ext. 111, or at [email protected].