Okay, so I stole that title from
Florida Cracker, but it's fitting because this post has a little something to do with him.
I arrived at the Florida Institute of Technology last summer ready to be on my own and ready to learn. My main goal was to go there, be there four years, and return home armed with a degree in meteorology. During this time, though, I hoped to meet others who shared my interests in science and, to an even greater extent, Florida. Though FIT is in the state of Florida, it is not
really Florida in my mind, though there are still some hints of real Florida away from the coast.
I didn't realistically expect to meet any fellow Florida crackers at a school mostly populated by out-of-state, technologically-oriented city dwellers, but I still kept my hopes up.
After a whole semester of hard studying, I came home for Christmas Break with many
great friends, but none who shared my interest in Florida's wildlife, culture or history. Hm.
Things rapidly turned around one night this past semester, though. [Patience, FC, I'm getting to you soon :-D]
One night, our school's chapter of the American Meteorological Society held a "movie night" on campus to watch weather-related movies and "geek out" about various meteorology stuff. I spoke with a fellow that night who found out about my interest in Florida through my Facebook page (if you don't have one,
get one.) He's a fellow weather whiz and was in my Aviation Meteorology class this past semester. Through our conversation, I learned that he is from FC's part of the state.
A little background...I have been following Pure Florida for over three years now after finding it through Google, and actually met Florida Cracker once at the Florida Folk Festival. At this meeting, I learned his REAL name *gasp* and deduced that we are actually kin to one another somewhere along the line. As a matter of fact, we have a series of interesting connections in our families.So I asked my new friend if he happened to know anyone by FC's last name, and to my complete astonishment, he said yes.
As it turns out he is friends with FC's son and his oldest daughter. Another thing to add to the list of interesting connections!
The last thing I expected to run into at FIT was a friend of a blogging pal.
Through this new friend, I met two girls who are also from Florida - both identifying themselves as "crackers." So in one night, I went from having no cracker friends at school to having
three. As an added bonus, we are all meteorology majors who are very interested in our field of study.
Alright!
Thanks, Sarah N. Dipity!
