The marvels and mysteries of Miami

A marvel: the beaches

I grew up in the Midwest. Sure, we had beaches. We had the Great Lakes, which provided us with sand dunes and waves and a place to splash around. But the beaches here amaze me. I'm used to water that is green, or maybe brown. And, unlike the water that comes out of the faucet, the water in the Great Lakes (or any of the 10,000 in Minnesota) is opaque. In Miami, the water is turquoise, right up until you walk into it, at which point it is clear. This blows my mind. I feel like I'm in some version of a Hollywood beach, because I didn't know until now that it was possible to see your feet when you're chest-deep in the water. And fish! You can see little schools of fish swimming around your feet. Too cool.

A mystery: They sell a lot of stuff at intersections here.

That is, when you pull up to a red light, people walk through the stopped cars, offering cold water, flowers, and shrimp. The other things they sell are bags of citrus fruit - limes and lemons. The lemons, though, appear to have all the zest removed. I've been puzzled by this, and have discussed it with many people. Removing the zest makes fruit go bad more quickly, and lemon zest is a pretty useful ingredient. I know now what's going on, though. Any guesses? (Answer at the bottom.)

A marvel: the dragonflies

Around campus, I can walk through what can only be called swarms of dragonflies. I'm not a big fan of bugs (as almost everyone knows) but dragonflies might be my favorite bug. They're beautiful, they don't bite you, and they don't give you the plague. The combination of palm trees and dragonflies makes me feel like I've stepped back into the Paleozoic era.

A mystery: why more people don't die in car accidents here

The columnist Dave Barry always joked about the terrible drivers in Miami. I know that lots of people claim they have bad drivers in their city, so I've been busy comparing this to DC. I can't yet tell if there are more bad drivers here, but they do seem to be bad for a different reason. In DC, aggressive driving is the norm. There was a lot of honking and a lot of tailgating. People were bad drivers because they were important and they had somewhere to be. Here, people are bad drivers because they're just not paying attention too much. So the car drifts in the lane a bit, or they pull out in front of you - they're not trying to be mean, they just aren't too worried about their driving. I'm still working on adapting to this new attitude. I honked at someone the other day, and somehow felt like I had been extremely rude. The guy hurriedly backed up out of the lane, and I realized that car honks are quite rare here. I'm still adapting.

***The secret is, they're not actually lemons. They're oranges, and they've been peeled by a machine, and then bagged. This makes them easy to eat, although I think it also means that you have to eat a huge bag of oranges before they spoil.