I am walking along the road and I feel scared! Not sure why as it is only 8pm and nobody is around! I think that is the scary bit! Here I am in downtown Tampa and nobody, I mean nobody, is out walking! Not a soul to be seen anywhere!
There are plenty of cars rolling around! Enormous gas-munching, large tyre monster trucks with dark-tinted windows! Could just be a lawyer going home after working l ate or perhaps a kerb crawler looking for a cheap and nasty blow-job or a gang of youths out for a fight with some pale Scotsman!
How am I supposed to know?
I walked from the Tampa Port Authority building on Channelside Drive , onto Meridian and then onto Jackson Street which runs through the heart of the business side of Tampa !
It was dark and creepy and not a soul was in sight!
Some church bells rang! A mournful expression of destitution in an otherwise creepy surround!
I have managed to get most of the way along Jackson Street and I can see the Bank Of America building ahead my hotel lies just behind this tall building!
Nearly home; nearly safe!
I was passing a bastion of civilisation and so I made my heart stop pounding! Nothing can happen outside the Hyatt Regency in Tampa ! I passed the regal entrance when all of a sudden a large and hooded black man popped out of a garbage bin! My heart made the lighting journey back into my mouth!
A large black-man with no shoes on had been raking around in a bin outside the Hyatt Regency and upon hearing my footsteps he pulled himself upright!
I looked around for the doorman, a wanted ray of light in an otherwise black surround but he was nowhere to be had!
I moved quickly on and to my hotel!
I won't be walking at night time in Tampa ever again!
Ieuan Dolby is the Author and Webmaster of SeaDolby.com. As a Chief Engineer in the Merchant Navy he has sailed the world for twenty years on a variety of rust buckets and state of the art vessels. Now living in Edinburgh, Scotland with his wife and son he writes about cultures across the globe and life as he sees it; a seafarers escapades with a few tall tales thrown in for good measure! Further articles and photographs of his travels can be found at his blog The Seadolby Articles and Tall Tales.
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