Storming Castillo de san Marcos in St. Augustine

Miles: 10335.6
Gallons Burned: 340.2
Caffeinated Drinks: 65
Gigabytes of Pictures: 27.9

I'm in New York. It's awesome. People from everywhere, culture being made everywhere, life in every stage, movement, constant movement, basically a taste of heaven. I don't know how to articulate what I feel here in the Big Apple. I just stood in Time Square for over an hour watching all the faces stream by, wondering at their existence, imagining how beautiful their stories must be...Why is she smiling?...What makes them looking into each other's eyes like that?...Why is that blond gal looking so sad and standing in the middle of so many just to be alone?...What brought him to the place where he hands out fliers to a strip club?
This city is devastating. I couldn't deal with this place for an extended period, there are just too many stories, too many lives to constantly wonder about. I am too curious for this city. I can't be like the wall of people who don't so much as turn to look when a man screams in agony after being clipped by a cab or at the screaming prostitute led away by New York's finest.
I am glad I leave tomorrow. I love this city, its the greatest in the world, but I can't handle it. Maybe I'm just too small for it.
Seeing the acid-worn statuary in Washington Park made me think about my time in St. Augustine Florida, so let's step back.
I got to Augustine at about 11pm after a slow drive up from the Miami Area. Parking was easy in old town and I (being an obsessive walker) headed in search of adventure before the engine had stopped settle into stasis. I walked through the Plaza de la Constitucion into the old retail district:

Then I saw the oldest wooden school house in N. America:

I ease-dropped on a ghost tour discussing the city wall watchman's daughter who is said still stand at the wall and wave at drunk people. Here is her wall:

After that I started looking for some coffee, failed, started getting cold and thought about going back to the car and abandoning my quest for the castle. I'm glad I didn't. Instead of getting warm I drove on quickening my pace to stay warm. I found the famous Castillo de san Marcos. It was closed (obvious I know by then it was 11:50pm). However I felt that I had a moral obligation to breach the wall being a loyal subject of her majesty the Queen of England. Oh yeah! Didn't I mention it? I am a dual citizen of both the United Kingdom and the United States. Wierd huh? Email/call me and I'll explain if your interested in another piece of my story. Anyways, when the Spanish held this historic fortress the British tried several times to take it. They were repelled each time. The Fortress is imposing to be sure, but couldn't the British ships blast a hole in the wall and storm the castle? Well no. One reason is that the fortress is built from Cantila (a locally hewn sedimentary rock that is very porous). When a cannon ball strikes this it doesn't crack/shatter the bulwark, rather the ball is "absorbed" into the wall. It just gets stuck inside of the stone. So this fort was never defeated in battle.
I am British. So I mounted a night-time assault. It helped that I was dressed entirely in black (I can't help that it is my most flattering color). So I snuck past a young star-gazing couple and a bored looking guard and into the grounds of the National Monument. I jumped down into the fort's moat, this is what I saw:



The lack of light made any longer range photos a study in black shadow.
I ran into an official ghost tour of the fort and I blended into the group. That's when I saw this cannonball furnace. What the defenders would do was heat a cannon ball until it glowed red and then drop it into a cannon and shoot it into a ship starting a fire:

Oh and this store's sign reminded me of Phil's upcoming clothing line:

One final anecdote. As i walked back to the car around 2am I approached a ghost tour from a dark alley. One of the tour participants looked down the alley and violently grabbed his buddy and pointed at me. I stopped and stared the wide-eyed men down...What was the big deal? They eventually moved on whispering to each other. This was my wardrobe for the evening:

Was I really that "ghost like"?
Next time I'll tell you about a church that made Mars Hill look like a preschool...