[5:30 p.m.] As Wilma finally picked up speed and made that long-awaited northeast turn toward Florida, many locals here in Naples have finally picked up the pace and seem to have a sense of urgency. It’s been a weird 12 hours or so here. The day started sunny and warm. People packed the beach and hung out. But now, Wilma is definitely headed this way and people are getting off the beach. Even if she’s a weaker storm than the one that slapped Cancun silly, 100-plus mph winds still sounds fast.

Late this afternoon, heavy clouds rolled in and ended the sunshine beachgoers enjoyed earlier in the day. Heck, it even rained briefly. But I put an immediate stop to that by taking out my $7 poncho from CVS and putting it on. That or my umbrella never fails to stop rain. Good thing it stopped raining because when you’ve got a poncho on, you never, ever, ever look cool. Have you ever seen James Bond wear a poncho in any of his movies? Heck, no. The only guy that can look cool in a poncho is Clint Eastwood, in one of his spaghetti Westerns—and even then he has to waste a bad guy while smoking a stogie. And his poncho was dirty burlap with a gun under it, not this cheap plastic kind.

But I digress. Most of the locals—except, of course, the surfers—are leaving the beach. And local park officials closed the pier. They did that by placing a small chain across the boardwalk, like the kind they use when they close a check-out lane at the grocery store. Hate to tell them this, but that would only work in some place where people are obedient, like Salt Lake City (the only place I’ve ever been where pedestrians wait for the light to turn green before crossing a street when there’s no cars anywhere in sight).
I talked to a 20-something Naples native, Harper Simpson, who was hanging out at the pier watching the surfers. He said last year, when Charley roared through, they came out to the pier and it was covered in water. Some of the boards even popped loose from waves pounding it. They hopped the little chain and went out on the pier, which extends 100 yards or so into the Gulf. Not sure if I would try that one unless I was 20-something again, too. And that ain’t happening.

[6:30 p.m.] What is it with people and cameras? Many don’t seem to know the difference between my still camera and one of those giant, Soviet-era television cameras you see being lugged around everywhere here by TV crews. I think what throws them off is when you put a still camera on a tripod. I walked around downown Naples and the beach today with my Canon on a tripod, so I could take some of these panoramic photos for this Web log. (If you haven’t seen them, got to the main page and check them out). Apparently, when you put a still camera on a tripod, it transforms it into a television camera. I never knew this until about a half dozen people yelled at me today “Hey, I want to be on TV!” Others just honked their car horms and practically hung out of their windows waving to me—like I was broadcasting live from Naples.