Not long ago, a friend offered to take me for a float.
Now, I’ll be honest. For most of my life, going for a float has meant one of two things. One is a dollop of ice cream served in soda, typically at an establishment that only has outdoor seating. The other involves getting some friends, some inner tubes and some reasonably priced domestic lagers, and heading up to a body of water like the Peace River for a day spent meandering downstream and hoping none of the logs near the river’s edge start looking at you.
Turns out there’s now a third float.
What you do is, you go to an establishment with lots of small, dark rooms. Each room is dominated by the float area. The float zone is too wide to be a tub, too shallow to be a hot tub, and it’s filled with salty water. (The float people are extremely specific about the level and nature of the saltiness.My scientific verdict is: very salty.) You dim the lights to your comfort level (pitch darkness is recommended, but that’s not everybody’s thing.) You can have either silence or the kind of music they play in spas or at Miami nightclubs when they want everybody to calm down a bit and try the cocktail special.
At this point, I want to be clear about something. I love trying things that are completely foreign to me, and I’m not here to make fun of floating.
Many people, including my friend, swear by it. Relaxation, stress reduction, all sorts of mental health benefits - it’s great for the people who love it. I understand this.
After 15 minutes of floating in salty water in total darkness and complete silence, I also understood that I am not one of those people.
I started panicking. I tried to calm myself, but it wasn’t working. I got up, showered off and spent the next 45 minutes waiting for my friend and sampling the waiting room’s selection of herbal teas.
Hey, not everything has to be for everybody.
I thought about my adventures in floating while editing this issue. On page 9 there’s a story about a sound bath, where yoga practitioners meditated to the sound of singing bowls.
I’ll admit, my first thought was: sorry, doing what to the what?
My second thought was: actually, that sounds really nice. I wouldn’t mind checking out a singing bowls sound bath sometime.
I worry sometimes that we’re losing serendipity - that in a world where algorithms get better and better about feeding us the music, shows, stories and events they think we’ll like based on known preferences, it’s getting harder to stumble across the things we never knew we’d like.
There are a few antidotes to this anti- serendipity-ism. One is newspapers like this one. In this issue we’ve got everything from those singing bowls to an interesting new Main Street Players production to tips for where to watch the final of a certain soccer tournament.
We performed no algorithmic machinations to find those, we just look for interesting things in Miami Lakes.
Speaking of things to do in Miami Lakes, I’m on the lookout for a local float. Preferably with root beer.