Florida Man is an internet meme based on stories of Floridians exhibiting moronic and occasionally illegal behavior. The meme went viral in 2013 when Scott Simon butt dialed 911 and then discussed his plans for murder on the recorded line. Over the years, new stories with outlandish headlines hit the web inspiring HBO to launch an anthology series of celebrity reenactments. “It’s Florida, Man” and Netflix’s fictional series “Florida Man” are full of lost appendages, occasional incarcerations and lots of stupidity. It leaves the viewer with the unanswered question, Why Florida Man? Why not Utah Man, or Virginia Man? We can tell you why.
It’s the summers. Florida summers drive locals to crazy behavior. Transplants say that a hot day in Florida is no different than a hot day in Maryland. They claim that 95 degrees and 95% percent humidity feels the same on July 25th in MD as it does in FL. The hot truth is that a mid-Atlantic heat wave lasts a week or two. Natives know summer is a subtropical depression from May to October driving Florida locals to produce Florida Man content for Netflix.
The 30 days in a tent experiment for our 10th anniversary morphed into 150 nights in a tent too many. On May 10, 2025, on the sandy playa of Black Rock Desert, we called it. There was no last straw or final nail event. It was the cumulative effect of the load/unload, set up/break down, rain, bugs, sleeping on the ground, and all the other mental, biological, and material inconveniences of choosing to be unhoused that finally wore us out. What we hadn’t counted on was the Florida Man effect waiting for us back home.
This episode of “It’s Florida, Man” centered on two restless people making the poor decision to pull into an RV lot, just looking of course, because while we could not take another round of golf or game of pickleball in the oppressive heat, neither could we take another moment of conditioned air within the confines of a perfectly pleasant house. Like a Florida Man named Eric Merda who lost his arm to an alligator when he made the poor decision to cool off with a dip in Lake Manatee, we thought we could just kill some time looking around an RV lot without attracting attention. Florida Man stories don’t work out neat and tidy like that.
A week and 2,000 S-N-S miles later, Eric was dragging a 13 ft nuCamp T@G RV behind Boss from Maryland to Florida. Only a Florida Man could fail to find a suitable RV in the land of unlimited RVs. Still 97 and muggy, the pressure was off just knowing we could escape by driving to the Arctic, or maybe Norway anytime we wanted. Admittedly, our thinking was muddled. We had convinced ourselves that the tent was the problem. With a hard-sided king bed in tow to protect us from the elements with no nightly set up/take down, we could regain our lost adventure card. At a height of just 7 feet, the T@G would slip into the garage without triggering the wrath of the HOA, who put us on their naughty list for our dubious choice of shrubbery. Wins all around.
In the heat of the endless Florida summer it all made sense. The composite shell of a rolling king bed stuffed into the third bay of the garage promised cool nights under dark skies, far from the development of the Whole Foods and Chick-fil-A going up next to the Costco at The Marketplace down the street. We even took it for an overnight shakedown in a nearby sweltering Florida State Park to prove to ourselves that we could. What we proved was that the best Cuban street food vendor in Venice had packed up and left and that we could survive a no sleep night in a T@G. Not exactly a resounding success.
Like Eric Merda who rationalized that the lake was refreshingly cool and that he hardly used his left arm anyway, we rationalized that all shortcomings would be resolved once we were on the road. With a couple of weeks available before the crush of the holiday season descends, we are headed to our favorite haunts in remote west Texas. Will everything be different now that we are somewhere in between towing a small condo and pitching a tent? Or will everything be the same, just not on the ground? Does a deja vu moment from the Tampa RV show prove that bad decisions cannot be avoided, only delayed?
The T@G SE is an odd choice for an RV, and there are plenty of good reasons why less than hundred of this model are made each year. It is minimalistic to the max. It’s as if they pulled it off the production line before all the good stuff went in. There is no kitchen, no bath, no water, no heat, no stand up headroom, no TV, no radio, no microwave, no sink. It is a hard sided tent on wheels. It can be towed by subcompact car. Some might say it looks absurd dwarfed behind a Ford Superduty designed to haul something ten times its mass. Who would buy an RV like that to escape Florida just as the weather is changing to 75 and breezy? We’ll tell you who. A Florida Man.
