Homestead's not much to look at, but ...

HOMESTEAD, Fla. - No track is as interesting to approach as Homestead-Miami Speedway. Drive south from Miami down the evil toll road, pull off at exit 9A and you suddenly are on another planet.

There's strange vegetation, tree farms and fields that look as if they were borrowed from the Everglades. You need to get rid of something, nobody will find it here.

Some of the drivers that discard the unwanted don't care if others see it. The scenery becomes stranger as you make a left, then a right, then another right or maybe a left and move deeper into Ned Beatty/"Dueling Banjoes" Country.

You see on the side of the road two wasted little boats.

You see palm trees, a stove, a curling branch that hangs all the way over the little two-lane road, a huge storage cabinet, a ditch filled with water and a disembodied shower stall.

Before I reach the track, I decide to perform an experiment. I use my turn signal to let the world know that I'm about to go left.

Other drivers immediately begin to slow. They seem, I don't know, frightened. Lifelong Florida residents, I suspect, they have never seen a turn signal.

Make it stop, their faces suggest. Please. The blinking lights are scaring me.

What my experiment indicates is that the reason Florida drivers -- at least the drivers with which I'm familiar in the Miami and Orlando areas -- refuse to use their turn signals is not an equipment problem.

The problem is theirs.