It’s 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in Sarasota’s posh, up-scale St. Armands Circle. 

There’s overcast skies and every few mintes or so, a band of showers briefly passes through. At this time of day, you would expect a late lunch crowd but the trendy sidewalk cafes here are close to full. Why? Because this is St. Armands Circle, a fairly pricey tourist destination and hangout for the well-to-do. Here, it’s more like Disney than downtown Tampa. And like the crowd at Disney, every other voice you hear in St. Armands Circle seems to be in a different language.

Tampa’s David Walston, 34, and Eric Lentz, 32, just found out how expensive lunch can be here. At one of the more modest eateries, they shelled out a combined $26 for a couple slices of pizza, a salad and two ice teas. Me, I’m surviving on tea and Power Bars from the 7-11.

Lentz works for chemical/aspirin giant Bayer and Walston is a sales rep for Univar, one of the distribution companies that stores some of Bayer’s products in warehouses around the nation. The two friends drove down to Sarasota Wednesday for a customer meeting and decided to lunch in St. Armands. When they left home early Wednesday morning, they knew Wilma was already a Category 5 hurricane but they figure they have time to make a decision about what to do if the storm heads for the Tampa Bay area. Walston is single and is waiting to see when the storm turns east before deciding where to go. Lentz feels the same way but his wife is expecting their first child and says they will leave Tampa and head north if Wilma continues to be a strong hurricane and heads anywhere near Florida’s West Coast. Both are headed back to Tampa later this afternoon.