The Reluctant Journey to Reality

From the minute we awaken Saturday morning, there were signs that we should stay in paradise.  First, we got to the airport, turned the car in, went in checked in and began to go through security; taken my shoes off, taking the laptop out of the backpack and placing it in a separate box, putting my wallet, my belt, everything in my pocket, and my phone…..  It is then that I realized that my phone was left in the rental car.  Debra and Adrian had already gone through with my other stuff.  I grabbed my wallet, my tickets and my shoes and began a mad dash toward the shuttle buses to get to the parking structure where my super expensive, 4G, world connected, anytime-link-to-the-internet was left to fend for itself.

I get to the rental agency and my car was gone!  I frantically searched for the attendant who was at the other side of the parking structure.  He had not seen it but one of the attendant drivers delivering cars was due back from the other lot.  I waited forever and finally I was about to fetch the attendant again when I noticed someone cleaning the inside of one of the cars.  “I looking for a phone I left in the car I just turned in,” I said.  “Oh Yeah”  he said and went and got it from the office.  My baby was safe!

Back to the shuttle and back to the terminal and through security again and caught up with Debra and Adrian.

The next sign that I should stay in Florida was when the airline clerk announced that one of the flight attendants had gotten sick and they could not take off until they found a new one!  About half hour later the same clerk announces that they are overbooked and that there were looking for 10 volunteers to give up their seats.  They were willing to give two (that’s “2”) free round trip tickets anywhere to any Spirit destinations.  Visions of Machu Picchu and Mexico City danced in my head.  I made a bee line to the counter and offered our tickets.  The bad news:  They would only take me to La Guardia and we were on our own to find a way back to Detroit – No Problem.  Well it turned out there was a problem, no flights from NY or surrounding airports were available to Detroit anytime on Saturday or Sunday.  Machu Picchu and Mexico City began to fade from reality.

The flight form Ft Lauderdale to La Guardia would have been uneventful if it wasn’t for the family from hell sitting behind us.  If there was ever a time to beat the crap out of spoiled kids this was it.  They made the trip miserable for everyone.

The trip to Detroit was uneventful and we got back on time.  Back to our jobs, to school, to our daily schedules, to paying bills and to shoveling snow.   

Just so we remember the benefits of air travel, here is Adrian on Friday snorkeling in the Florida Reef and snow blowing the driveway on Sunday morning. 

The Slow Pace of Paradise

OK, here goes, a hint of my age and the time when I might have been considered (by mistake) somewhat “nerdy.”  In Star Trek episode #28 (1967) Kirk and the Enterprise crew find themselves in front of the Guardian of Forever in the episode "The City on the Edge of Forever."  McCoy gets sent back in time, changes history and Kirk and Spock have to go back and get him and set the timeline straight. 

Well I feel that we went through that portal back to a time when life was easy, the planet was warm and we had no worries.  But “they” found us and now we have to get back through the portal to the reality of Michigan; work, school, schedules, bills, shoveling snow, and the daily routine of life.  Ain’t that a bi**h!

But our last day in the Florida Keys were very relaxing.  After a leisurely breakfast and a relaxing cup of coffee (Alex and Carmen had to go see and photograph the sunrise on the beach for the umpteenth time), we decided to take a trip to Key Largo and do some snorkeling at John Pennekamn State Park. 

I was hoping to go to the city center at Key Largo, expecting of finding another “Key West” and have a leisurely lunch with some dinkie-poos and then take in some snorkeling.  Well it turns out that Key Largo is just a collection of residences, businesses (mostly restaurants, motels and souvenir shops).  It doesn’t even qualify as a suburb since there is no city to be a suburb to.  In fact the only tying link to all communities in the keys (maybe not Key West) is US 1 and the tourists and supply trucks driving up and down the road.  The police (Sheriff, State Troopers and Law Enforcement; Law Enforcement seems to be another layer of law officers on top of everybody else) seem to have a field day on US 1.  If you have a traffic infraction, where can you go?  It’s not like you can go on the side streets and hide.  Speed limits are slow, 45 mph on less, on a national highway!  Once in a while you might see a 55 mph section of the road, like on the 7-mile bridge, but not often.  So woe to the driver that violates the speed limit they would be trapped like a steer on the ramp to the slaughter platform!

Anyway, instead of a leisurely lunch and drinkie-poos in tropical Tiki bar in the center of “town,” we decided to buy some sandwiches at Publix (the local grocery chain) and go eat at the park.  Now here is an experience that I had not had up to today; slow motion of life.  The two people making our sandwiches must have been at least 75 years of age.  T-h-e-y   m-o-v---e---d  soooooo   s-l-o-w-w-w-l-y .  Hell, I could have taken a leisurely trip to the bathroom, read several sections of the New York Times while I was sitting there doing my business and still would have had time to change the type of bread I wanted before she put the meat on the bun.  I told the woman “I was sort of hoping to have the sandwich in time for lunch at the park.”  Bad mistake!  She started a slow conversation and stopped working on the sandwich about how she loved that park.  She was such a nice person I did not have the heart to tell her that I was being sarcastic.  We had a similar experience at the other stores – everyone was moving in slow motion!

While waiting outside I developed a theory as to why people moved in slow motion. Some background to the theory:  About 80 percent of the people in the shopping plaza were over 80 years of age.  Their skin was super dark tanned with cream-colored age spots and it was hanging in flaps down their legs and arms and around their neck.  There was one lady that I swear the skin off her elbow reached her wrist!  They all walk around in these shorts that are too big for them and all their clothing were of wild prints and bright colors, it was like coming off a bad LSD trip.  Now for the theory:  the reason they moved so slow is that if they walk fast the flapping skin would throw them off balance and they would fall over.

A quick change to bathing suits and into snorkeling gear we headed to the water and the remnants of an old sunken boat about 100 feet from the beach.  It was nice down there but the only thing left of the boat were the cannons.  There were lots of interesting fish and colorful plant life.  Unfortunately the light did not capture the true colors.

On the way back we behaved like the perfect tourists stopping tourists traps; sea shell shops, T-shirt shops, Ice cream shops, another words, maintaining the local economy with tourist dollars.  Many stores try to compete by having some "attraction."  It must work because this giant lobster pulled me right in.

Some fast showers and we were on our way to “The Fish Company Restaurant” where we not only had a great fish dinner, we consumed great quantities of Piña Coladas that ended up being more than seventy percent of our bill.

Our last day was simply great and so was the whole week!  Love the house, love the weather, the water temperature was great.  I did learn that I have to lose some weight and get in better shape; I could only dive for 30 seconds or less and it required a lot more effort because fat floats and lots of fat takes a lot more effort to push down to the bottom of the reef!

A Close Encounter of the Manatee Kind

Thursday was another lazy day in the Rivera compound in Florida.  We decided to do some kayaking in the channels around the house do some fishing and maybe harvest a couple of coconuts from the five or six coconut trees around the house.

I now have a better appreciation for the challenges of Robinson Crusoe in getting coconuts to have fresh drinking water.  These palm trees are 30 to 40 feet high!  Throwing stones at them don’t help, there are no branches long enough to knock them down and the trunk of the tree is too rough to climb up and get them.  One of the big problems is that this well endowed gut keeps the body out too far for the arms to reach around and hold on to the trunk of the tree.  Not that we would have strength and the stamina to climb that tree with this office working, wine drinking, donuts-eating and skin-so-soft treated hands.  And even if we did go to Home Depot and buy a tall enough latter to get up there, there are monsters protecting their coconuts up there.  I can just picture reaching for that coconut and losing your fingers to those prehistoric creatures lurking in the branches above.

Kayaking and fishing seemed much more pleasant.  The house came with three of them and we (Alex, Adan and Adrian) decided to paddle out in the channel, look at the fish, check out the pelicans up close and maybe come across some Manatees.  We got to see them all.

                        A Pelican comes in for a landing (and hoping for a free handout of fish)

A Manatee Encounter of the First Kind

The Washington DC half of our group had to leave to go back home today.  It was sad to see them go, but I’m sure not as sad as they were about going. 

We decided to go to the beach and check out the underwater life and had another close encounter of the jellyfish kind and hundreds sea shells and little colorful fish.  The sediment from the broken dead coral stirred up easy and we could only float on the surface to keep things visible.

Ed and Alex decided to take in some fishing and they caught some huge ones.

Well maybe not so big.

 

After a quick shower, we went out for a nice sea food dinner at the Sunset Grill and Raw Bar.  A nice way to end the day.