Happy New Year

We spent nine days on Merritt Island with our friends Jim and Vicky. They took us everywhere that we needed to go and out to dinner and for drinks more times than I remember. We had all of the local foods and even our first taste of Vietnamese food--very tasty. Jim and Vicky met many Vietnamese people in Biloxi, MS because many Viets came there to start shrimping. J&V became a fan of their food.

Jim and Vicky saw, in this blog, that our camera had died so they gave us their camera. Southern hospitality has no limits. I haven't installed the software yet so I don't have any photos to present now but I have memories to describe until the photos are ready.

We tied our boat to a slip next to J&V's boat in Harbortown Marina at the end of the most hospitable pier we have experienced so far. We met Chuck, who lives aboard his sailboat with his cat, Mandy. Mandy has free run of the marina and climbs on 'Chablis' (J&V's boat) to eat whatever herbs Vicky might be growing in her pots.
We also met the steel drum musician and his wife on the next pier over. We also met hundreds of birds that rest in the Australian pines across from our slip. We saw dozens of cormorants, pelicans, anhingas, grackles, gulls, terns, martins, and some crows (who travel in murders in the same way that grackles travel in plagues). The cormorants, which we see at home on Hidden Lake, and their cousins the anhingas spread their wings to dry them after a dive to capture fish. It's a stately pose to see.

One day J&V drove us to Grills Bar where the cruise ships depart and where we drank rum with coke and waved to the passengers of the ships as they passed heading out to sea. My oldest son, his wife, and my grand kids went there many times back when he used to live in Florida. Those are great memories.

J&V have involved themselves in a most obscure hobby and shared their passion for it with us. It's a kind of scavenger hunt for retirees, families, and anyone who enjoys a 'hide and seek' challenge. It's called Geocaching and you can read about it at http://www.geocaching.com/. There are hidden caches all over Columbus and the world and one somewhere in Hidden Lakes where we live. Geocaching is a worldwide hobby and many travellers take time from their business trips or sightseeing to hunt for hidden treasure with no more reward than the satisfaction of finding the cache and signing their username on the cache ticket.

We left harbortown Marina on Tuesday, December 29, to continue our progress south. We anchored on Tuesday night at Dragon Point at the southern end of Merritt Island and the next night just north of Vero Beach. On Thursday, we tied up at another Harbortown Marina property in Fort Pierce to have a little New Years Eve fun and to watch the OSU Bucks beat the Oregon Duck-ups today, on new years day. We are also letting a butt-load of rain go by.

The marina bar here harbors many friendly folks such as Dave who says he is a retired cop from Brooklyn New York but has no ID, driver's license, or credible history. But talking to him is like being 'on camera' with a retired vaudeville comedian like Milton Burle, or Mory Amsterdam. His conversation, complete with New York accent, skips from adornment of Mandy's breasts to what a friend ate at a yacht club celebration to his bizarre plan to sail to Barbados with an incompatible friend.

We also met Marvin who just celebrated his 80th birthday. Marv is a WW2 vet who, when yelled at because everyone assumes that he is hard of hearing, yells back at them "because he's not hard of f#@king hearing". He was a reconnaissance pilot in the war and still is pissed because when he was discharged one day short of his 21st birthday, the F*#cking bartender at a Hollywood Florida bar wouldn't serve him a f#*king drink until midnight when he legally turned 21 years of age. "The A--hole," he laments.

Then there's Delna who is a transplant from the Caribbean. When we met her and her beautiful accent on New Years Eve she was smoking her last cigarette ever for the rest of her life. Today she was back in the bar promising to quit after this next pack is gone. We gave her a copy of our book. We plan to return here in the spring and see if my words offered any help. Maybe--Maybe not!! We'll see.

Next entry will have pictures, I hope.

Marv says "Happy F*#king New Year to all of our friends.