Cruise Day

Wednesday March 21

Today is gambling cruise day, and I'm looking forward to a "win" after last week's $50 loss. I leave the condo about 7:45 on my bike and arrive at Marti's Family Restaurant and have their #1 special and coffee. That comes to $6.50 plus a dollar tip.

I cross over the bridge to Fort Myers Beach and arrive at the dock about 9:30. I pull out my "coopen" and get the cruise for five bucks. I go through security, and I am up on deck 3 by about 9:45. I pass the time by reading and typing out blog entries, while the deck fills up with fellow gamblers. We're off at 10:30, and the casino opens are around 11:45 once we reach international water. I play blackjack, and decide to quit when I am $32.50 ahead. I had it in my head to try and double my stake of $50, but I think this is about the best I am going to do. As before, we have a nice table of players, and a congenial dealer by the name of "Joshua" who dealt blackjack in Vegas for 7 years, including a fairly long stint at the Luxor. So we compare notes on our Vegas experiences. He says he misses Vegas, so I'm not really sure what brought him here. He doesn't offer, and I don't ask because I always worry that the answer will be something like "paternity suit," or "mother is dying of cancer" or something like that.

I eat my little "carry-on" lunch of tuna salad, crackers, a protein bar, and free coffee at about 1 p.m., and this is fine and sufficiently satisfying. There are many dolphins swimming alongside the ship today, and these are very fun to watch. I continue to read and finish "Assassin's Shadow," by Randy White. We dock at 4:30. It is spitting rain at Fort Myers Beach, and the beachgoers are folding up their chairs and umbrellas and heading off the key. I hop on my bike and hot-pedal it over the bridge and to Pincher's Crab Shack on San Carlos just as the heavens open and this little misting turns into a full blown shower. I cover my bike seat with a plastic bag so that my ass won't get totally soaked when I return to ride the rest of the way home.

Inside Pincher's, I enjoy a feast of stone crab. The bill comes to $31.53, but I leave “Tasha,” my nubile young waitress who kept touching me on the shoulder (all part of her plan, I’m sure), a $6 tip. So the winnings didn’t quite cover the $37.53 bill, but almost. I cracked ALL the stone crab ahead of time, until I had this lovely mound of ambrosia from the sea on my plate. (Tasha admired my handiwork at a couple points during this approximately half-hour-long process.) I poured melted butter over this mini mountain of crab, and spritzed it with juice from a fresh lemon wedge. Somewhere, angels wept. For my sides, I chose baked beans and cole slaw. I washed the whole thing down with two 12-ounce “Shock Top” beers served in chilled mugs. I had a coopen from a local flyer for a free slice of key lime pie. It was the “bimini” variety, where they fold the sweetened lime juice into whipped cream, so the pie is kind of “fluffy.” I prefer the classic custard filling, but this was still very good, and I certainly couldn’t complain about the price. (It’s normally $4.50.)  As I am eating dessert, I am even treated to a rainbow, as the rain has stopped and the sun is out again.

About the only thing I don't like about the place is that it's one of these "Kids Eat Free" places, and of course they plaster this on big signs at the front of their restaurant. So of course there are throngs of rugrats running around the places, especially at the time I stop there, which is about 5 p.m. The kid's menu is a limited choice thing, so about the closest thing to crab legs they can get is fish sticks, but the parents love this stuff, and I suppose it's a real bonanza to those who bring in 3 or 4 kids. So it's kind of a drag knowing that us "kidless" patrons are subsidizing all of this. But I have to admit, the stone crabs here are delicious. I haven't tried anything else, so I don't know about the rest of their menu.

I peddle the rest of the way back to the condo, and enjoy a relaxing evening with the kitties.

Expenses/winnings: Breakfast, $7.50; dinner $37.50. Subtotal $45.00, offset with $32.50 in casino winnings. Net expenses: $12.50.

Bruce