Another Cruise

Tuesday 12/16. Another near achingly beautiful day. Sunshine, not a cloud in the sky, and headed toward a high of about 72. I’m currently on board the “Big M” floating casino, having biked here from the apartment. Took me a little longer this time because I tried to cross the San Carlos bridge on the opposite side, only to find there is no sidewalk on that side! So I had to double back in order to cross busy San Carlos Blvd at a traffic light. There was a large light pole laying across the sidewalk that I didn’t see until the last second (the sun was in my eyes) that almost threw me over the top of my bicycle, but I managed to stop in time and just thump it with the front tire. I was going to move it, but some lady came running out of one the stores in the strip mall yelling at me not to touch it because she thought it might still be “live.” Too late. I had already touched it, but put it back down. It was too damn heavy anyway.

The bike is locked up in the maintenance garage at the dock, and I’ve got a tuna salad lunch kit and two energy bars in the backpack for later snacking. I had a grapefruit and a pretty good serving size of oatmeal for breakfast, so that should hold me for a while, but I know the eight mile bike ride burned up some of that energy.

I went out and looked at bicycles at a couple thrift stores yesterday, but didn’t find anything interesting. I’ll start looking at craigslist, but this may have to wait until after the new year. I won’t be doing much, if any, biking anyway during the week Dawn is here. I also stopped at Love Boat Ice Cream Co. for a single dip black raspberry chocolate chip in a sugar cone. Yummy. Dacquiri, tortilla chips, and salsa for “happy hour” back at the apartment, and a ribeye steak for dinner.

I’m trying to complete another update (i.e., new watches) for the website this week. This will consist of 11 new watches, and will be the last update for 2014, and it may be a couple of months before I update again. All the watches I brought along with me will be up on the website after this update, so from here on in, my business will consist of gradually transferring the watches that don’t sell off the website over to eBay. That should be easy work since all the photographs are already taken, and descriptions written.

Tomorrow evening is the free movie premiere of “Unbroken.” Ed, our group leader, has all 150 of his free tickets spoken for, and other groups in addition to ours will be coming to the theater as well. So it promises to be a sold-out show, and even perhaps overbooked so some folks may be turned away.

Friday is the art/music walk in downtown Fort Myers with the meetup group, and on Sunday I’m thinking of inviting my one set of neighbors, Jim and Patty, over to the apartment for a get-together with some snacks. Those are the people I’m thinking of asking to watch Abby while Julie and I are on the cruise. So it’s going to be a busy finish to the week, and next week will be Christmas.

Well, I’m hungry now, so I’m going to beak into one of those energy bars, along with a free cup of a dark coffee-like substance from the spigot dispenser.

Excellent cruise today. Beautiful weather and calm seas. I won $20 at the BJ table, plus read about 70 pages of Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country, which I'm enjoying immensely. Pleasant bike ride back to the apartment, where I made myself a nice large margarita, and for dinner a couple of hot dogs with some Fritos. I’m sure I’ll sleep well tonight.

Bruce