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| Selfie, with snack bar in the background |
To the average person, this would seem nuts. But to an avid watch collector, this is just another day, chasing down another "lead" passed on by a fellow collector: "You might find some watches at the North Fort Myers Outdoor Theater Flea Market." But as I am sitting here, with another hour to go before the sun rises, it occurs to me that most any person looking at this photo would think "nerd" and not be too far off the mark!
Anyway, hello to everyone. The above was the scene Wednesday morning. And while I didn't find any watches, I did find some "wraparound" sunglasses of the variety I was searching for in Cozumel (adding to the nerd effect, but boy are they nice ... polarized and everything!), along with several leather watch bands that I purchased for $3 apiece. So at least I didn't drive the 30-miles round trip and come away empty handed.
To back up a bit, sister-in-law Julie and I spent Monday the 19th at Fort Myers Beach, and had a lovely day with sunny skies and temps in the mid 70s. We walked barefoot along the surf line for about a half mile, and saw the most amazing sight: a large (most likely male) dolphin swimming back and forth about 100 feet, and doing this about 30 feet out from the shore, Every so often, he would leap into the air and body slam the water. We were both wondering what he was doing, but pretty soon he smacked a good size fish completely out of the water, whereupon the dolphin caught it in mid air and swallowed it. This he repeated several more times, catching one more fish, before swimming out to deeper water. It was the most amazing sight, and we just happened to be at the right place at right time. Also the right time in that there was almost no one in the water (to scare off the dolphin to more remote waters) because it is still a bit cold for swimming. But the dolphin sighting prompted several people to jump into the water to try and get an underwater view. Julie and I stood there for perhaps five minutes, rapt with this spectacle unfolding before us.
Things were rather anticlimactic after that, but nonetheless pleasant. We rented a couple of lounge chairs with umbrella, and hung out on the beach for perhaps an hour and a half, and then went to the Gulfshore Grill (where sister Dawn and I had been before) and got an order of bacon-wrapped shrimp, and grouper fingers, and shared, washed down with a Rolling Rock (me) and a frozen rum runner (Julie). Then, to the rooftop of the Lanai Kai beach resort, where we enjoyed another round of cocktails, sitting in on of their signature "rocker booths" while watching the beach goers frolic beneath us, all the while breathing in in heavy reefer fumes from the reggae band playing six stories beneath us. I swear I got a little buzz from the weed, because I left the Lanai Kai very happy (or maybe it was the rum, or a combination of the two). Anyway, it was a lovely and fitting way for Julie and I to spend our last day together before she departed for Wisconsin on Tuesday.
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After dropping Julie off at the airport, Tuesday was fairly uneventful, except for the return of my Microsoft Surface tablet computer, which took a complete crap just a few days before the cruise, and after only nine months of use. Microsoft sent me a completely new unit (or at the very least a newer reconditioned unit), so I had to go through the initial setup again, and several files stored locally on the hard drive of the old computer were lost, but nothing major. I will most likely store everything on Microsoft's "cloud" now, and hope that this is safe from North Korea.
I watched Disney's "Fantasia" on Netflix Tuesday night. I normally don't report on my TV viewing, but it had been ages since I had seen this movie, probably so long ago that I wasn't even able to appreciate the movie's imagery, and how far ahead of its time it was when released in 1940. I did a little research on Wikipedia, and while the movie was critically acclaimed, I don't think a lot of the public understood that this was an animated movie for adults, and instead took their kids to see it as a "cartoon." I can only imagine the little bastards being scared out of their seats by the sequence set to Mussorsky's "Night on Bald Mountain." It still gave me tingles watching it. Anyway, the movie still holds up 75 years later, and it's hard to imagine the painstaking cell-by-cell hand work that went into this given our present state of animation technology. A beautiful movie.
Today, in addition to going to the flea market, I procured for myself a better bicycle with a larger, lighter (aluminum) frame, and six speeds to give myself more speed on the straightaways, and more torque going up the occasional inclines I encounter. Here is a photo of it:
I bought it off a fellow on Craigslist for $100. The "Next" brand is made by Dynacraft and sold exclusively through Walmart, not the greatest sign I know, but at least the company is located in the United States (though I assume they import the components). The frame is aluminum rather than steel, so it probably weighs a good 20 pounds lighter than the bike I was using. The front fork is shock mounted, as it the seat, for a little "give" on the bumps, of which there are many around here. The gears shift smoothly, the brakes, cables, and tires are all in good shape, and it appears to have been ridden very lightly. The rear kickstand is also a nice feature. I think it will serve my purposes just fine, and tomorrow I will take it to the bike shop around the corner and have the handle bar adjustments tweaked a little bit. The "Upland" cruiser will now go on Craigslist.
So that's all for now. I'm going to send this out, and get going on some dinner.
Bruce
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