Postcard From The Gulf Coast

  Our time on the Gulf Coast of Florida is coming to an end in a couple of days so I thought a recap of the past ten days was appropriate.

  First, a warning. I've rewritten this paragraph three times and each time it sounds like whining. Suffice to say we came here to enjoy warm weather at the beach and we haven't been able to do that. It's been boring and depressing. There. Done.

  Yes. That's our pool. We haven't even stuck a toe in it since we arrived. Guess what? The day we leave it's supposed to warm up here but we're heading to the Atlantic coast and it's warm there too.

  Before the Biggest Storm In History brought cold and snow to north Florida this week we managed to get out and explore a bit. Last weekend we took in the Sarasota Farmers Market then headed down to the water where we saw the cutest twenty-foot tall couple.

  You likely recognize it, from a famous picture taken at the end of WWII, as noted by this plaque.

  It was a beautiful morning, one of a very few, and we managed to spend some time in the sun. After the market we headed down to Siesta Key Beach, supposedly the #1 beach in the USA, as the sign says.

  We beg to differ. I'd like to know what criteria are used by the voters because we've been on a lot of beaches in the USA and #1, this ain't. The sand is so fine it compresses and feels like walking on a road, like Daytona Beach. There's little or no surf, like many Gulf beaches. Because the beach has a dramatic slope down to the water you can't really see the little bit of surf unless you pitch yourself within fifty feet. As a result there's a bazillion people all crowded down by the water that you have to negotiate your way through to get your toes wet. Like, who voted for this?

  Last November we spent two nights on the Florida Panhandle. There was no one there. The sand was perfect; "sugar sand" the locals call it. Not much surf but great sand. Unfortunately, right now it's covered in six inches of snow. For sheer gobsmacking beauty I'd take the dramatic beaches of the South Oregon coast. Again, no one there. Ridiculous waves bashing in against the rocks. To me, those would be better choices as the #1 Beach in the USA. You get the point.

  Anyway, we went there, saw it and left. The weather from The Big Storm was closing in and we figured being at home was a better idea.

  Of course, with the weather being shit and nothing to do in this house (there's a Scrabble dictionary but no Scrabble game), scanning news feeds was all that was left. I won't bore you, Dear Reader, with my take on the shitstorm that's settling over this country with President Numbnuts in charge but just know it's impossible to ignore when you're immersed in it.

  After a couple of days, with a full dose of cabin fever upon us, we decided to go for a drive. The weather report said if we drove south for an hour and a half it wouldn't be raining. And so we did. In hindsight, we could have driven three hours east and had a warm day at the beach. We didn't.

  We ended up in one of our pre-COVID vacation spots, Fort Myers Beach. If you're not aware, a couple of years ago they were hit with Hurricane Ian and last fall, Hurricane Milton. What kind of a hurricane goes by the name of Milton? Milton sounds like an uncle that drops by to pinch your cheek and slip a whoopie cushion under your butt. If they wanted an "M" name for a devastating hurricane why not something menacing like Mephistopheles or Mammon. No wonder people didn't evacuate.

  Anyway, we got a first-hand look at the devastation with strings of oceanfront properties that once contained multi-coloured beach houses and now only concrete slabs and broken palms.

  There was a lot of that. There's a big pipe running the length of the beach that is being used to pump sand from the ocean back to the beach as part of the restoration project. Construction is everywhere, some restoring existing structures and some new builds. No tourists. There's no restaurants, bars, parking near the beach, etc. A lot of the condo buildings like the ones in which we stayed are empty due to water damage. It's a sad sight. We hung out a while while Penny searched for interesting sea shells thenl the rain from up north moved in and we headed home.

  It's started to warm up and the sun came out today. The weekend weather promises to be much closer to what we signed up for so we can go outside and frolic. We'll play some golf, go to the beach, get a drink at a tiki bar and look forward to better weather and a more interesting location at our next sit, at Boynton Beach.

  We have a couple of days between this sit and the next so we'll hang out at Cocoa Beach and hope the weather holds so we can get an up-close view of a SpaceX launch Tuesday night. We've also agreed to a two week sit in Houston that will fill the gap after Florida so we're all booked up until the end of March. All the sits promise to be more interesting than our last three weeks. We hope.

Something Happened

  Yeah. Something happened. It got warm. For a day. Well, two actually. Since we arrived we've been struggling with the remnants of the cold snap we dragged down here in our car's slipstream. Not cold in Canadian terms but for Florida, yeah. I'm not looking for sympathy because we all know that 15C is HOT compared to -15C. Canadians would be out in shorts and t-shirts if the temperature suddenly hit 15 in January. However, when you drive two and a half days in order to be warm and you're not you feel just a bit cheated. Especially when the long-term forecast says it won't get warm until the day we leave. Ok, complaining /off.

  We're in a nice house with two cats who are amazingly standoffish. We see Dusty in the morning and evening and he's managed to warm up to us just a bit. We only see Mia when she comes out to eat otherwise she hides from us all day and all night. There are three sets of sliding doors at the rear of the house and Dusty spends a lot of time going out the bedroom door, which we leave open for them, then standing at the opposite one begging to be let in. It's a fun game. For him.

  We have an unheated pool in which we haven't even stuck a toe because, wait for it, it's not warm here. The last time I checked it was all the way up to 68F, about 10 degrees less than it would be for me to even think about getting in it. Oh, and the microwave broke last night in the middle of making dinner. Put the thing in, set it for 7 minutes and, after 5 minutes, it stopped with a bad, something-melted-and-it's-not-what-you-put-in-there kind of smell. Now I actually have to cook.

  Ok, I did say it warmed up for a couple of days and we did take advantage of it. Monday was time for golf and we found a place where we could play nine holes for a reasonable price. Right beside the Venice airport. I mean, right beside, as in next to the runway. Hook your drive and you'll be responsible for a Cessna pinwheeling into the ocean. I sliced instead. No one died.  Afterwards we headed to Siesta Key for buck-a-shuck oysters and some of the local brew. Not bad. We'll head back there soon.

  Yesterday I decided to do some 'slporin' on the bike so rode the three miles to Venice Beach.

It was a nice ride and there's something about getting off your bike, lying on the sand and watching the waves that has a certain je ne sais quoi about it. I felt so good that I continued wandering around the town to see what else was on offer. A park running down the middle of Venice Ave featured banyan trees which are always cool to see wherever we encounter them.

  I checked out the "culture park" where the art gallery, community center and library are gathered but didn't see much culture so I left in search of the old Venice Railway Station. Imagine alighting from a long train trip in the 1920's after leaving snowy New York and being greeted by this:

It's not "old Florida" but it helps illustrate the attraction for early tourists. Of course, this area is home to the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus so the train station displays some of that history too.

  That was pretty much it for the day so I went home to break the microwave.

  Since the weather has been iffy there's been ample opportunity to keep abreast of the news and, frankly, it's depressing. I've been on Bluesky recently which, for the uninitiated, is like a left-wing X (Twitter). I agree with most of what's posted there but it's a constant "here's another stupid thing Trump/Musk/Bezos/Zuckerberg/MTG said/did today" and it's become a trial being immersed in it.

  For example, today I read that Trump wants to create an External Revenue Service to collect tariffs. Um. I thought Musk's DOGE thing was supposed to be reducing the size of government. Also, Customs and Border Patrol already collects tariffs. Stupid. Then I read how Walgreens pharmacies have noticed sales are down after they started locking up everything to reduce shoplifting. Surprise. I'm trying to understand how this country functions amidst all the stupidity.

  The news wasn't all bad. Yesterday I watched Jon Stewart's interview with Mark Carney. If this guy isn't our Prime Minister after the next election there's no hope for us. If you haven't seen it you'll find it on YouTube. Watch it.

  Enough politics. You didn't come here for that shit. You came here for this. Last night I was looking at house sitting posts, trying to find one to fill a two week gap in our schedule. We're willing to go anywhere it's warm... within reason. I found one in Austin, TX that looked interesting. Nice house, nice neighbourhood, two dogs named Sosa and Lorenzo. Then I read this:

  "We are the biological parents of Sosa and Lorenzo"

  You know me well enough now to actually hear what's going through my head when I read this:

  Biological parents of dogs = dogs

  Ok. I've heard the "fur babies" thing ad nauseum over the past twenty years but this is a step too far. Either the post was written by dogs and that raises a whole raft of questions like, "How can dogs afford a house?" and "How can dogs type?" or the "parents" failed Grade 11 Biology spectacularly. Pretty sure people can't have dogs as children unless the house is beside a nuclear waste dump. Suffice to say, we're not responding to this ad.

  We still have two and a half weeks to fill that gap so, as it gets closer, we'll become less selective. If the ad's still up we might end up fearfully driving to Austin to see what dog children are like, in person. By the way, I think Sosa is named for Sammy Sosa, a famous drug-cheat baseball player. Maybe steroids are at the bottom of this little mystery.

  That's about it for this chapter. The forecast calls for warmish weather starting this weekend so maybe some beach-y things are on the menu. If not, our next sit on the Atlantic coast is promising warmth and we'll be ready for it. Stay tuned.

Into The Belly Of The Beast

  Well friends, we're finally back on the road after many months. Although it was great to be near the kids for an extended period it's been a drag not being close. The house sits we were able to engage in the GTA were far enough away from them to be inconvenient and, after living so close for their entire lives, just plain odd. All the sits had many positive aspects but they weren't close enough to be comfortable.

  With my part in the renovations done it was time to get on our horses and get out of Dodge. City, that is. Not Dodge, the car. I've never been a fan of Chrysler products. Except the minivans. They're ok. But I digress. The open road was calling so we answered. When I say, "we answered", I mean we responded by leaving. We didn't actually answer. It's not like I stood on the road and whispered, "I hear you". That would be silly. C'mon. So, rather than say, "we answered", I'll say we got in the little red (orange) car and drove south into Trump country.

  We were committed to being in Florida by midday January 7 and I had arranged two motel stays so we'd have a relaxing trip with time for Atlas Obscura distractions along the way. Of course, the night before we left CNN informed us "the storm of the decade" was going to intrude on our plans. We decided to leave Bradford at stupid o'clock on Sunday morning to get ahead of it. It almost worked.

  As we approached Cincinnati on I-75 the weather closed in. Now, being a seasoned winter driver, a couple of inches of the white stuff isn't going to make me nervous.

  Back in the 1980's, while driving to a ski hill in Australia with my sister-in-law Wendy, we were stopped by the local constabulary who commanded us to install tire chains before going any further. You see, a half-inch of snow had fallen on the road that morning making it too  dangerous to navigate with regular summer tires. When I showed him my Canadian drivers' license he said, "Oh. You can go ahead." I had the same feeling when we crossed the Ohio river into Kentucky.

  The one hour trip across the mountains to Lexington became almost three as we crawled behind the world's slowest snowplows and avoided cars sliding sideways or spinning their wheels on every climb. By the time we reached Lex a total of five inches had fallen. Where we come from that happens four or five times every winter and we deal with it easily. This wasn't. Imagine driving through a snowstorm surrounded by a cars with driving school signs on their roofs. Now you get the picture.

  When we arrived at our motel I texted Jen to let her know we'd survived. She told me I deserved pizza and a beer. Good idea, except Lexingtonians were treating the weather as an extinction-level event. Everything was closed. Streets were deserted. We went out looking for dinner and our choices were reduced to a stale gas station sandwich or the McDonalds' drive-thru. Mickey D's won although the food we received was cold and tasteless. We should have travelled with a can of SPAM and some melba toast. It would have been tastier. No pizza and beer for Mikey.

  When we awoke Monday we found the car coated in three quarters of an inch of ice. Think William H. Macy with his ice scraper in Fargo. The Weather Channel was calling it a "weather emergency". Red screen. Lots of talking heads. The only weather-speak they didn't use was "Snowmageddon". They're saving that for February.

  I let the car warm up for ten minutes and easily cleared enough of the ice to get us out of there while the locals looked on, shaking their heads and marveling at our backwoods Canadian audacity. We loaded our beaver coats, maple syrup and birchbark canoe and launched ourselves out of the parking lot/skating rink, heading south, leaving the disaster area in our rear view mirror.

  I read later schools were to remain closed until Wednesday. What would these people do if they encountered real snow? We exited the storm area an hour later and, with temperatures on the rise, aimed ourselves at Florida's warm, sunny skies and sandy beaches.

  With ideal driving conditions ahead of us it was time for Atlas Obscura. There wasn't much. It looked like our best bet was to stop in Knoxville, TN where a giant Rubik's Cube had been erected for the 1982 World's Fair. We didn't find it as it's located somewhere inside the Convention Center and most of it was inaccessible while people milled around removing Christmas decorations. We did see a giant disco ball on a stick, so it wasn't a total loss.

  The Atlas also told us about a nearby junkyard that was littered with old wrecks that had  trees growing through them. It was said to be a very dramatic landscape worthy of a lot of Instagram-worthy photos. Also, it cost twenty bucks to see it. We gave it a miss.

  That night we stopped in, what we thought was, a quiet little burg named Cordele. We didn't know it at the time but the town was named after the daughter of a railroad magnate. It was also the only place along I-75 in Georgia offering passable motel rooms for less than $150. Ok, time for that pizza and beer I didn't get the previous evening.

  If you remember how our first house sitting excursion started, this was a repeat. We had left on our grand adventure and aimed ourselves at Delphos, OH, where we had once eaten incredible Mexican food, only to find everything closed because it was Memorial Day. We settled for Pizza Hut as it was the only thing available.

  This time, no pizza. The only pizza joint in town was Pizza Hut. Been there, done that, not doing it again. We settled for non-pizza, managed a beer, and headed back for a quiet night's sleep. Except not.

  We found out why Cordele's motel rooms were cheaper. It turns out Cordele, GA is a hub for many of the railroads that service the southeast US. Eighty freight trains a day pass through there, an average of more than three per hour. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. Each one blares it's sleep-inhibiting horn as it passes. Wikipedia also told us Cordele has the only railroad "diamond" in the South. People come from all over to see it. Not us. Give me a giant fork or a plane on a stick any day. Anyway, we almost managed a night's sleep and focused on the warm, sunny skies and sandy beaches that awaited us.

  Oh. About that warmth. Remember the giant, once-in-a-decade storm we drove through? Well, its cold air was following us. As we drove south the weather forecast for our destination changed, dropping 20F. Not so warm. Still sunny. Warmer than if we'd stayed in Canada but not warm.

  So here we are, safe and sound in Venice, FL, although not warm. The beach is still sandy and the sun is still shining but it's not lie-on-the-beach warm. It's more like you-still-need-a-jacket warm. I'm sure it will get better but the long-term forecast currently calls for more of the same for the next ten days. As I said, it's warmer than what we left behind us so no complaining. But it could be so much better.

  We have two cats to hang out with here but you'd never know it as they seem somewhat reserved, preferring to avoid us even when food is offered. They'll warm up to us but, if the weather is any indicator, it might take a while.

  Oh, last night I had my pizza and beer. Frozen pizza from Walmart but pizza just the same. I didn't want Jen to be disappointed.

  We're here for three weeks before moving across the state to another Florida sit. It should give us plenty of time for some deep-sea fishing, kayaking, golf, beachcombing and, hopefully, some of those buck-a-shuck oysters and two dollar Yeunglings we found on the Atlantic coast a year ago.

We have our priorities.