A few years ago, Kim convinced me that our kitchen needed new paint and wallpaper.  It had been a few years since our last cosmetic update and the old stuff was getting tired.  Not being one to farm out any work that I can do myself, I forged ahead with the project.  I mean, how hard could it be to remove the old  paper, prime the old paint and simply replace what you had just taken off?  I was about to find out.

A few months and several 'kitchen units' later (one kitchen unit = five boat units) the project was complete. "What happened?"  I kept asking myself?  How did this seemingly simple project get so far out of control? It turns out, in my naivete, that you cannot simply change colors or remove paper.  Doing so would be like me getting a spray tan.  Looks good for a short time, but underneath, its still the same worn-out old guy.

To do it right and make it all work, its best to start from scratch.  So, as the kitchen project began to evolve, I discovered that paint and paper begat counter tops.  Counter tops begat sinks and fixtures.  Sinks and fixtures begat door hardware.  Door hardware begat cabinets.  Cabinets begat appliances.  Appliances, well they don't begat anything.  They are the top of the food chain.  Anyway, what started out as a simple weekend project for me, turned into a multi-month frenzy of major projects and check writing.  On top of that, I had to go shopping with Kim for door handles and such and I really hate that kind of thing.

So flash forward several years later and I am standing on the bow of our boat looking at the worn out paint.    Still smarting from my kitchen experience several years prior, I was hesitant to dive headfirst into another major 'cosmetic' update.  I mean, the boat didn't look that bad, and after all, its just a boat, right?  But after talking with several other boaters, checking out the internet and generally ignoring every voice screaming in my head "don't do it!", I bought some paint.

This should have been my first clue.  Boat paint is egregiously expensive.  Way over $100/gallon.  Plus, you need special rollers and brushes, lots of thinners and enough blue edging tape to circle the globe.  Still though, I kept telling myself... "its okay... think about how much you are saving by doing it yourself!"

So one fine morning in early January I began the process by removing the first piece of hardware.  Like any good paint job, the work is all in the preparation.  Removing as many impediments to a smooth finish is the key.  The idea is not to paint around (or god forbid... paint over), but rather to paint in a way that there are no edges or brush marks created by impediments to a smooth roller.  Anyway, there is a lot of hardware on the boat.  Removing and cataloging it took several days alone.  Next comes the sanding. Yes, the old wax/dirt/finish needs to come off lest the new paint not adhere to the surface...and its very messy.  Combined with breathing in the acetone and whatever carcinogens were floating in the air, the next few weeks of sanding caused me, I am sure, to lose millions of whatever brain cells I had left.  Next came the taping... and taping... and taping.  Anything that was remotely exposed to my unwieldy brushes and rollers had to be protected.  It was everywhere.  I had some in my hair at one point but I think Kim was afraid to pull it out.  I mean, I need every follicle!

As the days and weeks dragged on, I began to lose my energy and patience with this project.  Hey I am retired!  I didn't sign up for this.  But the end was coming into view and I was happy that I wasn't shopping for corian.   The boat was finally ready for some paint.

Now for as much as this paint costs, you would think it would be easier to work with.  While it will last for years under some extreme conditions, for that kind of money it should go on with less effort.  The key to a great finish is to eliminate any roller/brush marks and any 'bubbles' that come to the surface after application.  The window to do this is very small as this paint sets up VERY fast.  I am talking minutes here.  Even though it looks like milk going on, it handles like peanut butter.  At times, I felt like more the sculptor than the painter.  But after a few hours, I got the hang of it.

The whole job took a little less than two months but we are very happy with the results.  We even have people stopping by with their cameras to take pictures now and then.  One afternoon as Kim and I were admiring the fruits of our labor, Kim asked me about replacing the countertops in the galley.  "How hard could that be?"  she asked.  "You did such a great job on the outside, lets do the inside".   

I wasn't falling for that again.  

  

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I can't lie to you.  We are really liking this retirement gig.  Life in the Florida Keys is very nice.  There is a real community here, a sense of belonging.  Even though the people here are passing through but for a short time, we have grown fond of the many friends we have made and truly believe we will be 'buds' for a long time to come.

I think one of the catalysts that brings people together is the proximity of one boat to the next.  Marinas are tight spots and you cannot help but get to know your neighbor.  As such, you are compelled to get out and meet each other.  Back home, our house sits back in the woods on a little over an acre of ground.  We can go months without seeing one of our neighbors.  Here on the docks, you see everyone almost every day.  And if that is not enough for you, there is a happy hour every afternoon at five where all the boaters gather on the beach, sharing a drink and some stories as the sun goes down.



One of the things we wanted to do this year while in Marathon was to try out a few of the different marinas on the island.  There are many and each has its own flavor.  The first place we tried was called Sombrero Dockside.  Probably in the best location on the water, Sombrero is known for its lively clientel and popular bar and grill.  Each night at the bar there would be live entertainment.  The genres ranged from country to pop with one night reserved for karaoke (ugh!).  Most times, the music was quite good, but sometimes it was just plain bad.  Unfortunately for us, we were two slips removed from the stage which meant we heard every note that was played.  It was if they were playing in our basement.  This is okay if it was only a few nights a week.  At Sombrero, in season, there is music every night.  I don't think we could have made it the whole winter.

Luckily for us, we were able to get a slip at one of the other marinas we were wanting to try out.  Across the road on the bayside of the island sits Banana Bay.  As loud and boisterous as Sombrero was, Banana Bay is quiet and serene.  With a scant 27 slips, Banana Bay is a tight knit community of boaters who value thier privacy.  While there are still the nightly gatherings on the beach for happy hour, the conversations are shorter and pointed more towards banal things like the weather and the tide.   We have made one friend here that we hope visits more often:

This is an eight foot manatee that hangs around the marina, looking for a kind soul to offer her some fresh water.  It is amazing how large and docile these animals are.  She lumbers in every other day or so, hangs around for an hour or so and then is back on her way.  Its fun to watch her as she roll over from her back to her belly as the kids squeal in delight.

So as the days amble by here at "shuffleboard city," we are spending most of our time working on the boat.  (theres a surprise!)  The big project this season is to repaint the 'house'.  The 'house is the part of the boat that is out of the water and not the hull.  It comprises the flybridge and foward decks, along with the dinghy deck.  It has been a lot bigger job than we thought it was going to be.  Maya was looking a little tired in the paint department and I am glad to say that her new coats have made a great difference.

We are gearing up for our big 10 week Bahamas cruise later in the year.  We can't wait for that!  For now though, we are enjoying the weather and all the good friends we have made.  I am going to make it a point to get out in the neighborhood a little more when we get back to Cincinnati.  I wonder what they would think if we had happy hour nightly out on Treeknoll?

After several months back in Ohio, we are finally aboard Maya once again.  Its so nice to be back on the water.  Its just so relaxing!  We were talking the other day and Kim mentioned that after almost four years of owning Maya, the boat finally feels like our home.  Kim thinks its all the special touches that make it seem so personal now.  New chairs, carpet, paint....all the usual 'X' chromosome stuff.  I feel that its all the 'units' we have invested in Maya that makes her ours:  boat units and blood units (from so many injuries) ....the 'Y' chromosome stuff.

So Maya sat in the hot Florida sun this past summer.  Up the river in a marina off the Caloosahatchie was her sabbatical home from June to October.  We checked on her from time to time though, charging the house batteries and shooing away the occasional spider.  All in all, after a thorough cleaning and some polish here and there, Maya was ready to go again.

We spent some of October and all of November and part of December down in Fort Myers.  From there we tackled many of the projects we had been putting off.  Maya got a new radar, some new furniture and carpet. We also got rid of the old surround sound and video/stereo units.  In today's world, if you have the Internet, you have it all.  No need for all those old pesky electronic components.  If you have a wide screen TV and a wifi connection, you are good to go!

It was also nice being around Dad for all that time.  He has been going through a rough patch recently and I think our boating diversion was good for him.  He loves being on Maya and we try and take him out whenever we can.  He is moving from his present spot to a high rise on the water soon.  Here is a shot of a proud owner with his new digs in the background.

We haven't had a lot visitors cruise with us on Maya.  I don't know whether its the idea of being on a boat with 'Gilligan' and 'Mrs. Howell' at the controls or just the fact that its hard to carve out the time off necessary to do a trip, but our passenger manifests are pretty sparse.  We haven't had a lot of takers on our invites.

So, this past New Years Eve, we had planned to spend the evening with our good friends Tom and Tina.  They were down from Cincy for a short break and the idea was that we would drive up to Sarasota where they were staying and meet them for some end of the year fun.  Soon after that, the plan was that we would be depart for our trip down to the Florida Keys.

A few days before our New Year's bash, the weather forecasts indicated that a fast moving cold front would impact our ability to make the voyage.  It takes three days to get from Fort Myers to the Keys and you have to make sure you will have good weather for the crossing.  Cold fronts and north winds make for a very lumpy ride and we just weren't digging the idea of being bounced around for so long.

The two options were to leave early (and miss the end of the year festivities) or delay our departure until the adverse weather conditions had passed.  It looked as if it might be up to a week before things settled down out in the ocean, so we decided to leave early.

I didn't like the idea of bailing on our plans with our friends so I gave Tom a call and told him about the situation with the weather.  Being a pilot, he understood right away that you can't mess around with Mother Nature.  So, trying out this spontineity thing again, I asked him if he and Tina would like to 'move the party offshore' and join us on the crossing.  I mean, what could be more fun than trying to outrun a cold front in a small boat on international waters?

He agreed immediately.  Tina.... maybe not so immediately....but pretty quickly nonetheless.  Kim calls boating, 'camping on the water'.  In some ways she is right.  The quarters aren't as spacious as they are at home and for a few days,  privacy takes a holiday.  Lets just say that when someone flushes one of the toilets onboard, everyone else knows about it.  They make a lot of noise.

Anyway, Tina is such a good sport about everything.  I knew she would embrace the trip once she got over the initial shock.  Tina and I are a lot alike....we are cut from the same cloth.  So, I knew where she was coming from.  Would I rather spend a week in Florida in my oceanfront condo with all the comforts of home or would I rather spend that time like a cork, bobbing up and down the waves hoping that my friend planned this trip so we would be safely ashore before the weather closed in?  Ha!

So, the day of our departure, Tom and Tina showed up at the dock with their toothbrushes and a case of wine, ready for the cruise.  They climbed aboard Maya and we were off.  First stop:  Marco Island.  Just a short 6 hours away, Marco is a great place to spend the night.  Totally protected from the wind and current and a very short dinghy ride away from lots of good restaurants, I thought this anchorage would put everyone at ease.  It turned out the seas were like glass the whole way down and the trip couldn't have been better.  We dinghied in to shore for dinner at a great restaurant that night.  All was good.

The next day we departed at 'oh dark thirty' for our next stop:  the Little Shark River.  Located at the southern tip of mainland Florida, Little Shark River is about as far from civilization you can get (not counting Clermont County, Ohio).  There are no cell towers, internet connections or even other people for miles and miles around.  Just you and nature baby!  After another day of smooth sailing, we arrived at the anchorage 20 minutes before happy hour.  And, happy it was.  We may have just set the world record for wine consumption that night.

Later that night when we were outside admiring the multitude of stars in the sky, one of the voyagers remarked how 'pretty the spinning stars were.'  I didn't have the heart to tell him/her that the boat and the sky were perfectly still and that perhaps it was his/her head that was spinning.  Oh well in my book, its a good night when nobody falls overboard.  Kim also made a spectacular dinner, complete with grilled chicken, some potato thing and a vegetable, I think.  I can't seem to remember anything other than it was good.  hmmmm.

The last day, I had everyone up before dawn.  The cold front was bearing down on us and I wanted to be safely tied to the dock in Marathon before the winds kicked up.  I am not sure, but I think Tom was still drunk when we hoisted the anchor.  He kept going on about those stars again, so I sent him back to bed. 

Here's Tom thinking about how he will never be a liver organ donor.


It was a short 40 miles down across the open water to the middle keys where we would be the next three months...about a 5 hour run.  The front was scheduled to arrive around 1800 (six p.m. for you landlubbers) and I wanted to be there by noon.  As luck would have it, the seas were dead calm for the entire passage.  If it weren't for the porpoises that were chasing us, I doubt that there would have been a ripple in the water.  It was picture perfect.

We pulled into Marathon right on schedule and got into our slip without any problems.  That night we met up with two of Tina's friends, Jody and Ed.  They have a house down here in the Keys and they invited us all over for dinner... and it was wonderful.  As we sat on their back veranda having a pre-dinner drink, the winds began to howl.  35 knots, at least.  Boy was I glad we were on land!  I love it when a plan comes together.

The next morning, Tom and Tina had to say their goodbyes and return to the great white north.  We had a ball having them aboard for those three days and they have an open invitation to cruise anytime they want.

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One of the downsides to being in a career field for a long time is that sometimes your professional life spills over into your personal life.  I can imagine how an accountant might view his friends as 'personal exemptions' after a lifetime of doing taxes.  Some of my business executive friends can't stop talking in corporate speak.  A conversation with them will always include words like 'synergy' and 'organic'.  Problems are 'challenges' and obstacles are 'learning opportunities'.  I don't know if I have ever had a real live "Aha moment" but I faked one once at a dinner party just to keep the conversation moving.   I also have a couple of friends who teach elementary school.  I think you have to be a special person to do that for a living.  But I think that after a few years behind the desk, many have trouble turning off the persona they use everyday with their students.  When at their homes, for instance, we have to make sure we use our  'inside voices'.  Once we were invited to a cookout and I am sure that when the food was ready, the hostess told us all to "line up."  I truly wanted to ask her if we had to sit 'boy-girl-boy-girl' but I don't think she would have gotten it.

So after 30 years of flying around airplanes, I too have some spillovers to deal with.  This last trip up the west coast of Florida was a perfect example.

One thing pilots always have in the back of their minds is a backup plan.  Doesn't matter what the situation, we are always thinking 'what if'.  What if the weather is bad?  Where we going to go?  Better have a plan.

What if something breaks?  Where you going to get it fixed?  Better have something in mind.

What if?  What if?  What if?  It is enough to drive you (and your spouse) crazy.

So, me being the itinerary planner, I seem to worry a bit too much about the schedule.  Originally, we were going to go to the Bahamas.  I don't know how many schedule iterations I went through before we finally scrubbed the trip, but it was a ton.  Granted, there are a lot of 'what ifs' involved with a trip like that. I mean you just can't fire up the engines and take off across the ocean, can you?  Well, I can't.

The western Florida cruise should have been a piece of cake.  From Fort Myers, where the trip began, until we reached our destination of Clearwater, there are many great anchorages, marinas and attractions for us to visit.  If there is anyplace on the water that you can just wing it and be safe, western Florida is it.

We started off thinking we were going to take three weeks to a month to visit all the places on the agenda.  We were going to spend three days here and two days there.  I had us staying at a marina in St. Pete for a week and an anchorage in Useppa Island for 4 days.  I poured over the guidebooks and internet for every scrap of information I could find.  After a few days I proudly showed Kim the fruits of my labor.  "Huh!" she remarked.  "I bet we don't do a quarter of all that," she said.

"No way!" I told her.  "This is going to be great."

"Well" she said, "let just provision for a week to start.  We can always buy more food as we move up the coast."  I was fine with that because, what if something happened and we had to abort the trip, etc. etc. etc.  I was at it again.  The 'what if' syndrome.

We left Ken's house and started up towards our first destination - as planned.  As it turned out, that was the only day that went off as envisioned by me.  We were going to spend three days at the first anchorage, exploring the beaches and restaurants in Useppa Island.  Each night as we sat on the back deck of the boat thinking about what we would do tomorrow, it seemed like we would lose a day off the itinerary.  Our first stop ended up being two days instead of three.  We skipped stop number two and went straight to stop number three, thinking we would just add a day on at that destination.

I think I drove Kim crazy going over every possible variation in the schedule we might undertake.  "We can stay an extra night in Tampa if we skip night number seven in St. Pete," I would tell her.  Or, "there's a great band playing on Wednesday in Sarasota but that would mean we would have to skip the Venice anchorage," I said to her.  This was a daily event for us, this schedule gerrymandering.  I think I was taking a lot of the spontaneity out of our trip as scheduling became more of a chore than something to look forward to.

One night the phone rang and it was our daughter.  She had been in an accident and while, thank goodness she wasn't hurt, her car was totaled.  Since the car was in my name it meant that I would have to fly back to Cincinnati and deal with insurance people.  I also needed to help our daughter get another set of wheels.  This was a 'what if' I hadn't anticipated. 

Out came the paper and pencil and within a few minutes I had another itinerary ready for Kim to review.

"Okay" I said.  "We can turn around tomorrow and still make it to the last half of our original trip if you want, or if you would rather, we can stop in Cabbage Key for blah, blah blah. "  Peeking up from my handywork, I could see that Kim's eyes were glazing over.  "Lets just get back" were her words of wisdom.

So we did.  It took a another week to get Maya back to Fort Myers and tucked away in her slip but we had a good time on the way.  

As we sat at the airport waiting to board our flight home, I turned to Kim and said, "You know, if this flight cancels, we can take the one thirty flight to Atlanta and connect to the four thirty back to Cincinnati.  And if we don't get on the one thirty, we can......"

Judging by her response, I don't think she appreciated my due diligence.

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For some time, we had been putting together a trip from the east coast of Florida to the Abacos Islands in the Bahamas.  We had put a lot of time and effort into planning this trip and were very excited about the journey.  The plan was to stay about six weeks, exploring all the tiny islands that make up the northern part of our Island neighbor.  Unfortunately, mother nature did not cooperate with us and we had to scrub the mission.  Turns out that the water levels in Lake Okeechobee (which we needed to cross in order to get from where we were in Fort Myers over to the other side of Florida) were too shallow for us to safely navigate.  They are having a drought in Florida and the lack of rainfall has had a serious impact on the lake levels.  So, discretion being the better part of valor, we decided to go to plan "B" and head up the west coast of the state and visit some of the wonderful ports on the Gulf side.

Our first stop was at our old friends Ken and Phyllis Weber's home.  When I was a corporate pilot at P&G, Ken was one of the pilots I flew with.  He has been retired from flying for many years now but we still keep in touch.  As a matter of fact, Ken was partially responsible for us getting into the boating world in the first place.  Ken and Phyllis have owned a 56 foot trawler for over 30 years now.  Kim and I were so impressed with their boat when we were on it the first time that we thought we would like to own one someday ourselves.  So, 20 years later we found ourselves pulling into the Weber's dock outside their home in St. James City, fulfilling a dream from many years past.

To put it mildly, Ken and Phyllis are living the good life.  Outside their waterfront home on the shores of San Carlos Bay, is where they keep their boat.  They can keep a keen eye on it from the three levels of their home which all have expansive views of the water.  They also have a pool and hot tub from where they unwind each evening to the sounds of lapping water and the taste of a fine pinot grigio.  (Am I sounding a bit like Robin Leach?)  Of course, they invited us to join them for cocktails that afternoon and we happily agreed.

I must tell you that sitting there in his pool with a glass of wine was quite the experience.  I wouldn't call it a vulgar display of wealth but rather the fruits of the culmination of many years of planning and lots of  just plain dumb luck.  We toasted our good fortunes, well aware that we deserved none of it and that it could be all plucked away at any moment.  "Carpe diem!" as they say.

We spent a wonderful evening with Ken and Phyllis.  They took us to their favorite restaurant (in their Rolls of course!) where we dined on the freshest fish in southwest Florida.  From there it was back to the boat for a nightcap and then a good nights sleep.

I hope Kim doesn't get too used to this lifestyle and its going to be hard to replicate it on a daily basis.  But I will tell you that if we have learned anything from our short time at sea, its been to enjoy whatever gifts you have been given, whenever possible.  You never know what tomorrow might bring.



                                                                                      

Our first cruise was now 'in the books' and it was time to head home and catch up with our lives up in Ohio.  Three months was a long time for us to be gone and I think we were both getting a little tired.  We have Maya tied up to a dock behind a friend's home near Fort Myers Beach. She will stay there for the next couple of months while we get ready for the next adventure.

We were scheduled to attend a Defever Cruiser's Rendezvous in Sarasota the third week of March.  This annual event is a chance for fellow Defever owners to confab together to share stories, drinks and adventures.  We always look forward to seeing all of our friends at the annual Rendezvous.  Its a great three day party.

Around the end of day two however, we started to run out of gas.  We had been boating non-stop almost since Christmas and feelings of homesickness were beginning to set in.  Maya had been put to bed, our car was loaded up for the drive north and I think our brains had already checked out from life on the sea.  As we got ready for the final day of the Rendezvous, we discovered our hearts just weren't in it.  So instead of taking the highway offramp for the meeting venue, we kept going straight up I-75.

We haven't made the drive up from Florida to Ohio in a long time.  Being back on the highway sure brought back some good memories though.  When I was younger, we used to vacation in Florida every summer.  During the high school and college years, there were the spring break trips.  Now that I am in my golden years ;>) I am a little nostalgic for this old ribbon of concrete.

A few things have changed over the years.  Yes, there are still senior citizens driving around with their blinkers on and truckers doing 85 mph on your tail.  That part is still the same.  What struck me the most was the flavor of the billboards along the side of the road.

I remember those benign (and annoying) signs for Stuckey's..... "8 Miles Ahead" or Howard Johnson's.... "AAA approved".  Although those signs seemed to be everywhere back then, they were essentially harmless. During this drive up from Florida however, we were bombarded with signs touting "No Scapel Vasectomies" and "Porn Superstores."  The Coppertone Girl has been replaced by scantily clad XXX models.  I even saw one billboard cleverly advertising "Lookout Mountains" as the come-on to their porn shop.

I am no prude, mind you.  But really.  Do we have to have these signs all along the highways?

By far however, the most prolific ads were for personal injury attorneys.  They were everywhere.  Here is a short list of the best 'easy to remember' phone numbers in case I am in an accident:

1-800-GET-LAWS
1-800-BIG-CASH
1-800-THE-JURY
1-800-TELLU$$

and my personal favorite:

1-800-KA-CHING

I am thinking that a fair number of accidents are caused by people reading those annoying signs and not paying attention to the road.  Probably a potential lawsuit in there somewhere.

Anyway, we are scheduled to make our next trip in a month or two.  The plan is to cross Florida at Lake Okeechobee and head out into the Atlantic Ocean on our way to the Abacos.  The Abacos are part of the Bahamas chain of islands and are the closest to the US mainland.  Only 50 miles east of Palm Beach, the Abacos are a wonderful way for us to get our feet wet as we explore the islands outside the United States.  We are very excited about this upcoming trip and already wishing we could leave tomorrow.

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We left the crystal clear waters of the Florida Keys behind and started our way back north.  The "Season" as they call it down here is on the wane.  The snowbirds, having had their fill of tequila and hubris, are making their way back to the thawing permafrost of middle America. 

We left Marathon a little before the rush.  Having some work to do on our teak railings, we needed access to shorepower and city water to complete the task.  The plan was to take a slip in Marco Island for two weeks where we could take our time and finish the job right.

The trip up from Marathon is usually a two day affair.  We were in no hurry and wanted to check out some of the local flora and fauna, so we did it in three.  First stop was the Little Shark River.  Ideally situated halfway between the Keys and the Mainland, Little Shark is in the middle of a mangrove patch, a long way from nowhere.  There were no bars of any kind.  No cell phones bars, no internet bars, no beer on tap.  That was okay though.  It was good to get back to nature and just bask in her enormity.

So we pulled into the anchorage around 2 o'clock and enjoyed the lapping of the waves against the hull and the callings of innumerable birds.  By three o'clock we were into our first beer and by four we were looking at our now depleted cache of videos wondering what were we going to do for the next 18 hours?  We decided to watch a horrible movie called "The Dog Problem" (it went straight to video) and pray that we fell asleep by nine.

The next night was a little better.  We were anchored just outside of Everglades City.  It is the last outpost of civilization before one makes the crossing from the west coast of Florida, across the swaps to Miami.  We knew there was life there as all day long, a steady stream of fishing boats came in and out of the pass that leads to the city.  Our plan was to go and visit the very famous Rod and Gun club for dinner.  A mecca for sportsmen, the Rod and Gun Club has been around for almost 100 years.  Big game fisherman make the pilgrimage at least once in their lives to pay their respects (and high prices) to those anglers who have come before.  The place looks like a TGIFridays, but instead of license plates on the wall, they have giant dead fish.  Anyway, we didn't make it in.  The winds were so high that day that we couldn't get the dinghy in the water.  It was a four mile run from the anchorage to the restaurant, so we would have been drenched on arrival anyway.  So, discretion being the better part of valor, we ate cereal for dinner that night.

The next day we triumphantly made it into Marco Island.  From about 15 miles away, we could begin to see the gleaming white towers of condos off in the distance.  Like magic, our cells phones and air card came back to life and we were once again among the living.  Or so we thought.

Marco Island can best be described as a haven for the over 80's crowd.  I have never seen so many senior citizens in one place in my life (and Kim worked in a retirement community)!  The restaurants are like a funeral home with bar service.  The giant screen TV's behind the bar don't show the big games.  They show Wheel of Fortune.  If an ambulance with sirens blaring passes outside, you can hear the patrons whispering..."I bet thats Maury.  He didn't get his flu shot."  It was going to be a long two weeks.

So while we busied ourselves with the teak project, we also got accustomed to life in Marco... or 'Shuffleboard City' as I called it.  They have a lot of rules down here... and a lot of people watching that you don't break any of them.  Our grocery store in Ohio has an express line for those who have 20 items or less.  The stores down here cap their item count at 10.  So unknowingly, I got in line with a few too many items. Well a hush came over the store.  All you could hear was the hum of Musak and pacemakers.  Then came the stares.  Not the furtive glances we give up in Ohio.  These were the stink eye, in your face, if looks could kill stares.  And they were all looking at me.

At first I didn't know what was going on, but I knew something was amiss.  I looked around thinking that maybe "Maury" had come back to life and was seen over in the incontinence aisle.  It seemed though, they were all looking at me.  At first I felt pretty cool.  Here is a reasonably young guy, in fairly good health, visiting their local establishment.  I must have looked out of place to them.  Maybe they were just trying to remember when they were in their prime and Ike was president.  Who knows.  But they were definitely looking my way.

Finally it was my turn to "check out"  (by the way, they don't use that term in the grocery stores in Marco...its too close to home.)  As I unloaded my cart, the checkout lady advised me of my blunder.  Aha!  That was it.  It was me...over the limit.  Well, I apologized the best I could noting to her that I was from Out Of Town and didn't know any better.  She didn't care.  I think the 'incident' livened up her usual dull shift.

Anyway, as I left I could hear the old farts whispering among themselves and looking at me.  In a final act of defiance though, I exited through the entrance doors and didn't return my cart!  Maury would have dropped dead on the spot!







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