Back a few weeks, while this site was in cyberlimbo, I was in uncyber Florida. We took Josie and went down to our favorite little green hut on Sanibel Island. A week of hot, sunny weather with nothing to do but bike up and down the sandy streets from one gorgeous white sand beach to the next. As usual, I brought my watercolors with me. In fact, I got pulled out of the security line at the airport because the gal running the x-ray machine thought my brush roll looked suspicious. I had to go with a huge guy in a uniform off to a table at the side where he asked me if there was anything in my bag that could poke him. After I assured him that there was nothing more dangerous than a pair of folded up needlepoint scissors, he rifled around till he found the bamboo mat.
"There it is," he said "we couldn't tell what this..." as he spoke, he lifted it out, spilling my extremely expensive sable haired brushes out on their tips.
"Oops." he said, peeking at the brushes and pencils bouncing across the floor. "never mind."
It was an uneventful flight.
Good thing, cuz if a terrorist had tried to pull anything I was perfectly prepared to stab at their jugulars with my broken pencils.
The weather on the island was perfect. It was hot, but not too humid and not too hot to bike. One morning Jay took off to work out and we had plans to meet him at the Island Cow, our favorite place for breakfast. It's everybody's fave, so when we got there, there wasn't anyplace left on the bike rack. I was carefully leaning my bike by a tree, making sure that the car parked there wouldn't drive over my bike when it backed out. As I did so, the driver came out, having finished his breakfast.
"Don't worry!" he advised me "It's a rental!"
Then he hopped in his SUV and promptly backed right into the gal backing out on the other side of the lot.
I hope it was a rental.
One night we went on a sunset dolphin watch cruise. It couldn't have been more beautiful if it had been directed by Steven Spielberg. Honestly, our first sight of dolphins was when they jumped out of the water right in front of the sunset, as if they'd been waiting for their cue. There was a woman on board who claimed to be named "Starbuck". Now, for all I know she had told everyone in the restaurant the night before that her name was "Slappy" and she was the queen of the rodeo clowns, but on our cruise her name was Starbuck.
I loved her. She thought I was 25.
It was dark out.
Despite bringing my paints, slightly bent brushes and all, I only did one tiny sketch. I just wasn't in the mood to paint. I was too busy biking, swimming, reading and smuggling little coolers full of champagne to the beach. I read four books that week and they were all good.
Our last day in Florida we spent at Ft. Myers beach with friends who have a time share on the beach. We ate, shopped, sunned and had a blast. Gary and Karen live in Duluth, where two weeks earlier they got a foot of snow. Karen and Josie hit it off right away. They were wearing the same toe nail polish. They let me hang out with them most of the day.
All in all, a perfect vacation.
