Day 109, Year 10: Shop ‘til You Drop
Date: Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Weather: Sunny and Beautiful; Temp Low-70’s F Daytime, Low-50’s Overnight
Location: Anchored in Lake Sylvia, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Mark had an appointment with Dr. Gomez at 11:30 am this morning, but it was closer to 1 pm before we left Holy Cross Hospital and started our afternoon shopping spree. Lee and Lynda were with us and the first stop was Trader Joe’s in Boca Raton. This is north of the hospital by a few miles, but I REALLY wanted some TJ’s Dark Chocolate Almonds and Lynda wanted her favorite cereal, only available at TJ’s. On the way back south to Costco, Lynda spotted a Walmart and she wanted some things from there. We stopped and Mark found a cleaning brush for our grill and some additional clothes hangers. We really needed both things so that made the stop well worth it for us. Next, we did a quick run through Costco, ate lunch there for $1.50, and continued our trek back towards Fort Lauderdale. We stopped at Whole Foods to get a special kind of tea for Mark, Home Depot to get Lynda another washing machine (bucket) and some Fish Fertilizer for my little garden, the Galleria Mall to get an adapter to charge Lee and Lynda’s Apple electronics, and CVS and Publix for miscellaneous items. There was no one-stop-shop today. It was here and then there for this little thing and that. But it was a successful day and Windbird and Sea Turtle can’t hold much more. So it must be time to move on. Tomorrow Mark and I go back to Holy Cross for Mark’s treatment. We have a couple of other errands to run with the Ed and Lynne’s car, but at the end of the day it will be returned and we’ll be back to walking and taking public transportation.
While we were at the hospital this morning, we got a call from Helaine Kanegsberg. She and Alan have had a last minute change in plans and will not be able to make the trip around the Keys to the West Coast of Florida with us. We are so disappointed, as are they, but we’ll just have to make plans for another trip at a later date. This news does change things for us somewhat. After tomorrow, we can go ahead and start the trip to the West Coast as soon as Thursday. We will still make a stop in Biscayne Bay, but possibly just a one night stop before continuing on. But as always, the weather is throwing a kink into the plans. The forecast keeps changing and now it is looking like Sunday and Wednesday of next week will bring strong winds from the East. This is just what you don’t want when you are in exposed anchorages in the Keys with no place to hide. Mark and I have both spent the entire evening studying various weather forecasts and we have come to no conclusion as to when to leave and where to stop along the way. We just need more time to figure it out. So we’ll probably still leave here on Thursday and go to one of the anchorages just south of Miami. If the weather looks right, we’ll continue on the next day. But if not, we’ll hole up in Coconut Grove looking for that ‘just right’ weather window.
While on the topic of weather, I must mention the blizzard that hit the south shore of Massachusetts and Cape Cod and the Islands yesterday and today. We’ve been following our daughter’s weather updates on the WCAI website and all we can say is that we are glad that we are here. I’m sure the grandkids have enjoyed the snow, but there are lots of people still without electricity with temps in the low teens tonight. And poor Nantucket Island. Those folks are still without electricity and according to CBS meteorologist Eric Fisher, they had eighteen consecutive hours of 60+ mile per hour winds. I guess if they can survive that, we can survive 20 knot winds from the wrong direction in the Keys.
