Weather
At long last our extraordinary hot spell broke, leaving behind gorgeous days and nights. In October, while the rest of the country was dealing with heavy rains, flooding, and cold we were suffering with 98+ degree weather, with real feel temps of well over 100+ degrees. It began to feel that our hot and humid south Florida summer would never end.
For a week or so now we’ve had day temps in the low 80s and night temps in the mid to high 60s. Ahhh, what a relief. It’s been nice enough to have the doors and windows open all day. To improve things even more, the bugs have completely disappeared, so we are enjoying the gorgeous weather with not a single mosquito, June bug, or insect of any kind to torment us.
Halloween
Halloween was a non-event this year – quite a change from 2007 on Capitol Hill in Seattle and 2008 in Gueydan, Louisiana. Not only did we not do anything, but our neighborhood was deathly quiet as well. A number of families in the neighborhood put up decorations, but the night of Halloween was completely quiet.
Our big entertainment was watching Alex put together his costume. He works at an Ale House, which required every server and bartender to wear a costume all day on the 31st, offering a prize for the best costume. Alex decided on a Corpse Removal Expert costume – a pair of blood-spattered white coveralls stenciled with CRE in black on the back, his hair in a mohawk, with a white blood-spattered nose-and-mouth face mask.
We gave him suggestions and comments (he already had everything worked out – he only needed final approval), and held the mirror while he did the blood spatters on his overalls, face, and face mask. His costume was extremely simple, but he won first prize, walking away with a hundred dollars in cash! Check out our photo album to see his costume.
Bike rides
With the weather finally turning beautiful, we’ve been back on the bikes again for more than just errands. Several days we headed out to the beach in Delray, resting on a bench at the corner of Atlantic Ave and A1A watching the traffic, both vehicles and pedestrians. We have plenty of cyclists to see on Sundays, mixed in with joggers, rollerbladers, beachgoers, tourists, and the occasional surfer hauling a surfboard.
Cyclists take over A1A on weekends, with riders coming from fifty miles in all directions to ride the beach route. We counted over a hundred cyclists just in an hour or so of sitting at our observation post, many of them riding wheel to wheel in fast-moving pace lines. Nearly every cyclist is kitted out in beautiful, flashy, colorful, expensive outfits, riding expensive bikes. It’s quite a sight.
Though I’d bet we have more overall riding experience, we feel like the country cousins with our putty-colored (yes, that’s really the color REI calls our bikes) funky-looking touring bikes with the strange padded trekker handlebars, and our faded lime-green long-sleeve Ex-Officio shirts with black capri pants. We stand out like lone desert wildflowers in a sophisticated garden of highly cultivated blossoms.
Check out our photo album to see a sampling of the riders we saw.
Last Sunday we finally headed up to Boynton Inlet, where the Intracoastal connects to the ocean. It’s long been one of our favorite places anywhere. For us it’s a twelve mile ride out, six miles through the residential and commercial areas of Delray, hitting A1A at Atlantic Ave, followed by six gorgeous miles along the coast up to the Inlet.
The weather was particularly spectacular – cool, crisp and sunny. We always leave early so we can arrive at the Inlet by 8 a.m. when the fishing charters and dive boats go out. The last few weeks we’ve had extremely high and low tides, causing extremely high surf. For us here in SoFla that’s quite a sight – we normally have no wave action – so whenever we do have waves, crowds gather at the beach to see the excitement.
We arrived at the Inlet right on time – stopping with the other spectators on the bridge to watch the action. The northern jetty has been closed for several months to rebuild the dredging operations; though now open, the south jetty will be closed soon for rebuilding. Sunday being a day off for most people, the crowd was bigger than usual.
The waves were awesome – though we’ve lived here ten years, we’ve only seen waves this high a handful of times. Most of the smaller craft opted to stay in the Intracoastal once they saw the height of the waves crashing against the jetties, but the larger fishing and dive boats headed out.
With an outgoing tide of 9-10 knots per hour meeting the incoming surf, the current between the jetties was impressive. We held our breath watching the Lady K, the Sea Mist III, and the dive boat carefully negotiate their way out through the waves to the open ocean. The dive boat and the Lady K got caught with an intimidating set of waves; we watched them wallow in the surf, nose pointed to the sky, followed by an immediate plunge down, only to go up again.
We stayed quite a while oohing and aahing as the waves crashed into the jetties, watching the misty spindrift on the long lines of waves out past the jetties, keeping an eye on the surfers (the waves are a real treat for local surfers!) checking out the cyclists heading both directions on the road behind us. During a lull in traffic, one cyclist pulled up next to us.
He’s Jeff Meral (sounds like pearl with an ‘m’), a dentist in Coral Springs who rides as much as he can. Jeff does a 45-50 mile ride, usually turning around at the Inlet. We had great fun swapping stories for a while before he had to head back. Jeff, we hope you send us a note!
Chelsea and I weren’t ready to head home yet, so we wandered our way over to the picnic area on the Intracoastal side of the Inlet. Down near our favorite spot we discovered that the tides were so high they had flooded a sizeable area of the parking lot; in fact, they had come up over the top of the sea wall at high tide.
Maneuvering our bikes through the water, we catwalked on a ledge at the edge of the seawall to keep our feet dry. The water was still extraordinarily high; each passing boat tossed up wake that nearly breached the seawall. Fish were still flopping around alive in the parking lot; chunks of seaweed had floated right over the seawall.
As we sat at our favorite table overlooking the choppy waters of the Intracoastal, munching our peanut butter-honey sandwiches, watching the ospreys and pelicans, and checking out the Sea Tows as they headed to rescue people in the high surf, we heard a terrific screeching from a flock of birds overhead; it sounded familiar but we couldn’t place it, nor could we place the shape of the birds. A moment later Chelsea shouted “Parrots! Those are parrots!”
When we first moved to Florida ten years ago we lived in Ft Lauderdale. We had a huge ficus tree in our back yard – we were only a mile or so from the Atlantic Ocean so we had a whole different set of birds than up here. Quite regularly we’d have a flock of parrots settle in our ficus tree, chattering and muttering away. Moving farther north here to Delray, we’ve not seen a single parrot in eight years.
Of course we had to have photos, but the parking lot was flooded; we couldn’t get over to the trees where the birds had settled. I leaned into Chelsea and murmured, “A dedicated photographer would take off her shoes and socks and wade into the water…” After a brief hesitation, off came her shoes and socks. Moments later I had mine off; we spent a thoroughly enjoyable hour wandering through the very cold water barefoot in the parking lot, chasing great photos of the birds. (We found out later that they are black-headed conures, found only in a small community in Sarasota FL and another in Miami.)
Check out the photo album to see the waves and the black-headed conures.
Alex’s birthday
Alex celebrated his twenty-second birthday last week; it seems unbelievable that time passes so quickly. He took off for two days up to West Palm Beach with his girlfriend, but we called on his birthday to sing happy birthday to him. Meanwhile we bought a twelve-pack of cherry coke – his favorite – and wrapped it in our pre-used packing paper. Chelsea used her calligraphy skills and pens (we kept them out of the packed boxes) to address the gift to Alex; she even created a bow and ribbon out of paper.
Alex knows how tight our budget is, so he expected nothing; he was really tickled to get the gift, especially since it was chosen and wrapped so very thoughtfully (grin). He put the twelve-pack in the refrigerator, wrapping and all.
Errands and courthouse
Living in an urban area without a car is really an experience. Cars aren’t expecting us, and there’s usually no place to lock up our bikes when we arrive. On the other hand we are so unusual (being only on bikes) that store managers or owners are often accommodating to us.
One of our funnier and more annoying stories was last week at the Delray courthouse, when weren’t lucky enough to have any accommodating store manager to help us out.
We’d promised a neighbor that we’d head to the courthouse on his behalf to pay a parking ticket (his registration had expired and he’d forgotten to get it renewed in time); it was the last day and needed to be done that day. Needing the income, he really wanted to work. So we agreed, especially since it wasn’t too far out of our way on our regular ride. We got the ticket, the paperwork, and a check from him.
Our buddy had to go to work, do his opening shift, get his bi-weekly paycheck, run to the bank to deposit it, and call us so that we’d know when it was deposited; he needed to get enough cash in the bank to cover the check he’d given us for the ticket. By the time he called it was 10:30; we were waiting in Delray at our favorite spot on the corner of A1A and Atlantic Ave.
It took us no time at all to negotiate the traffic on Atlantic Ave. The fun started when we arrived at the courthouse. Bike racks were available; in fact, there were no other bikes there. Looking around as we locked our bikes, it didn’t seem like a place to be leaving our tools and phones and bike lights in the bike bags, especially since two women chatting on a nearby retaining wall were discussing their respective prison cellmates and which judge they’d had.
It took us a few minutes to gather everything together, but our Camelbaks are large capacity, so we got organized before we got into the courthouse. Much to our dismay, the Delray courthouse has been completely revamped. What used to be a straightforward system has now turned into a major big-city approach.
Several years ago I had to pay a ticket at the courthouse. I walked in the front door, waited in a line of perhaps ten people, walked up to the counter when my turn came, and transacted my business. The whole process took maybe fifteen minutes.
Now we were faced with a scanning and security system that would rival a major airport. Our tools were rejected; we had to dig out all keys and put them in a special tub; we had to turn on our phones and put them in the tub with the keys; we had to remove our helmets – they did let us keep our shoes with cleats on.
Meanwhile the line was backing up and flowing around us. The security officers told us brusquely several times to go put our things out in our car. “We don’t have a car, we’re here on bicycle”, we patiently reminded them. They had absolutely no idea what to say to that. When we asked if there was anything we could do, anyplace we could put our rejected items while we popped in to pay the ticket, we faced a blank stare.
We finally asked how safe they thought it was for us to leave our things in the bike bags. More stares. One officer said, “Well, how high is a wall?” Feeling frustrated, we headed out to the bikes and carefully put our things away.
We negotiated security with no troubles this time. Maybe thirty minutes and we’d be out of there, headed home for a late breakfast, we figured. We dutifully took our number and found some chairs.
So much for popping in to pay the ticket – we waited two and a half hours for our five-minute task. We had no books, no writing paper, no laptop, absolutely not one thing to help entertain us while we waited. I had thought to make an extra sandwich, so we each took turns checking on our equipment in our bike bags and chomping down our sandwiches, but it wasn’t enough to stave off hunger for that long. There wasn’t anything to do except grin and bear it, and get out as soon as we were done.
The good news? Everything was still in our bike bags and we had awesome tail winds home.
Library
One of our favorite resources recently is the Delray Beach City Library. Free library cards are given to any resident of the state of Florida, so we signed up a few weeks ago. The library is huge for a local library, with two open-air floors, soaring knotty pine ceilings, indirect skylights, a fountain out front with stone benches, wooden benches under the overhang, bike racks out back, and a very friendly competent staff.
We are regulars here now, cruising the mystery book shelves, the movies, and lately the non-fiction writing shelves. We each have a library card now, so we can take out up to six movies altogether for a three-day span, renewing them by phone for another three days. That means we get a movie a day for free.
We have churned through an astonishing number of books as well, finding our favorite authors and getting everything the library has on hand for each author. We haven’t had this much fun reading since Patti’s Book Nook in Gueydan, Louisiana.
And the best part is that we get great exercise, as the library is a ten-mile round trip bike ride from home.
Downsizing
We continue to make progress on the projects around home, though we’ve taken a few weeks’ break, partly for catching up on the website projects and partly from exhaustion. We sold our beloved green leather recliner – our only comfort is that it went to a good home. We’re still planning on a garage sale sooner than later, and we just sold our last section of Adventure Cycling Maps.
It’s really odd to be watching our things gradually disappear – we are still in our home, but all our much used and much loved items are either sold or are in boxes ready to go back to storage. We are living a Spartan lifestyle for being at home, but it’s still luxurious compared to our lifestyle on the road.
Winter Silks
Alison at Winter Silks wrote a great little piece on our journey and posted it in the Winter Silks winter newsletter at www.wintersilks.com. If you’ve got time, take a look at the article, and take some time to check out their online catalogue. We sent them photos of ourselves at the Mardi Gras parade in Lafayette Louisiana; yes, the shirts we are wearing are Winter Silks mock turtlenecks.
We were thrilled to receive a $100 gift certificate from the president of Winter Silks as a follow-up to the article. We have spent several weeks deciding what to get with it, finally deciding on two silk tank tops for me and one long sleeve high-tech silk shirt for Chelsea. We dearly love our mock turtlenecks that we got a year ago – we wore them everywhere, taking them off only long enough to wash. It’s not been cold enough here yet to wear them, but they are clean and ready to go whenever the temperature drops!
Downloading
We are using our Verizon Wireless Air Card for Internet at home, but Chelsea’s laptop can’t take my card – the Air Card is pre-historic by today’s standards. We’ve brought Chelsea’s laptop along today so we can upload photos and download the updates to some learning Spanish software we’ve got. So far we’ve tried three times, lasting an hour and a half each, but the downloads are timing out, so we’re packing up and heading home – we are hungry and tired and we’ve got a half hour ride home still. If we’re lucky again, we’ll have strong tailwinds all the way home.
Signing off from the Delray Beach City Library…