Guard dogs

Hi kids!

Here's a picture of me hanging out with the guard dogs on my temporary
estate here on Grand Bahama Island as arranged by Bernie the New
Jersey car dealer. We are out by the hot tub. The pool is in the
background. We are generally laying low and trying not to blow this
deal at least until the wind storm predicted for Monday and Tuesday
blows over and my rib knits.

Angel Jen is hanging out on the boat. She claimed to be cleaning but
the last time I went down below she was napping. Then the next time I
came back she was lying in the cabin reading a book.

"Angel Jen!" I said. "Stay true to your roots! Good Protestant
Camptown women are proud of their hard working natures!"

"Mañana! It's island time, mon!"

Old Angel Jen's hardscrabble roots are softening in the Caribbean sun.
Now I guess it's up to me.

And for the jolly young linguists and dialecticians in the class,
around here it's Ca-RIB-ee-un, not Ca-ri-BEE-an. I can't speak for the
other islands but that's what the Bahamians say.

So be good kids. Be mindful of the teacher and reflect on the fact
that two guard dogs will sell out their duty for a handful of ham
cubes, another handful of cheddar cheese and some long sought after
affection. These two man killers are now my friends.

Bernie the new jersey car salesman

Hi kids!

We are still in the first port we landed in at the Bahamas, Lucaya.
I'm still recovering from a busted rib suffered in the maelstrom night
of the trip over, though I'm glad to say Bahamian Spittoon Fever seems
to have passed.

Lucaya is an extensive man made waterway harbor with canals dug hither
and yon for literally miles (and littorly miles, too, I guess). They
did it imagining people would flock to build houses on the waterway
but it has never happened. The lots nearest town center are maybe half
full and the outlying ones much less so.

We anchored in one of the lobes of said waterway happily for several
days. We met some cruisers there and a shoreside ex-cruiser landowner
who let us hang out, use the dock to get in and out of the water, et
cetera. All was happy, happy. There were two other boats anchored
there and the shoreside ex-cruisers lived in several boats at one of
the landowner guy's house's dock. All was happy.

Then the captain of one of the boats anchored there decided to have an
argument with one of the landowner's neighbors. It seems one of the
neighbor's guests had disturbed said captain with a hot rod arrival
aboard a jet ski. Said captain had been anchoring there for six years,
on and off, and he felt he could tell the land owner and his jet ski
guest what to do. Loudly. And in front of the guest.

The anchoring guy forgot a fact of life. You kids should always
remember this fact. It is: big fish eat little fish.

And he was arguing with Bernie, the New Jersey car saleman who had
paid a mil and a half for his place. Bernie was not pleased. He had
embarrassed Bernie in front of one of his biggest clients. And Bernie
knows how to make things happen.

As it turns out, in the Bahamas if a landowner doesn't want you near
his place, he can tell you to move. So yesterday a tall, handsome,
strong Bahamian policeman with a nice uniform with a red stripe down
the legs was riding in Bernie's boat as Bernie took him from anchored
boat to anchored boat telling us all to skiddadle. The guy that
started the argument, us, and the other boat that was hanging out
there were all told to go.

Being good Protestant Camptown type people, we said,"Sure thing,
officer! No problems here!" Then we right away pulled anchor and moved
to another place way out of Bernie's sight and hearing.

Unhappily, it was too near a marina and they said,"Beat it", too. What
to do? What to do?

Just then old Bernie came along in his boat looking for us. He gave us
the lowdown on his run in with the nitwit in the other boat, thanked
us for pulling anchor and told us we could use the dock at his buddy's
place until we were ready to leave the island.

I'm like,"Sweet."

We pull into the place he has indicated and good old Bernie has called
his buddy to square it all away with him, the caretaker of the place
has been put on alert, everything is set up. The caretaker, Luke,
another handsome, strong Bahamian gentleman is falling all over us. He
assures us that anything we need, he can get it in five minutes, ten
max. He shows us around the estate, the pool, the cabanas. He
introduces us to the guard dogs, Bonny and Clyde, two massive Doberman
pinschers, and urges us to feed them if we want to stay friends. (I
immediately busted open a package of cubed ham!). Sweet! Old Bernie
has set us up pretty well!

So I went down to the police station to shake the cop's hand and thank
him for tossing us out of the anchorage. Man, that worked out great!

So remember, kids. Don't argue. Be nice. Get along. And when the man
says hit the road, hit the road!

Dead bodies in a cave

Hi kids!

Here's a picture of old Angel Jen descending a staircase into a cave
entrance.

The Bahama islands are what's left of a way ancient volcano. The
volcano came up, then over like millions of years got worn away by
wind and sea. As the volcanic rock wore away coral grew on top of it.
Like for millions of years. Then it rose up again as islands. So the
islands you can see now used to be coral reefs. The rocks on the
island are filled with fossils and made from old coral.

We went to a national park and checked some of these rocks out. This
park had caves which we went down in to see the old rocks and fossils.
The caves had big pools of water in them. The guide said the
underground caverns went for like half a mile. All you had to do was
get some scuba gear, dive in and swim around to see them.

We were like,"No way. We are NOT swimming underwater, underground. Nuh-
uh."

So we just sat and watched the fishes.

The guide said when they explored the caves underwater they found the
bodies of six Lucayan Indians in the bottom of the water. Man, I'll
bet the guy that found them jumped out of his skin! I mean you're
swimming around underwater, under ground, poking around, you turn and
there's some old dead Indian staring at you! Woof!

It was nice and cool in the cave. We ate our lunch there and fed bread
to the fishes. By the way, they like cheddar cheese, too.

There was a second observation platform for the cave, it turned out.
If you continued on the trail it came up around and you could look
down on the first entrance and see the people going down the staircase
into the cave. I was going to stay up there and wait until someone
went in, then, in my best, deepest, scariest old dead Indian spirit
voice say,"Whoooo's enterrrrrring my caaaaaave??" man, I'll bet I
coulda scared them good.

But someone wouldn't let me do it.

Hmmmm....

I wonder who that would be.

Any ideas?

Frogs in a blender

Hi kids!

We went to the beach fish fry last night. There are three small
restaurants near us that have a 'fish fry' special on Wednesday
nights. We had fresh fish, conch fritters (chewy and delicious!), rice
and guava roll for dessert. No, I don't know what a guava is, but it
was good.

The restaurant was outside. It was nice eating in the warm breeze. The
bad part came later.

After we paid our bill we wandered over to another place, right on the
beach, where they were playing loud reggae music and serving drinks.
We watched a group of thirty Japanese tourists play 'take my picture'
for about a half hour. These guys just LOVE snapping pictures. First
one guy had to take a group picture of all of them using each one's
camera. Thirty 'squeeze in and smiles'. Then all the boys took group
pictures of all the girls. Then they made them turn around and did it
again. Then all the girls took group pictures of the guys. Turn around
and repeat. Lord, didn't they go on with this for a long time!

Then it got really ugly. Most of the crowd was old white people from
cruise ships. The night got dark and the old white people's
inhibitions started slipping away. They got up to dance.

Children, there is nothing uglier than a bunch of old white farmers
and farmettes whose proper Protestant inhibitions have been eroded by
island fare and island air trying to dance to a reggae or hip hop
beat. Oh, praise the lord, was it ugly. They looked like frogs in a
blender. One of these Midwestern escapees had been convinced by his
distance from home to have beads woven into his beard by the lady in
the booth downtown who puts cornrows in people's hair. So he was
kicking up his heels with these beads bouncing around his chin.
Whoop! Who let the dogs out! Whoop! Whoop!

Please, children, dance. Learn to dance now. Dance from your heart. Be
good at it. Maybe, just maybe, when you get on in life and show up at
the Bahama beach to cut loose on the dance floor you can look like
you've been there before.

Cruisers hanging out

Hi kids!

Here's a picture of some cruisers hanging out in the afternoon.
'Cruisers' are people like us who cruise around on their boats,
checking out the islands, checking out the towns, snorkling, and, of
course, fixing their boats. Most of the time they chat with one
another, make arrangements for cocktail parties and plans for travel.
But they usually convince themselves that due to weather, currents or
a broken something or other that there isn't anything to do but stay
where they are and snorkle and chat some more.

Here are some cruisers gathered under a tree in the shade. The guy in
the white shorts with the grey hair (on his head, not on his shorts)
owns the property and the four cottages on it. He rents them out,
parks his boat out front and lives on the boat.

Why? Just likes it that way, he says.

He rents space to other boaters and lets passing cruisers like us come
ashore at his place for a shower, to do laundry and for this daily
chat session.

The guy in the blue shirt is a renter of one of the houses. He gave us
a ride to the grocery store today in his car.

The lady with the red shirt is sailing to the Azores with a seventy
four year old man. The Azores are about five thousand miles away. The
man has never sailed before this trip from Florida to here. Good luck!

We are meeting quite a few interesting people and having some
interesting chats. Everyone here says

"Hi kids!"

to the Camptown first grade.

All of whom obey their teacher like she was the captain of a ship.
Right?

Tropical island beach

Hi kids!

Well, if you were wondering what a tropical island beach looks like
here it is, at least a tropical island beach at a resort town, anyway.
We will explore more deserted islands later.

But this is the basic scene. Sand on the bottom. Blue sky on the top.
Palm trees bent half over in the wind. Wall, behind which is the
resort hotel. And two tourists enjoying the beach.

Only two? Yup, only two. It seems the Great Republican Economic
Implosion of 2009 is not over yet and the Bahamas, which survives
almost entirely on tourism, is still hurting economically. When I ask
the ladies selling the cheap, made in China beachware and 'Gramma went
to Lucaya and all I got was this lousy tee shirt' tee shirts in the
stalls downtown how business is they say,"Basically, zero."

And if each of the tourists I see buys something from them, they are
still going broke. The streets are empty. And this is their busy
month, usually!

The people at the marina we stayed at hadn't been paid since last
year. They still show up for work, though. That's dedication. That's
also no other jobs to be had in town.

So if you young'uns save up your allowances and charter a plane for
Grand Bahama Island, you would be much appreciated.

Camptown meets Bahama beach

Hi kids!

Here is a picture of Angel Jen on the beach.

No swimsuit. No shorts. No flowery prints or bright colors. Not for
Angel Jen.

"I'm staying true to my Camptown roots!" she said. Yessirree bob, you
could pluck her off this tropical island beach and plunk her down in
any church supper in Bradford County and she'd fit right in.

She even refused to step into the water.

"I hate sand in my toes." she said.

Note that I am taking this picture from out in the water, while in my
shorts and with two or three quarts of sand between my toes.

I managed to get her loosened up a trfle later but she's a real
Camptonian through and through, that girl!

Now to get her into the beach wear!

She'll come around!

Bahamian spittoon fever

Hi kids!

Well, old Pirate John has been laid low the past couple days. It seems
I contracted a case of Bahamian spittoon fever. That's a sickness that
makes you have a fever and makes you feel like you've been swimming in
a spittoon for three days. Probably got it from a few mouthfuls of
water ingested while snorkling around to see if the anchor was dug
into the bottom well enough. Or from Bahamian pizza or something. At
any rate I slept a whole day away before we went out exploring again.

We ran into this guy downtown. He's a Bahamian curly tailed lizard.
They scurry around all over here and they curl their little tails up
in a tight spiral curlique when they're thinking.

In this picture I'm trying to convince him that little guys should
stay out of the road. I'm like,"Dude! Use the sidewalk! You're gonna
get scooter squashed put here!"

I must have been convincing because he got up on the sidewalk and ran
away.

And same for you guys! Keep your curly little tails out of the road!

Slick talk

Hi kids!

While we were waltzing around the streets of Lucaya today we were
approached by a young lady promising to shower us with free stuff.
Free dinners, free limbo dancing, free bonfire parties, free tee
shirts, free rum, free scooter rides, man, it sounded great!

I asked her,"Why are you giving us all this free stuff?"

She said,"I get paid $60 of I get you to take it."

I'm thinking,'free stuff for me, $60 for her. Sweet deal'

"Oh", she said. "And they try to sell you a time share."

A time share is where you give somebody a whole lot of money and they
promise to let you take a vacation there once a year for a whole long
time. If it's a nice place and doesn't go out of business it can be a
good deal, I guess.

So old Angel Jen says,"We'll go!"

I was so surprised. I never expected her to do it, but I went along
for the ride.

We took a ride over to the resort and it was really nice. It had great
rooms, a great beach and pool. This lady gave us a real hard sell.
That means she tried every which way to get us to sign up, give her
$16,000, and become 'real Bahamians'.

When we said we would think about it and decide by tomorrow, she got
mad and didn't want to talk to us anymore.

So we left. The lunch we got was good but I'm not sure it was worth
the hassle. But it's another brick in the wall of experiences in life.

So be good kids and maybe some day you can enrage a slick talking
Bahamian predator salesman like we did.

Whitest

Hi kids!

We wound up on the dock at the end of a fishing tournament last night.
Here is the judge weighing the day's catch to determine who the winner
is.

This is the third and largest fish caught during the day. It weighed
25 pounds. There were about fifteen boats in the tournament, each one
bigger than the other, costing from, say, $250,000 to half a mil, with
bridges, fly bridges and super fly bridges, big fishing poles, out
riggers, fishing chairs, hundreds of horsepower each burning at least
300 gallons of fuel a day. And that day's catch was about fifty pounds
of fish. One of these mighty sportsman shared the fact that his boat
(four gentlemen from Georgia, a dozen poles among them) had not caught
a fish in the whole four days they had been competing. Man, this sure
sounded like fun! But I don't even have a fishing pole that would
haul in a twenty five pound fish.

But I got looking around at the crowd and I figured out a competition
I could win. See all the tans on on these people? They hang out on
this tropical island and they are outside all the time. Their tans are
great.

I haven't been warm enough to even wear shorts until today. The sun
hasn't laid a ray on me yet. So I'm going to organize a 'whitest
belly on Bahama' contest. With my fair skin and lack of sun I'll bet I
can win.

Well, nothing left but the doing! I'll let you know how it comes out!

Til then, you all be good kids and listen to who?

That's right, you're getting it.

THE TEACHER!

Bad idea

Hi kids!

Just a short lesson in this picture. Don't put your arm in a shark's
mouth or it will look like this. Right before your arm becomes shark
food.

Remember: shark's mouth + arm = bad idea.

Now there's some math you can understand!

PS
This is not a real shark and no actual arms were harmed in the
production of this public service announcement, nor skarks, neither.

Angel Jens new friend

Hi kids!

Right after Angel Jen took my picture with my fellow pirate she made
the acquaintance of his friend here. Seems like the old pirate was
doing pretty well with the ladies despite his mullet and various
missing body parts.

From the hip huggers I'd say she got her fashion sense established in
the nineties, but you never ask a lady her age. Especially not a lady
that's hanging around with a one legged, one handed pirate with a
three foot sword.

She is a big one, though, isn't she? She's way taller than Angel Jen.
Nice lady, though. Kinda quiet, but so's Jen so they got along fine.

So be good kids, wear your hip huggers if you got'em and someday you
could be a pirate's 'moll', too. Or maybe not.

Yo, Ho! Another pirate!

Hi kids!

Well, last message we were leaving Miami and wondering if we would
make it over the hundred miles of raging sea. We made it, by the skin
of our teeth (that means barely made it because there is very little
skin on teeth, generally). The wind blew a whole lot more than those
liars at the weather bureau said it would and the seas raged higher
than I've ever seen. There was spray every place. Good thing we had
our foul weather gear on! We had to dodge big ships in the night and
fight, fight, fight to get through. Or I did, rather. Angel Jen slept
through the fighting while I drove. (Whichever one of you observed
that it seems like she does all the work, take note.)

In the end we made it to Grand Bahama Island after 24 hours of travel.
We checked into the country with immigration and customs, refueled
again and went out for dinner as a treat.

In town while looking for a restaurant I met this fellow, another
pirate! He seems a little worse for wear as he is missing a hand and
has a wooden peg for a leg and he doesn't stand up too straight. But I
like his Bermuda shorts. The frilly cuff on the shirt sleeve is a
little questionable and the mullet has to go. I had a jacket like that
with all the paint on it once but Angel Jen tossed it out. She says
'appearance is important' and, of course, she's right.

Gotta get me one of those hats, though. Sweet.

So be good kids and, once more, who's always right?

Huh?

Louder!

The TEACHER!

Leaving Miami

Hi kids!

Well, it's finally time to weigh anchor (that's a sailor talk for pull
the anchor up and stow it for traveling). It's early Wednesday morning
and we are leaving Miami harbor.

We got all prepared by putting everything away so it doesn't fly
around when we are bobbing in the ocean, putting on the sails, filling
up the fuel tanks, buying a BIG bag of candy (Skittles, my favorite),
putting on clean clothes and brushing our hair.

It was raining but we didn't care. We put on our 'foul weather gear'
which is what sailors call their rain suits after they have paid $400
for them to keep us dry in the rain.

Under the foul weather jacket I wore my hunting, fluorescent orange
shirt. It's specially made to wick away moisture (hunters get nervous
and sweat a lot, I guess) and B) it makes the bodies easier to find if
they drown.

Here is a picture of me at the helm as we are leaving Miami. The tall
buildings behind me are Miami.

Do you think we'll make it? It's over a hundred miles of raging
ocean. Anything can happen.

Well, nothing left now but the doing. Off we go, come what may. Pray
for the sailors!

Café scum

Hi kids!

We are still in Miami Beach. The wind is blowing so hard we just about
drown trying to take the dinghy ashore. When we drive the dinghy the
same direction as the wind it jounces around up and down a lot. When
we try to go the other direction, into the wind, it jounces around a
WHOLE lot and the waves break over the bow and spray sprays up in the
air when we hit them and we get wet. Poor old Angel Jen gets the
wettest because she rides in the front of the boat (ladies first, you
know!) while I drive. She squeals if I go too fast so I just idle
along but we still get wet.

We are waiting to head out over the dangerous raging seas to the
foreign country called "The Bahamas". When the wind calms down a bit
we will strike out, probably Wednesday.

In the meantime we braved the dinghy ride into town to check out
Lincoln Avenue, a toney pedestrian mall through the center of town. It
occurred to me that this is something you Camptowninians never see:
cafés.

Dining outside on the street (en plein aire, as the young Francophones
among you might say) is a European thing. The French started it, I
believe. They call their restaurants with outside seating on the
sidewalk 'cafés'. In Paris hanging out at a café, chatting with
friends and watching people go by is a tradition. Lots of other
Europeans emulate the Parisians and here in Miami Beach it's warm
enough to do it, too. A person would die of freezation if he tried it
in Maine, of course.

So we went up and down this street looking at all the cafés and café
dwellers. Since I am a bicycle rider I call café people 'café scum'.
They sit outside and clog up the sidewalks where I'm trying to ride.
They are all spacey and self involved and hardly ever look out for
good, hard working pirates in transit so I have to slow down and avoid
running over them.

They sure are cosmopolitan, though. These people are all stylin' with
fancy clothes, shades, fast cars, et cetera. Many languages were
overheard, Spanish, French, Italian, Creole, Japanese, you name it. I
bet they would disagree with the term 'café scum'!

So be cool, kids. Get you some shades, four inch heels and a Porsche
and you could be a café scum with a Blackberry in your ear some happy
day!

Palm trees

Picture for post below which, for some reason, wouldn't come through with post.

Flexibility

Hi kids!

Today we learn a lesson about palm trees, Chinese philosophers and planning.

A very long time ago, some say 2500 years ago, an old Chinese philosopher named Lao Tzu was trying to leave his town to move into the mountains. The guy in charge of the road knew what a wise man he was and wouldn't let him leave until he wrote down his knowledge in a book for people to use when he was gone. 

Instead of cussing about government burocracy and inefficiency stifling the innovations of the free market like some modern conservative cable channel commentators might, old Lao Tzu just got to business and wrote a book called the Tao Te Ching.  

One of the philosophies he wrote down was about flexibility. One of the things he wrote was:

"Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it"

He is talking about how water can wash things away even though it's not hard and strong itself, it's flexible. 

Man, I love philosophy!  It takes a lot of thinking to understand it sometimes, though. 

Well, old Angel Jen and I had our minds all made up to strike out on the big ocean for the longest, most dangerous trip we had ever taken, over a hundred miles of unbroken water hundreds of feet deep. We had bought food, stored water, made chicken salad, put everything back in its drawers, changed our clothes and brushed our hair. We were ready to go, even if we died. We studied the route, studied the landing places on the other end, studied the alternate routes if we had emergencies, I mean we were prepared. 

The weather was supposed to be for good strong winds in just the right direction. We have been waiting for a long time to get the right winds and, it seemed, they were here at last. West winds, blowing 15-20 miles per hour. 

Well, we woke up yesterday and the blesséd wind was blowing twice as hard as predicted!  Now usually I am a man of fixed purpose. I decide, then I act. What I say, goes!  It's part of the beauty of being me, decisiveness. 

But I looked at the palm trees, like the ones in this picture, all bent over and waving around and I remembered the old Chinese philosopher. 'Sometimes you gotta be flexible' I said. 'We'll live to sail another day.'

Man, am I glad I did!  I figured the wind would die down later but it never did. The boat hopped around on its anchor chain all day as the waves crashed around. If we had gone off shore in that we'd a been sunk!

So maybe tomorrow, kids. We still have the food and water, though some of the chicken got eaten (lime and chicken salad! A real scurvy beater!) and we will have to brush our hair again after all that wind.

But stay tuned!  The dream continues! 

John

Haitian restaurant

Hi kids!

Well, little buddies, Angel Jen and I are still lying about in Miami
Beach, a sweet place to lie about if ever there was one, waiting for
the weather to get just right before we head out to sea again. As the
astute young hydrologists you are, you are undoubtedly familiar with
the fact that when wind blows across water in the oposite direction of
the current, the seas rise up in huge waves, steep and close together.
Since the Gulf Stream is running very strongly in the waters between
here and Lucaya, Bahamas, our destination, and it goes north, we need
a wind that is either coming from the south or west. Not north,
because of the waves, and not east because gentlemen never sail to
windward. 'Gentlemen never sail to windward' is an old saying that
came about from the fact that trying to sail into the wind, while
possible, is laborious, slow, generally uncomfortable and you get wet
from all the waves crashing into you. Sailing 'downwind', that is, in
the same direction the wind is going, is much more comfortable.

While we wait for a turn of meteorological fortune, we hooked up with
some other boat folks for a trip to a Haitian restaurant. Florida is
close to Haiti and quite a few ex-Haitians live here. The food was
very spicy and they had murals all over the walls, the tables,
everything! Evidently Haitians love to paint stuff up in bright
colors. In the picture below there are two people and the rest are
paintings on the wall. One of the real people is Angel Jen. Don't the
people on the wall look real? Man, that's good painting!

I had goat meat while I was there. I had never eaten goat before. It
does NOT taste like chicken. It wasn't bad but I'd take a hamburger
over goat any day.

Recently the nation of Haiti had a disaster caused by an earthquake.
Did you hear about that?

Well, be good kids. Wait a minute. That goat was once a kid! I ate an
ex-kid! Well, be good kids anyway, and I hope you are as tasty as
that goat!

Sand forts

Hi kids!

You guys like to build snow forts? Well, we are way down here in
Miami, just about as far south as a person can get and there's no snow
down here. But they have plenty of sand. So people go out on the beach
and build sand forts and sand castles.

Check out my sand fort! I built this big round circle of sand around
this umbrella with this bucket. Man, was that a lot of work! Sand is
about sixteen times as heavy as snow. And trying to make a sand ball
is a lot more difficult than making a snowball. But once you get the
hang of it, they really pack a whollup! I knocked about half a dozen
people's hats off that way and then I had to scoot on outta there.
Attracted a little 'heat' as they say.

Man, I love exploring new lands! Sand forts and sand balls! Who
would ever have imagined?

Spring break

Hi kids!

Well, little buddies, Angel Jen and I are as far south as we are going
to get for a while. We are in Miami Beach. We sailed over the wild,
untrammeled ocean through a raging sea with waves that were six feet
high all day. We were so happy to be at sea again. Angel Jen got up at
four am in breathless anticipation. We said goodbye to Fort
Lauderdale, a town of many boats and tall buildings, and headed out
for Miami, a bigger town with many more boats and many, many more tall
buildings.

Miami is chock full of three things besides boats: real estate
speculators, who are mostly depressed, Cuban emigrés, who retain anger
over events five decades past, and spring breakers, who are happy,
happy, young, pretty and happy.

Spring break is an annual event (that means it happens every year,
from the Latin 'annum', year; you can look it up) where college kids
take some time off from their 'studies' (like 'Getting and Destroying
Ethanol 101'), come to Miami and relax on the beach by day before
resuming their study of 'Getting and Destroying Ethanol 101' at night.

Angel Jen and I went to the library for a while to do our taxes then
took our bikes for a ride along a beach full of spring breakers. These
five lovely young ladies were there. It occurred tome that in Camptown
you just never see spring breakers like this so I'm sharing.

In Camptown you also just about never see people with tans like this.
They ranged from hot chocolate to hot African in shade. But they made
the old white northerner feel right at home.

They had a funny accent. Instead of saying 'party' they kept saying
'pah-tee! pah-tee! pah-tee!' and dragging me sideways. And they asked
about a 'man-kini', did I have one, and so on. Real nice young girls.
I liked them a lot. I would have liked to get to know them better but
Angel Jen wanted to go back to the boat, so we left.

So be good kids, study hard and someday you might be a spring breaker,
too. It sure looks like fun.

Nincompoops

Hi kids!

Well, old Angel Jen and I are on the road again. We left the sweet
harbor of West Palm Beach, Florida, after enjoying two weeks of the
hospitality of the city, tying up at their docks for free, sponging
Internet access in their library, listening to all the music from the
waterfront events just off our bow and schlepped fifty miles south to
Fort Lauderdale. We needed to stop in Fort Lauderdale to repair an
alternator, which makes our electricity, and our raw water pump, which
keeps the engine cool.

Yesterday I negotiated the local public transportation system to get
to the place that sells the raw water pump parts. I showed the nice
man a picture of the pump, gave him the model of the engine and asked
for the parts, which he gladly sold me (for a good high price even
though I asked for the good looking guy discount).

I wended my way back through the torrential fury of a Florida
thunderstorm with my bike on the front of the bus. It was a long ride,
over twenty four miles total, sixteen on the bus and eight on the bike.

This morning I discovered that the nice man was a nincompoop. He had
sold me all the wrong parts. Despite engine numbers, pictures of the
pump, et cetera, he had messed it all up. So today I am carting myself
back along the whole route again.

It occurred to me that you, little buddies, maynever have seen grown
ups riding a bus. In Camptown only kids ride a bus, back and forth to
school. Well, in the cities there are busses that haul people around.
You pay some money and ride where you're going. Of courser, decent
people have cars and drive themselves around but for poor people,
people with no cars, people who can't see and pirates the city runs
busses. Here is a picture of the people riding on the bus while I go
see the nincompoop again and try to get the right parts. This time I'm
taking the whole pump, which I should have done in the first place.
You would think that with all my worldly experience and all the
nincompoops I've seen in this benighted world I would have anticipated
incompetence and prepared better.

Well, live and learn, eh?

So be good, kids, and learn all you can!