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.