Shore Leave in St. Louis – Brrr
Ross and Laura made it! And we had a few days to have fun
with them before we had to leave for St. Louis for a two month shore leave. We
had one grand day with them where we covered the town. After a few errands we
headed on down to Marina Jack marina in beautiful downtown Sarasota. It was
made even better by finding that Bill and Joy of Proud Lady were there. After
visiting with them for awhile and a quick lunch at a very cool waterside
restaurant we heading over to St. Armands and Longboat Quay to see how the 1%
lives. Driving over the bridge to get there we could see that the water was
spectacularly clear in Sarasota Bay. It was a fun day indeed.
But it was time for us to leave.
Our trip to St. Louis took two days. We departed Palmetto on
Super Bowl Sunday under bright, shiny blue skies. Ross and Laura of The Zone
who were now docked next to us saw us off. It was still cool but the high
temperature for the day was near 80 degrees. But that happy thought did us no
good as we were heading north towards much colder conditions. Our first day’s
drive took us out of Florida into Georgia passing Atlanta and ending up in the
city of Dalton about an hours drive south of Chattanooga. We did reverse layer
clothing tactics. By that I mean unlike in Florida where we would start with
long pants and long sleeve shirts with some kind of fleece top garment
stripping down to shorts and tee shirts as the day progressed we started with
lighter clothing and added on as the temperature dropped the further north we
went. The second day got progressively colder to where there was still some
snow on the ground in St. Louis as we arrived.
A week has passed and we are both working on our own
personal to-do lists. Mine is mostly boaty stuff, or at least those things that
can be done here, mostly ordering things that we will need upon our return to
the boat come the end of March.
Just for your information the reason for the delay in
putting a new blog post up is that my trusty Toshiba laptop computer crapped
out and was DOA when I took it to the Geek Squad at Best Buy. It needs a new C
drive. Of course I had to order a new system recovery disk from Toshiba before
the Geeks switch out the drive. Bummer.
We have been getting tidbits of info about our friends still
down in Florida. Unfortunately not all the news has been good. The crew of
Limelight, Don and Anita, have had a very unfortunate thing happen to them.
They were riding their bicycles when Anita was hit by a car. Laura sent a text
to us about it. She was injured to the extent that she needed to have surgery performed
on one of her knees. That is all we know. Here’s hoping that the damage is
slight and that her recovery is speedy. IF ANYONE ELSE KNOWS MORE ABOUT THIS
SITUATION PLEASE SEND AN EMAIL TO DARRELL.GROB@GMAIL.COM.
And so here we are dressing warmly and hoping for the time
to pass quickly and our tasks will fall into place easily.