The Value of Priceless

Today was instructional...
I love to surf, but nobody really expects to get to do much surfing in the winter time, even in Florida. Windy, overcast days come along frequently...but every once in a while, we get a day like today. It started off with clear skies, and a forecast for small waves and light wind. A huge plus was the temperature was supposed to rise up to a springtime number around 80 degrees. That pretty much summed up an ideal beach day and I had the time.
The problem was, all of my friends were working and the surf forecast also allowed for the waves to be too small to ride. This causes the average surfer to start adding up what the trip will cost, and how you are going to feel about that 1 1/2 hour drive back if you get skunked and have no waves ridden at all.
I usually make this list in my head: $12 in gas, $7 in tolls, $10 in junk food and coffee (that I seem to get no matter how much I tell myself I won't do it next time), up to $7.50 in parking fees if you can't find a free spot, and finally there is the time you could have spent doing something else more fun that driving to the beach and back.
Today was one of those days where I got there, it looked too small to even put my toe in that cold water, so I drove even farther to see if a better spot had guys out surfing to get me excited about it, but that parking lot was TOTALLY empty, and it never is. I knew what the problem was, yesterday had been a good day, and today was to be something less than.
So, I drove back to the pier and then found that my secret parking spot...one of two hidden places where you can park for free, was under construction...and apparently the construction was to add parking meters. These meters are $2.50 an hour and I'm not sure what they do with the money, but I'd like to think some of it gets used to make sure cruise ships aren't dumping their septic tanks right offshore...I could be wrong and the money goes towards sending civic leaders on well-deserved cruises themselves.
I ended up paying $7.50 to park and spent most of the beautiful morning with 3 other surfers in the water. I was still keeping that tally in my head, wondering how many waves I needed to catch before my meter was up and before the wind started blowing. It was a good time and when I was done and packing up my stuff, I felt like it was a worthwhile use of a sunny Florida day.
Then, something very strange happened, and to truly explain it so the young folks that read this can understand, I have to remind you how much things have changed:
My age group loves to trade stories about how we collected bottles on the side of the road to buy gas to go to the beach. You'd drive, hoping there were waves, and if you saw a car coming the other way with surfboards on top, you'd stick your arm out the window and waggle your thumb to get an up or down....if you got a thumbs up, you and your friends in the car were excited the whole rest of the way to the beach. Nowadays, all of us just go look at a surfcam on our cellphone to see what the waves are like. If you have a photo of yourself surfing from back in those days, you were somebody famous, or somebody you knew had a very expensive camera, and that somebody wanted to sit in the sand with that camera and take pictures, hoping they would turn out when the film was developed some day in the future.
That stuff started changing back when video cameras came out. I probably have a handful of treasured photos of the time before that..but after the age of video? I have hundreds of hours of my son playing soccer, so much, that even he get bored after a few minutes. These kids nowadays, they have no idea of what it means that we can recall so much with so little effort.
But I do...

What changed the day from a positive balance on my internal ledger to priceless, was one solitary sentence from a stranger that walked up to me in the parking lot: "Hey, I saw you on the surf cam, and you were doing so well out there that I decided I needed to grab my board and go surfing!"

That, my friend, is the definition of priceless..

The Lost City of Palataka and the Night Whistler

I came out of a deep sleep to a very insistent sound of someone blowing a whistle. As in many occasions in life, context was everything. If I were home in bed, it could have been many things, but I was deep in the woods, wrapped up in a mummy bag, inside a tent, enjoying the cool-enough but not cold evening after a long day of bicycling up and down the Palatka trail. The whistle trailed off, and I thought it must have been part of some strange dream of unknowable significance. About 15 minutes later, I heard the whistle again and opened my eyes wide. It was full dark, and according to my watch, about 4am in the morning. Was somebody lost in the woods and trying to call for help? Usually, our camping trips include me and my 2 brothers, but on this trip there was actually a decent-sized group of people camping near us. Could it be one of them lost while making a midnight trip to the latrine? I worried about them for a moment.
There seems to be an often-said thing: 'those millennials!' as if a generation of us is responsible for something wrong. Truthfully, we did not know how old those folks were that were camping near us, but they definitely wanted different things from the experience of tenting in the wild than us old dogs. They had pulled up in 3 fancy Jeeps with so many accessories that I was hard pressed to understand the functions of all of it. One had the fancy array of LED lights across the roof, a snorkel just in case it had to drive through deep water, and giant tire jack, capable of changing one of the huge mud tires that looked cleaner than the tires on my little car. And that was the more normal-looking jeep. The fancy one also had a tent on top, and this is where brother Steve decided that millennials didn't get everything wrong, because he liked those rooftop tents and had one on his Punisher truck. In fact, at one point during the previous day he was admiring the snorkel and wondering aloud if they made such a thing for his pickup truck. Aside from the jeeps, the group of friends had a really nice layout on their picnic table and were preparing a meal that seemed much more along the lines of healthy restaurant food than our hamburger and baked bean dinners. All of this was accompanied by board games, some kind of beanbag toss game and very loud 1940's big band music. I'm not sure who told them that camping was something other than long political discussions around a campfire, but that particular night, the politics at our fire seemed to swerve to about how little millennials were doing to fix the mess we had created in our lifetimes. I suggested at one point we might consider ourselves lucky if they don't invent some kind of ninja game for oldsters on television where if we win, we get to live, else we get to help fertilize the soil for future crops. We spoke a bit more quietly after that, to make sure we were not heard over the loud blare of the Glenn Miller orchestra.
Finally, at one point, we gave up and headed off to our tents to the sounds of our neighbors swing dancing around their campfire. I knew I would sleep well in spite of that, because of the hard biking done during the day, plus we had another long day coming up. Somehow I drifted off to sleep, in some kind of dream where I was the solitary French horn player in the Glenn Miller band, and counting 500 bars through the sheet music until I got to play my two notes in the piece, somehow knowing that I would get it wrong, and Glenn would stop the band and say 'let's hear just the French horn this time...'.
Suddenly, the whistle sounded again, and then again quickly. I was starting to get alarmed and got out my flashlight. I got out of the tent and saw another light on by Steve's truck and went over quickly to see who needed help. In the end, it turned out that my gadget-happy brother had gotten one too many electronic toys. Instead of the little sissy bell that most of us have on our bikes to warn someone that we are approaching, he had purchased an electronic version that could make many different sounds. And he loved to use the sounds, if we were coming up on a group of people walking abreast on the trail and oblivious to us, he'd treat them to the full range of sounds at his disposal. I think it included everything from an 'ah-ooga' model T horn to the sound of a bomb exploding (not sure why they included that, but Steve liked it a lot). Apparently he had been using it too much and the whistle sound was to let him know the battery was running low. He was really embarrassed about a piece of gear failing on his watch. He yanked it off his trike, pulled the battery and tossed the mess in the trashcan. He said that now he knew why people used the simple stupid bells.
All I know is that the next night, we didn't have any big band music...…..

The Blue Lady And The Lost City Of Palatka

Sometime early in 2018, the brothers Perkins decided to morph our monthly camping trips into something besides eating too much and sitting around the campfire talking politics. We started walking and then trying to bike around the dirt roads of the Princess Place Preserve and finally got to riding recumbents down A1A. Being who we are, we started to find out just how much we could really do. Paul, the planner brother, started mapping out all of the trails in Florida, while Steve, the professor, started researching just how much gadgetry you could use while doing this. Me? I started worrying...about how I was going to keep up. As Steve says, "It's not a race unless you are in last place".

Steve has back issues and needed to ride a trike. He quickly found out just how much it costs to get one of those that isn't slow. He now owns a Catrike 700, which is only slow going up steep hills. Paul and I are still going through recumbent bikes that we find for sale used, trying to find the one that works perfectly for us. In my mind, the world of recumbent bicycles is like the world of Harley Davidson choppers: it seems that there are so many variations that it's hard to know what you want until you've ridden it.

Excitement prevailed in early January 2019, when it was announced that the Palatka trail was now open, which is near our camping place. The official grand opening is supposed to be in April, but they are letting people on there early to test it out. The trail is open, but there is still a gap that prevents it from being the truly epic ride that it will be in the future. As of now, you can ride about 50 miles of really nice paved trail with few road crossings. There are restrooms, and parking along the way.

We got up early on a Saturday morning, Steve insisting on cooking his "Man breakfast" of eggs, bacon, sausage and hash browns. Paul was shaking his head and saying he would prefer some organic oatmeal, with perhaps a dash of uncut brown sugar and a sprinkle of cinnamon. I was saying "I really shouldn't", while holding out my plate for seconds on the bacon. I saw no reason why good cooked food should go uneaten.

We piled into our vehicles and started the 40 minute drive to the trailhead, me chugging coffee and blaring bluegrass music to get me in the mood for riding into the town that time forgot.

We met Paul's neighbor, Tim at the trailhead and got going in the bright, cool morning air. It was one of those days that made you glad to live in Florida, and have hope that the real estate developers will all choke before they reach the Palatka region. We rode through canopied woods, farmlands, and pastures. At one point, we had a perfect line of derelict boats on our left and a herd of Long horn cattle on our right. I was never able to figure out the boat collection. Was the farmer waiting for some city slicker to come by and offer him a large sum of money for an old rusty boat with a hole in it? If so, he needed some 'edumakatin' about the resale value of boats.

The ride didn't just go through woods and end in Palatka, there are some little towns in between and it looks like they don't quite know yet what's coming. If things go like they did in Winter Garden Florida, they will have rednecks in pickup trucks driving down main street with Hip Hop music blaring, while road bikers in spandex watch from little outdoor cafes, enjoying a little cup of latte before heading back on the trail 

Near the halfway point of our ride, there is a great bridge that spans the St. Johns river and takes you into the town of Palatka. That is a decent climb and I have seen people walking their bikes over that bridge, but we all made it. Lunch was on the other side and that was an inspiration for me. I had visions of some really cool Mom and Pop restaurant, that served fried green tomatoes, sweet tea, and grits done just right...but Paul made the call and it was 'Subway' for lunch. And that went pretty much as I thought it would. A giant line of people filled the little place, gawking at these people in strange clothes and unusual bicycles. I stood tall in line and tried not to stink of sweat as I waited patiently behind a well-dressed elderly woman with blue hair, thinking how strange it was to feel this out of place in the state I grew up in. At one point, she turned and looked up at me and said, "Excuse me young man, are you boys riding the Palatka trail today?". I replied that yes I was, and kind of puffed up my chest as I told her that we were going to do 55 miles in a single day. She smiled back and said, "It is a great trail, but that section at Hwy 100 isn't working yet. When we get that done, you'll have a 120 mile stretch. Now THAT's a ride!"

She then went on to telling me about websites and travel groups in the area...fortunately, she did not go into detail about how fast she and her group ride...which I felt was quite charitable on her part... 

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The Camping Trip In Which We Find The Lost City Of Palatka

We found a sweet spot of good weather in January where Paul, Steve and I were off and able to take a few days for the woods. It was Princess Place Preserve, that primitive Florida wilderness where you can pretend that you are way back in time. No electricity, no fresh water and the restrooms are port-o-lets. We've learned how to deal with this because there is just about nowhere nicer in Florida than this place if you enjoy nature...this time of year anyhow. 
Steve had his trucktop tent, while Paul and I had our large family tents, which are like mansions compared to what we use backpacking. We had decided that this was to be the year of epic cycling, and had our eyes on the newly opened section of the trail in Palatka, which is about 40 minutes from Princess Place, and we were excited about spending a day going for a record of 65 miles on our recumbent cycles.
Of the 3 of us, Paul is the minimalist, and comes only with what he needs. Most of that will fit in 3 boxes in the back of his truck. Steve comes with a truckload of new toys and backups for each one.
Me? I'm like a rocket capsule loaded with experiments. First job of the day was to stop by the Sunglow pier in Daytona Beach and see what I could do in the small glassy waves on my inflatable paddleboard. It was a very interesting morning. I had on my light wetsuit, which was quite warm in the morning foggy air, but the minute I put my foot in the water, I knew why I had to wear it.  The surf was okay, but I got out there, got wet and proved that my inflatable board could catch waves.
The big score was I found the secret little beach spot in south Daytona that had showers, bathrooms and free parking...near the Sunglow Pier!
Next it was on to Princess Place Preserve and our secluded spot right on the water of the marshlands. Even the drive into the park was awesome as deer bounded around my car, as if to welcome me back. I met up with the boys, got my stuff set up and we took off towards the exotic community of Palm Coast to get a 20 mile warm-up bicycle ride in before the big ride the next day.
I decided a really good lunch was necessary, while Steve and Paul wanted fastfood. I split the difference with Paul and Steve when they spotted a place that had BBQ in large letters on the front. It looked more like a fancy café from the outside, but I figured fancy BBQ worked for me. Little did we know that this was a Portuguese BBQ restaurant and it was packed with the upwardly mobile retirement crowd. Fortunately, the hostess found a small table for us, and we proceeded to pour over the menus, trying to find something that sounded good, and that wasn't as easy as you might think. I basically tried to find something under $15 in the sandwich section and settled on "cheeseburger". My brothers pretty much did the same thing, picking the simplest items they could find on the menu. We placed our orders with a pleasant and patient waitress that didn't seem to mind Paul's interrogation about whether pickle juice would ever get near his plate in the foodmaking process and if she could swear that the cook would not use pepper for anything the rest of the day. Things were relaxed and we had a great time, talking about what we were going to do, until I finally realized that we had been waiting for almost an hour for hamburgers...next time I'm going to pay attention when a restaurant is really busy and everybody is drinking and nobody is eating.
Later, Paul had his best I-told-you-so moment when I admitted $4 spent at Wendy's would have beat the Portuguese BBQ place by a mile...It's going to be a long time before I get to pick a restaurant with this group!

Maryland Rocks: Part 14 - The Last Good Meal

We were feeling pretty good about this trip. We survived 'The Roller Coaster', the super cold night, and finally being taken in by a cult group. All we had to do was to hike 8 miles over rock-strewn fields and hills that would seem extreme in Florida, but were nothing compared to what we had experienced. It was 8 miles back into Harper's Ferry, where a warm bed and a good meal, hopefully served with a beer or something better. Paul had cut back on the smoking and was feeling pretty good about the prospects of making it home with some cigarettes left over. All that was left was navigating these huge fields of rocks.

It was as if some giant had come along and kicked some a small mountain to pieces. You could walk for a mile at a time without touching anything but granite.
A funny thing about the Appalachian Trail. It is considered to be one of the better marked trails in the world. I remember reading that you really don't need a map to find your way, but there have been many comments from other backpackers that the trail seems very well marked when you are hiking on what looks like a jeep trail, but get yourself in these large rockbeds in the woods, where you can't even see a trail, and where's the white blazes on the trees then? My thought at the time was there was some guy with a 4 wheeler with a long pole and a paint brush on the end. As long as he could drive his four wheeler, there was going to be a lot of white blazes...or are least that's what it seemed like. We sure spent a lot of time checking our GPS's to make sure we were going the right way...I'm pretty sure you COULD get lost.

We finally made it to the large bridge that spanned the Potomac and entered into Harper's Ferry, and unbelievably, the first business we came across was our hotel! We got lucky with an early check-in and found our friend Andre was in town. We arranged for a meet-up at the Anvil Restaurant and enjoyed an afternoon drink while he brought us up to date on his equipment and his new plan for food for the trip. His mom was helping by sending nutritious, lightweight good stuff. I'm certain that by the time he reached Georgia, he'd be in better shape that I ever was.
Andre took off to get ready for hitting the trail the next day and we set off to explore the town.

I was getting hungry and Paul wanted a fountain coke in the worst way, so we decided to head in the general direction of the convenience store on the edge of town, stopping along the way to check out good places to have dinner. Unfortunately, I could find nothing that would satisfy my brother. The restaurant that really looked good was the Canal House. As we approached the small building, a middle-aged man was heading out and noticed us. "You can't go wrong!", he said. "The grilled cheese is great and the tomato soup is homemade!". Another man came out the front door and said "There you go again, overtipping. How many times have we talked about this?"
Paul turned to me and said, "No, I am not eating grilled cheese and I'm real sure they don't have fountain cokes in a place like this!"
So it was that we hiked down Washington Street until it became almost dark and the realization that the Anvil restaurant was a long way back and we had only just gotten to the 7-11 . By this time I was starving. 
Paul broke into the run and was already at the fountain machine before I got the door open. To be fair, for a 7-11, this place was loaded to the ceiling with stuff to buy and food to eat. I'm sure it was almost always busy. Unfortunately, it was just outside of the  nice part of town and we were now in the section of falling down buildings that weren't getting repaired any time soon. 
 A young woman with long brown hair and no indication that she was a country girl was cheerfully working behind the counter and helping two truck drivers while I drooled over the array of junk food rolling around on little stainless steel cookers on the counter. She saw me looking and I said, "No way you have pepperoni pizza?" She smiled and pointed to a large windowed container on the other counter that had two lonely pieces of pizza just sitting there in the glare of infared lamps.
I heard a wail from the other side of the store as Paul called out "Hey, you need to switch the tanks on the coke!" 
The young woman turned from me for a minute and called out "Yeah, it's been broken all week. Both Coke and Pepsi. We do have Diet though." 
I heard a sound from Paul that was made me think of a moose snorting. I suggested that he get a bottle of Coke and pour it into a cup of ice and he looked back at me as if there is not one person in the world that would ever do such a thing.
In the end, our last wonderful meal in the great town of Harper's Ferry, was sitting on the curb to the side of 7-11, me chewing on day-old pizza, while Paul sipped on a fountain Orange Fanta, and we gazed at a falling apart double-wide house trailer with rusting axles where there should have been wheels. I tried not to think of steaks and margaritas, and all of the other things in life that I hoped to have. Paul looked over from his microwave cheeseburger and said, "Well at least this is better than $8 for grilled cheese and tomato soup!"
Slowly I turned...…

----The End-----

Maryland Rocks: Part 13 - Goodbye to the Cult Farm

It was really nice at the 12 Tribes Hostel and I'd say the only fly in the ointment, was my midnight journey to the bathroom. One thing pretty cool, for a guy anyway, is when I'm camping I just have to take a few steps out of the tent to the nearest tree. At the hostel, I took one step out the door of our 'cabin', being careful not to wake the others and found a full moon lighting the world up. I had vision of somebody catching me taking a leak in the cow pasture and then the group has a trial where it is decided whether I needed to spend a week in the blocks or a flogging was called for. Instead, I did the long walk to the bathroom building, which was still toasty warm. I almost spent the rest of the night there, but finally decided I needed to get back in my sleeping bag.

In the morning, Paul and I decided to try and find their little market that supposedly had the world's best muffins. Unfortunately, I was following directions from country people "It's over there on the other side of the 'holler'". I should have used Google, and I might have been able to describe the first taste of a organically grown muffin. However, Paul and I did find one of the oddest things on the trip. Not 100 yards away from this old farm, with chickens and cows and farm machinery about, was a little highway that was bumper-to-bumper full of traffic like the worst day on I-4 in Orlando. There were fumes, there was honking, there were BMWs trying to ride down the shoulder of the road. It was surreal that these things that were so different, were right next to each other, and yet, that explained the success of the market. In a town where you couldn't make money selling vegetables, you could make money selling coffee-to-go.

That reminded me...a constant on these backpacking trips to small towns in the mountains..if anyone out there thinks that Dunkin Donuts is on the ropes and can't compete with Starbucks, they have not been to these small towns. There wasn't a single time we passed a Dunkin Donuts that there wasn't a mile long line in the drive throughs.

In the end, breakfast was scrambled eggs and rice in the kitchen of the hostel. In a really nice surprise, the young woman with the 4 kids to feed the night before shepherded us into a giant kitchen and set us down at a countertop and fixed us right up. She even pulled out a secret stash of sea salt and after a good bit of that, I was in heaven...except they don't drink coffee, so I had some kind of tea that had no caffeine. I was okay, because I remembered the pot of coffee that they kept for the hikers in the bathroom area and could get that later.

What was amazing about the kitchen area, was while it was large and country-looking, it had serious industrial hardware in it. It was becoming apparent, that while these folks were living a minimalist lifestyle, they weren't poor.

I kept wondering when the pitch would come to donate some money to the 12 Tribes, and I did have some cash, so the main question on my mind was, how much would I give? As it turns out, we never even had the chance. One of the men loaded us all up in a van, with some of the kids and drove us back to the trailhead. They laughed and waved as we walked into the woods and I was left with the feeling that I couldn't have been more wrong about these nice people. Meanwhile, Paul was grumbling that he could finally have a cigarette and now he was never going to get a fountain coke. He was really bummed out about the lost opportunity to debate the leader and even worse, there had been no evidence that those guys were getting fat at the public trough. All was not lost though. We were hiking back to Harper's Ferry and eventually the same hotel. Perhaps the 'Snowflake' lady was still there with her dog and her Prius and Paul could show her the error of her left-wing politics...yes there was still hope..

Maryland Rocks: Part 12 - Into The Cult

There seems to be at least one thing that doesn't change as I get on in these years: I try my best to figure out what's going to happen in the future and I get it totally wrong at least some of the time, and this was one of them.

We found ourselves in a country setting. It was full dark and there wasn't much artificial light except what seeped out of the curtains in the various buildings of the compound. First thing, we were shown to the cabin that we would share with two other hikers that were staying the night. For somebody like me, that only a short time ago was looking at my feet in front of a gas station, wondering how I was going to make it through the cold October night in northern Virginia, it was plenty. For regular folk, it was more like one of those sheds you buy from a big dirt lot and they deliver it on a flatbed truck. The only electricity was from an extension cord that was coming through a window that had a blanket filling in the rest of the gap. That one extension cord already had two cellphones charging on it, and what appeared to be a small space heater. Still, even if I was sleeping in my sleeping bag all night, it was better than anything else I could think of. We were told to stow our gear, find the common bathrooms and then meet up at the main house.
The walk to the bathrooms was across a decent-sized cow pasture and I was real careful where I put my feet, as I could hear the cows mooing nearby. The bathroom building was the best thing I'd come across since the convenience store. It had a big common area and was toasty warm. There was a pot of coffee going as well. There was a group of hikers in there, including a guy in his 40's that was telling some stories that were giving Paul a run for his money. The others were younger, and the one that really got the most attention was the girl from Australia. For some strange reason, the young guys were way more interested in her stories about the outback, than the 40 year-old guy's stories about motorcycling around the United States. Paul was looking for an opening, but there wasn't going to be one this night. In the meantime, I was eagerly checking out the showers, including clean towels. Wow, these 12 Tribes guys really knew how to make you feel welcome. We were told by the other hikers that the members abstain from all outside news and only one guy has a cellphone, and it's a fliphone. It's purpose is to let hikers call in to get picked up. They said the members are nice, kind of strict with the kids, and don't believe in things like smoking, drinking, and sugar. I'm sure there were more restrictions, but I had just found one that was a deal-breaker for me: they didn't believe in hot water. I settled for washing my face and checking my armpits for ticks real quick. 

Truthfully, as long as I didn't smell worse than Australian girl, I figured I was okay.
We finally came to the part I was dreading and Paul was anticipating. We were led into the main house and sure enough there was an old man sitting, facing us, at an austere dining room table, with two plates of steaming food waiting our arrival. We were guided to our chairs and told to eat up. For once, I was not thinking much about food. I was looking around and seeing the other room that had 4 young children seated while a young woman in what looked like an old farm dress ran around trying to keep them happy, and just like anybody trying to feed 4 kids, she was busy. My first thought was, even in that frumpy dress, no makeup, and obviously un-dyed hair, she looked pretty good. There was a tall guy in his 30's behind me with a bushy red beard, and he looked capable of keeping me from bolting for the door. The old guy in front of us had those little round John Lennon glasses on, and if anyone was casting for a shopkeeper out west in the 1800's, this guy could get the part without reading a line. He was watching Paul closely and soon I discovered the same thing Paul did. Organic food sounds like heaven compared to what we had been getting, but compared to the hamburger and fries that we had eaten an hour ago, this tasted like gruel. It was beans and rice, but I do not want you to confuse that with some wonderful Mexican dish. This was white beans and white rice, and apparently another thing the 12 Tribes have on there list of things to avoid, is seasoning. I don't usually go for the hot sauce that much, but this plate could have used a whole bottle.
We stirred our forks around our plates, while I vowed to keep my mouth shut and kick Paul if he started any Trump stuff and it turned out these guys wished Obama was still in charge.

Instead, the world slid slightly sideways...the old guy, was apparently wise as he was old and figured out quick that we were not good candidates for donating all of our possessions and going to work on the farm. He found that we were from Florida and began telling us about how the collective works. The farm we were on didn't really make money. They started with a little produce stand, tried a few variations, and suddenly pivoted into "THE" place to stop and get coffee, a pastry, and a sandwich for lunch on the way to the train station. It sounded crazy, but after all of the traffic I had seen lately, I could see how the wealthy could go for some homemade food to eat on the way to work. I just hoped those sandwiches had more taste than what I had in front of me.
He went on to tell us about various businesses that the collective owned, including a power company! I feigned interest, while Paul tried to figure out if he should try to get some of their sandwiches in his machines down in Florida....then, the twist.
The old guy started telling me about some juicing operation they had in Cape Coral, Florida and how they had to figure out how to move these giant machines up north. I told him I spent many years in that area and then we came to the fact that his group had just purchased a Mango farm on Pine Island and he might get transferred there. Suddenly, we were best buddies, as I told him all of the places to check out if he moved there. I told him about the great fishing and the red tide issue. I told him where to eat in Bokeelia, without remembering that he probably didn't eat out often.
Paul sat quietly while I talked too much. Finally, it was bedtime and I left thinking what great people these 12 Tribes folks were, and Paul was grumbling that we should have stayed back at the shelter....