Myakka River State Park

 My neighbors are also my good friends here, and a big part of the reason I stay through the end of April is to do some things with them that we have talked about but haven’t had time to do.  Venice Beach was one, a road trip to a fairly dark sky place to watch shooting stars (they were probably fireflies, but whatever), free pie Monday, the list goes on.  Wednesday we got up early to do some bird watching and alligator sighting at the Myakka River State Park, near Sarasota.  It’s a great spot.  A few photos, all of them taken by my next door neighbor who has a great camera and more camera skills than I have ever had.

Delivered unto Caesar

 There must be a better way to do this than the way I am currently doing it.  Flying back to Michigan to organize and pay state and federal taxes, then returning to Florida for two weeks to close things up there sounded like an okay plan 4 years ago — Ah, well.  I’ll figure it out.  It’s been a busy winter in Florida, so a few quiet weeks there actually sounds pretty good.  

I spent some time with my grandkids and daughter over the weekend.  I had missed the girl’s birthday earlier this month and hadn’t seen her house since she’d done some painting and actually moved in.  She has a sign hanging on her living room wall, a gift from her step sister.  It made me laugh.

Random photos out my back doors.

April…. What comes after March.

 Time scrams.  March was challenging, but my time, my space and my life are once again mine.  Life lessons learned, proving that you can teach an old dog new tricks.  The lesson, by the way, is “be careful what you volunteer for.”  Self inflicted, mostly.  Moving on…..

I’m still in Florida, my final return to the northern ocean is planned for early May.  I will also do my little commuting trick and return north for a week to do taxes and take care of some things.  Take one of my bikes in to the shop, stuff like that.  See some family.

There is a sketchy plan for a bike ride in the works, something to mark the milestone birthday coming up this summer.  Measurements likely to be in metric units.  Yesterday I took a longish ride, in two parts—stopping at the house to refill my water bottle and change my layers as the day warmed up.  Felix just has one water bottle cage.  Felix?  An fx3 from the Trek shop here.

Orange bike bling, pedals and water bottle cage.   At the new resort in town, a fancy place for tourists.

A longish ride, requiring something like 3 naps to recover from.  Overall, successful for a ride of that length this early in the year.  Previous long ride was 17, about 3 weeks ago.

Sunset through the bougainvilleas.