In a nutshell, I went to Fort Lauderdale to take pictures. After a couple of hours, my laptop fell off the bike carrier and broke. Since I could not download the cameras I took the day off and biked around the beach for six hours. It was an unusually crowed weekend, even more remarkable as this is not tourist season.
I put in a good ten miles, most of it along the Atlantic seawall. It is the full Florida summertime so don’t try this on your own unless you know what you are doing. There are plenty of places to duck into but only if you drink or shop heavily. Wasn’t it Tammy Faye Baker who said shopping was cheaper than psychiatrists?
The downside of Sundays at the beach are the bikers. They don’t actually go out onto the sand. Instead they roar up and down the avenue making as much noise as possible. They are the same age as those old guys who ride their bicycles on the seawall but twice as annoying.
Except, of course, the guys on bicycles are much slimmer, trimmer and more good-looking, than the women they are riding past. They block my view. You may notice the complete absence of shade on the beaches. Oddly, palm trees grow in the sand but they do not put them there for reasons unknown to me. Some say it is because the palms are not natural, but neither are the sandy beaches. They are not even real sand. Yes, the beaches are fake in the sense that the sand is up to 30% particles of imported ground glass. It has a higher specific gravity and is not as badly eroded by the storm surges. Some storms can eat away 15 feet of shoreline.
I do not know why the sea looks green in some pictures and blue in others. This is not apparent when you are out there. It is likely nothing more than camera angles in the bright afternoon overhead sun. An experienced surfer was killed by a riptide last week. Next time out, maybe as soon as next Sunday, I will take some beach gear. I’m thinking of installing saddlebags on the bike instead of that carrier which requires things to be very solidly lashed down.
This could be an interesting week upcoming. I am heading out to Doral tomorrow to see about running in some network lines or cables with the new contractor, National Telecom. I met up with Fred at the office after suppertime to pick up cable and basic gear. This is a first time and we have no idea exactly what the company wants. They have sent only instructions to show up at the site and contact their engineers for support. The billing rate is $50 per hour, of which half is mine. Until I get super good at it, that is. People pulling cable are making $20 per hour.
Author's note 2015-03-27: National Cable turned out to be another Florida scam--in my opinion.
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