Despite this glittering example of how well JP researches these things, we had a great time all day. We parked in his brother’s condo across the road and spent most of the time chatting up women. Him, the ones over 30 with no success, me the ones under 30 with no success. Success is illusionary—I got two phone numbers, gave out my blog address and got past first base each time. JP got hit up for spare change.Several sources told me it was a jazz festival, not country music, which kind of explained why JP and I were the only white guys there for the longest time. Nobody on staff knew what time the music started, so JP and I wound up walking all over the Grove. Best place was still that thrift store run by the church ladies. And no, I don’t have any idea which church, okay. Par usual, I had to drag JP around, but once he got there he was enthusiastic.
The opening plan was for us to ride our bikes around. JP seems to have forgotten to fix the flat on his unit, so he did a lot more walking than I did today. It didn’t take me long to find shady spots while he went about to visit and shop. You can check for exactitudes but my guess it was nearly 95 (degrees) out there today. I finally bought a book and went into Starbucks for an hour to exothermate. We had that lively discussion of whether an airplane would take off if, instead of a runway, it was on a conveyor belt moving backwards at the same speed as the plane tried to move forward. (The answer had been on Public Radio earlier and since I already knew the answer, may tell you later.)
We stopped for pizza but generally mostly strolled around until we realized the canned music in the park was the same as the live music and we missed the startup of things. Heck with that, so we went back to JP’s condo and decided to watch a TV movie. Bad move, basic cable really sucks, and anything with child actors these days drags along like a Mexican soap opera.
Again the topic turned to real estate. This time we are in agreement about monster houses. We don’t like them. Singles in this state are confined to condos or apartments unless they want to occupy a 2400 square foot mansion. Assuming you don’t want a shack in the bad part of town, there is really no place you can find any “cottages” in the city limits. Um, make a related assumption you don’t want to live in one of those weird boxes first seen in Everglades City for $80,000 each. Call me a dreamer, but I believe a smaller house on a full size lot, but with a garden or a small natural wooded area has a lot more charm than a gargantuan drywall palace.
I wish I could report a fun-filled day. Instead, we watched a segment of that boring series “Streets of Laredo” and divvied up a huge bag of onions JP had been storing. Yes, onions. Why, would carrots be classier? I like onions. This is one of the things I mean when I say there is a lot more of nothing to do in Florida. Another plan involves getting up to Cape Canaveral to see any kind of space launch. Turns out JP has never seen one either. This remains in the future, since I did look up the NASA schedule back five years ago and they do tend to blast off at other than prime time.
Oh yeah, the airplane. Answer: of course it will take off, you numbskull. Airplanes take off from moving objects all the time, like aircraft carriers, water, and the earth itself. The airplane “pulls” against the air, it does not “push” against what it is resting on. Read up on relativity. An airplane taking off toward the west is technically moving “backwards” at 1,000 mph due to the Earth’s rotation, but it still flies. Or as NPR put it, “The only purpose for the airplane wheels [they mean undercarriage] is to stop the propeller from hitting the ground.”
