Best Life

  Our bike ride today brought us to Riomar Beach, less than 2 miles from the marina and further south on Ocean Drive.  Sunny and 75 - a beautiful day.  There were few people and a couple dogs, otherwise we had the sand to ourselves.   The foliage is reminiscent of a New England fall - brown dried, dead leaves scattered everywhere.  The extended frost earlier in the month definitely left its mark.                                                                            A calm and quiet night. The plan - keep riding and exploring Vero!

  Our bike ride today brought us to Farley Island and the Veterans Memorial Island Sanctuary.  What an awesome park!  Well laid out, dedicated areas for each war and each branch of the military and with each section facing water with plenty of benches to sit peacefully.  Well done Vero! The bike ride was the perfect anecdote to our long night and early morning.  With the winds and rain last night the dinghy was banging into the boat too frequently.  Paul wound up going out in the weather and essentially "putting it away" on all chains.   Then this morning our swinging with the wind caused us to run into the mangroves, breaking branches.  What?!?  We wound up retying our lines to our neighbor "Duet" and hoping for the best.  Although we were in deep enough water, we kept swinging into the branches.  Thankfully they left early afternoon and once we were snug on the mooring ball, the mangroves were out of our swing zone.  Ugh...

 We switched things up this morning and took off on bikes first thing.  Humiston Park was a mere 1.5 miles away and made for an easy ride.  All flat, some traffic and crowded sidewalks - fun!                                              We were walking the beach by 11am - sunny and 75 - perfect.   The dinghy dock was very crowded, as was the laundry room.  Not a single washer was available either before our bike ride or after.  Ugh.  When we returned to take hot showers, I found a washer open and took advantage.   Another gorgeous sunset: And because the wind is expected to pick up tonight, Paul and our "neighbor" Bill, tied us to the mooring ball.  Using two black dock lines, we are more secure. And Paul's project for today - caulk around the supposed leaky seams on the supports for the roof over th...

  A good night in Vero Beach.  We are enjoying breakfast for dinner - pancakes and bacon - with the hatches and door wide open to enjoy the 69 degrees!  We had a successful, albeit tiring day.   We have reinstated the unofficial "rule" of working until noon then using the afternoon to have fun, explore or just act retired. Paul's project at the moment, as Captain of the power police force, is to rewire Starlink to a different switch.  This will allow us to leave the salon outlets on, ice maker on and laptop charging without using the power to run Starlink.  Typically we only turn Starlink on to watch a movie after dinner - so easy enough to flip a switch at that time.  (And I usually fall asleep watching a movie causing Paul to get out of bed, climb the stairs and flip the switch sometime during the night.)                                  ...

  I did it!  I woke at 4am and never fell back asleep so I was on deck when the shuttle took off at 515am, as scheduled.  Pretty cool.  We were too far to hear anything and there were clouds that blocked most of the assent, but very hard to miss in the black of the morning. Then during coffee - splishing and splashing.  Dozens and dozens of dolphins feeding on the fish in our little area.                                                                                     First they herd the fish.                                                        ...

  The sunrise this morning - beautiful!  It was a short night since we were on deck at 4am waiting for the rocket launch.  We were just south of Merritt Island and the launch site, so we thought "Cool, perfect time to witness a launch".   We could hear the roar and rushed out thinking we missed it since the original time was 2am.  After a few minutes - silence.  We missed it apparently.  So we went back to bed.  Only to find out this morning it launched about 420am.  Yup - we gave up too soon.  Next launch - tomorrow 515am.  We will try again. The fog rolled in before we could finish our coffee.  Same bridge less than an hour later. We were going nowhere fast.  So we decided to clean out one of the front lockers.  Long pants and sweatshirts - back on. Paul climbed down in there, pulled everything out and reorganized what we kept.  Three bags of trash including inflatable pool rafts that came with the boat, w...