Sep 19 - in the heat of the night

Yes, it's hot at night. Yes, it's hotter during the day. Every day when I get up it's 80F. This morning, by 9am it was 86F and climbing. If you do any work outside you're liable to get chapped skin from taking so many showers.

Yesterday, the 19th, I went for a bike ride as promised. When I got down here I took the Peter White wheels off the Hummer (generator hub etc.) and installed the old Mavic Heliums that have a million miles on them. They still run well. Not as light as the Rolf's, still they're lighter than my Brevet wheels. Being lazy, I just went out with the tires that were on them -- a set of Michelins that have very few miles. As expected, sometime during the end of the first ride or at the beginning of the second I must have punctured because I didn't get very far yesterday before having to stop and fix a flat. This time it wasn't a flat from leaving the bike in the car in the hot sun. Well, that's the way it goes. So far today there's no flat from yesterday's ride ...

This morning, after encouragement from Sandy, I prepped her bike for a ride. Of course when I came back in and said "the bike's ready, are you ?" -- all I got was a "look". Hmmm.

We attended our first function at the Smyrna Yacht Club yesterday. It was called the Dockmaster's Bash -- only the Dockmaster was ill -- and we were supposed to dress tackily like tourists. There were a variety of strange outfits in consideration of the theme but I don't do this sort of thing very well so I just went "as is" -- in this case "as is" was not in my dirty/holey jeans since I left those all up north. Not having any tie-dye t-shirts, what could I do ?

The food was ok -- shrimp & oysters were very good; roasted veggies were very good; lightly battered grouper was so-so; barbecued chicken tasted like chicken; pork ribs were tasty but fatty; corn on the cob looked like corn on the cob; the coleslaw was good, but too much mayo for my liking; the potato salad was ... well, who knows since I never have potato salad; and the baked beans / pork & beans were actually very good even though I'm not a P&B eater normally. It was a windy night so there weren't any no-see-ums. It was warm; we could have sat there all night but I'd had my 2-beer limit and Sandy had her two glasses of wine ... we left a little after 8pm. There was one very drunk guy who said to someone else that he'd started drinking in the morning ... I guess there always has to be one. It was well attended for a hot summer night.

This morning I went to church and then Home Depot and then the drug store and then Publix. I picked up some ant spray, a pump sprayer to bring up north and a couple of other things. At the drug store I picked up a package of ends for my Sonicare toothbrush. I went all out at Publix -- frozen veggies, Snapple, some ham for lunches ... isn't this exciting ?

Back home, Sandy was sitting out the back. If you sit still, you don't sweat. I don't sit still very long ... before long I was trimming palms, leaving a pile to move to the front. Later, I did some trimming in the front, increasing the size of the pile. In between I mixed up the ant spray and did the perimeter of the house. I was covered with dirt after that and had a shower. I'll stop working outside at this point otherwise I'll have to have another shower.

Sandy has just had her lunch, already back from picking up fish for today and tomorrow (the fish store is closed on Monday's). I thought that it was time for me to catch up on the blog. There ... that's done !