Prolonged trip...

Sigh...it had gone too well.  No car camera hotel packing eating sleeping trouble at all.  And all I wanted was that streak to continue so that I could be at home in my own bed, even for a short night.  

Delta had other plans, though.  When they were changing a tire (how prosaic for a 100 million dollar plane) they discovered another problem with the wheel and delayed the flight.  As I mentioned, I only had 39 minutes in Atlanta so I left the plane for other alternatives.  When I was leaving the plane, they said it would be about 45 minutes late.  By the time I got to the gate to talk to the desk, they said a 90 minute delay.  By the time I got rebooked, the delay was up to three hours.  Can't you walk to Atlanta in three hours? 

So I am in Orlando.  Still.  Stuck with nary a toothbrush, though the nice people at the Hilton fixed me up with a toothbrush and all the necessities.  I laughed as there is a tiny bottle of Brute aftershave, and some Mennen Speedstick deodorant in the little bag they gave me.  Honestly, I haven't used either since high school all those years ago.  I'll smell good tomorrow--yesterday's clothes and yesteryear's scents!  It could have been worse, I guess.  At least it wasn't AXE or something like that.  Maybe someone can just Fabreze me!

I shouldn't really complain as it isn't like I am sleeping in the terminal.  This is actually the nicest hotel I have stayed in all trip.  I guess I just wanted to be home.  It will happen soon enough.

Ending a trip

It is my last full day of goofing off, and it was a quiet, but good day.  I left Fort Myers early and headed to St. Petersburg and the Dali Museum.  That was eye-opening.  It is a great story how it got there--Cleveland didn't want it, so St Pete volunteered.  I think that Cleveland might be kicking herself, but this was before Cleveland got so cool with the R&R museum and good stadiums.

Dali has talent, of that there is no doubt.  His early work was in the style of the very best impressionists and technically, you can tell his work is very good.  However, I suspect that he might be just a few fries short of a happy meal, to use one of those trite phrases. Wow.  Weird weird stuff, like LSD hallucination weird stuff.  I am glad I went, but even though I looked hard in the gift shop, I couldn't find anything that I liked enough to buy and put on my wall.

One of my goals was to travel Florida on the backroads and byways and I really did fail at this.  It was/is too easy to hop on a freeway, and often, those little state highways are nightmares of stoplights, strip malls, and uncontrolled intersections and farm machinery.  I did do better today and took Highway 19 from Tampa/St Pete up to Tarpon Springs.  At times it is a dreary drive, but at least it wasn't freeway driving.

Tarpon Springs is one of the best surprises of the trip.  Someone at the conference mentioned it and said it might be fun.  It is the sponge capital of the New World, and a community made up of mostly Greeks.  It is cute, touristy, laid back and fun.  The downtown had nice antique shops and a great book store (now the former home to an early Modern Library copy of Madam Bovary, with a dust jacket that I have never seen-yay!).  Closer to the sponge docks are streets with Greek restaurants and well, sponge stores.  A way above average Greek meal was dinner--it was 50 times better than the non-existent Greek place in St Cloud!  It was good advice that brought me here, and I am glad I made the effort.

Tomorrow I head back.  I have 39 minutes between flights in Atlanta, and I bet no one is taking bets on that one working out.  We will see--why rush?  The waiter at dinner tonight said why go back?  He suggested I stay and work at the place and just move to Tarpon Springs.  I am not sure about that, but I know that I shiver thinking about Minnesota weather again after a week of 80-85 degree weather.

Baseball, continued

I went to my second baseball game in as may days and doubled the size of my new hat collection when I went to a Twins game.  The game was less fun mainly because of the stadium.  The design, or rather the placement of the park meant that on a sunny day (remember, 92.4779 percent of our days are sunny!) everyone at the game is in fairly direct sun.  And it was hot (our average temperature is 84.314 degrees, all year around!).  I lasted into the 5th inning and I left.  It wasn't that good of a game, but really the park seemed like some great big grill where thousands of pasty white Minnesotans who were seasoned with months of  hot dishes and beer sizzled on a spit.  The fact that I resembled so many in this pack didn't make it any prettier of an image.

Plus, while in theory I had a good seat for photos, I was way too hot and fighting the sun for good shots.  That I fled the field because I was uncomfortable just further shows my appalling lack of commitment to the genre.  What it did convince me again of was when I DO like baseball.  I learned this in the early 1990s when I was in grad school.  It was fall, and finally cool in central Indiana and  midterms were rolling in and I actually had to grade and do the stuff teachers did.  I found this combination of grading midterm essays and baseball, either on the radio and especially on TV to be perfect.  Maybe because by then most baseball games actually mean something as they head down the home stretch.  I would watch a period of baseball, wait until they kicked a goal on the course or out of bounds and made a first point and assist, and while they were changing the net near the blue line on the pitch for half-time , I would placidly grade on with the perfect background noise droning on in the background.  Now that is when I like baseball!

Florida has been interesting, and I really have been trying to get a handle on it.  In some ways, it is the least hospitable hospitality state I have ever been in.  Tourists of whatever ilk are often treated with sometimes snide indifference.  I have to think that this is partially caused by the transient nature of so many of the patrons.  Short change someone?  No biggie.  They won't be back and there will, as one person said, one horde or another of tourists coming in right behind them.  Hotel room not quite clean or markedly expensive for what you get?  Hey, what choice do these sheep have?  They have to stay someplace.  I think that this even explains the general state of the food--tourists are grist for the mill of commerce, not gourmands, so it doesn't really matter if the fish is overcooked or the fish taco is less than authentic or perhaps even safe to eat.

Don't get me wrong.  I admire the machine.  One source says that there are 405,915 hotel rooms in the state--Orlando alone has 140,000.  Imagine having probably more than 300,000 guests in your home every night of the year.  If you rounded up 100 people in Orlando, 15-20 of them would be a tourist, more on certain events and holidays.   That it all works as well it does is a testament to how hospitable people probably are.

Oh well.  Tomorrow it is some culture, I guess, as I am going the Dali museum and then on to Tarpon Springs for some Greek food tomorrow night.  My visit to Xanadu/nirvana/paradise ends on Tuesday when I head back to a probable snowstorm and below zero temperatures.  Maybe this place isn't so bad after all...

Redsox

I went to a baseball game today, the first game in almost 2 years.  I even tried to take photos.  I suppose I would judge my work as semi-publishable.  By that I mean that if there was nothing better, these might be published if the paper had to.  Thinking back to my newspaper days, these would be almost insurance shots.  You know, you are at a game, not much is happening, and you have to have something so you shoot whatever moves.

I was shocked at how out of practice I am--I lost the ball, couldn't even point the camera sometimes, and pressed the shutter late.  Often.  I have lots of pictures of guys already standing up, brushing themselves off, and having a Coke--I thought I was getting them when they were sliding into second!  Part of this I will blame on equipment.  Amateur D-SLRs are fantastic, but they still have a lag time between when you press the shutter and when they take a photo.  Seriously, if you wonder why there are still cameras that cost $6,000, that is one of the main reasons.  That, and better motor drives.  

I would have to say that there may be a difference in motivation for me as well.  When I depended on this for my paycheck and was on deadline, I took this pretty seriously.  Honestly I know I missed two fantastic plays and photographs that would have been far better than these.  On one of them, I was eating a crab roll, and said/thought, wow, that was a great play at third.  The other time I missed a collision at second that also would have made a great photo.  I was buying a beer at the time, and the beer guy was in my way.  That probably wouldn't have happened "back in the day."

Moon, again...

I am not sure why I find the trees so intriguing here--perhaps it is because I don't know the names of them, and they are a bit different than the normal birch trees that I so often photograph.  This tree framed an almost full more quite well.

Speaking of names of things, an alert reader pointed out that the bird by the osprey nest that was photographed and posted a few days ago is a Pileated woodpecker, not a "just some kind of woodpecker."  I sure that this is one of many errata that people believe that I should add to my blog, and I will as people notice errors and omissions.

Play

So I pulled into my hotel tonight and saw this sign out of the corner of my eye.  First I wondered what kind of neighborhood this hotel was at, and then I thought, wow, this might be better than HBO!

Then I saw the rest of the sign, and I resigned myself to HBO...

Ford, Edison, and Naples

Today was an historic day of sorts, or at least historical.  I got to play the history nerd and I spent the day at museums of sorts.  I visited the Henry Ford and the Thomas Edison estates and got to see how the other half lived.  Nice spreads, if you don't mind getting lost in your own home.  They have kind of made them into time capsules and that is always fun.

I made it to Naples and got to see historic Naples as they call it.  Quaint.  I found it kind of funny--let's just say this.  I am pretty sure that the real history had a bit more diversity than was portrayed in the official version on display and referenced.  Also, all of it is put out there like this is some sort of paradise, and that life has been, is, and will be darn near perfect.  324 days of sunshine a year, perfect average temperature and on and on and on.    Except for the hurricanes, yellow fever, things that can eat you in the woods and water, a sun that can fry your innards, a very very red county and things like that.  Otherwise this place is darn near perfect...

I gave up doing much around 4:00 and just went for a walk.  The waterfront and the fancy part of town is nice, though a bit out of my income bracket.  I really want to eat at least one decent meal, and while I thought money wasn't much of an object, I revised that pretty quickly.  I browsed one menu where the cheapest item on the menu was $26.00, and that was an appetizer!  I am certain that there are good, reasonably priced places to eat, but I have not found them yet.  There are a ton of middle of the row chains, and lots of "family" type places. And some appropriately sleazy places in strip malls.  I think the vast middle is served by mediocrity and there are a few very good expensive places and then there are lots of places that have easy to chew food with the senior menu on the front rather than on the back page.  It's in big type, too.

I did stop at one nicer place and try a drink that was suggested.  Supposedly, the better quality, aged rum, rum about 15 years old is supposed to be good when sprayed with a little lime juice.  Maybe the rum was too old, or not old enough or the lime was old or something but I have to say I was not a fan.  I even drank two different kinds, just to make sure.  Don't say I didn't give it the ol' college try.  I am a fan of old things--they do get better with age, just like me.   I like really old scotch and port, for example.  Rum, I think, belongs in drinks with umbrellas.  Though old stuff (and people) are expensive and if I ever found someone mixing a $100 bottle of rum with pineapple juice I would be a bit disappointed.

Tomorrow is baseball--mid-80s, the Redsox, and stadium food.  Might be kind of fun, and perhaps I might even find a photo tomorrow.

Birding and other things

I went birding today, which is so unlike me that people should laugh.  Honestly, who could imagine me wandering around in the wilderness, trying to trophy shoot, albeit with a camera?  Plus, birding is boring!!!  Especially compared to my hobbies of pen and camera collecting.  Seriously, those hobbies are positively high intensity compared to bird watching.

That said, my visit to the Ding Darling Fish and Wildlife Refuge was pretty fun.  I am such a novice, and true birders just laugh at me.  For example, a birder might describe a bird I took a picture like this: "The Roseate Spoonbill is 71–86 cm (28–34 in) long, with a 120–133 cm (47–52 in) wingspan and a body mass of 1.2–1.8 kg (2.6–4.0 lb).^[5] The tarsus measures 9.7–12.4 cm (3.8–4.9 in), the culmen measures 14.5–18 cm (5.7–7.1 in) and the wing measures 32.3–37.5 cm (12.7–14.8 in) and thus the legs, bill, neck and spatulate bill all appear elongated.^[6] Adults have a bare greenish head ("golden buff" when breeding^[7]) and a white neck, back, and breast (with a tuft of pink feathers in the center when breeding), and are otherwise a deep pink. The bill is grey. There is no significant sexual dimorphism."

I would describe it as a pink bird with a bit bill thingy.

That said, I had fun, and I think I actually did pretty well.  I "captured" white Pelicans, the second largest bird in North America--only the California Condor is larger.  I got a twofer with a shot of an osprey chick and some type of a woodpecker.  I think I like the round red leaves of a sea grape and I liked the other tree/plant thing.  But the best shot was of an alligator snoozing in a ditch.  Mind you, this is not in a zoo and there are no fences or anything like that.  Yes, it is good that I can tell that it is an alligator rather than a crocodile but I would rather be able to do that from a bit further away than I was at the time.  The last photo is of a Florida moon that looks pretty much like a moon I might see in Minnesota

I am not going to make to Key West--too much driving time.  I will find another little adventure tomorrow

So why Florida?

It is a bit odd for me to end up in Florida for a vacation--I have been more likely to travel abroad more than domestically, so this is different.  I had to travel here for a conference and figured, since I was here, I would wander around for a bit.

The main reason that brought me here was well worth it.  It was an assessment conference and my assessment of it was pretty good.  As I measured its outcomes using the rubric I developed, I would say that the conference met the outcomes, which were of course clear and measurable.  Actually, it was just OK.  By far the best part was the keynote speaker by the president of Valencia College, a tiny community college in Orlando with 70,000 students.  Yes, that is right--this community college is bigger than the U of M.  It has grown because it has focused on student learning and it truly has a culture of doing this.

I am careful how to say how good this guy really is.  Let's say this.  Here is a college president, talking to a group of about 300 faculty and other assessment professionals, and as I looked around as he ended his session, I realized that there were people in tears.  And one of those people was me.  I think that I could (and I did!) learn from him.  It was impressive, perhaps more so because I am not sure we have such conversations in St Cloud which so focus on the students and big ideas.

Florida is an interesting place.  One highlight of the conference was a connection with someone who teaches at Santa Fe College in Gainesville.  Well, as a source, she was awful. One error of my friend was to not mention this little thing called the Daytona 500.  It explains the high price for rental cars, the cars and especially the trucks with Confederate flags, and the endless hordes of idiots who wear ball caps inside for no real reasons and wear t-shirts and sweat shirts with logos which are probably the only text of any kind that they read.  Hey, no page turning!   Really, more than 400,000 swarm into Florida for Speed Week, and it does affect the life of a tourist. I am not on a single NASCAR tweet or email list, so I missed this.  But the fun part is the cars.  I was passed on I-75 by three Ferrari's, a Lamborghini, and so many Porches that I lost count.  Really.  A Testarossa.  Who had to wait for traffic just like me and my Volkswagon!

My friend was also was from Northern Florida, so she did not fully fill me in on the phenomena of the Northern Snowbird which if course is far more common in Southwest Florida than "up north" or, as one person described any area north of Orlando, Georgia.  They are an interesting species.  Natives say the word as a curse word.  Honestly the vehemence  of their feelings is shocking. They are frustrated by the traffic and slow people driving, slow pedestrians talking, people swamping the restaurants  at 4:30 for  small meals with special prices for which the waiters will not receive much of a tip.

The impact of the zillions of these birds can be seen everywhere.  There are more pharmacies here than I could ever imagine.  When I went to a Publix, the large grocery chain store in Florida, the end caps as I entered the store/pharmacy promoted these things, besides bananas and stuff, for sale:  Ensure, Fiber One cereal,  and lastly, a pyramid of Depends.  More sad was my visit to a thrift store.  I always stop for camera bargains, but the visits to a few stores here very hard.  A difference was the was the frequency of whole sets of dishes, and complete, matching sets or suites of furniture, often with labels from Midwestern retailers.  People move or come here, but often don't  return to wherever home was.

What is the hardest part of this or what makes be most thoughtful about this is the preview of old age that is harsh and unforgiving.  And pretty sad.  I have wondered around lots of parts of towns and I have seen almost countless references to Ponce de Leon.  There are drives, boulevards. streets, lanes, ways, acres, and more all named after the guy who was looking for and perhaps found the fountain of youth.  But no one has found it, though everyone seems to be looking for it.  No matter what they call their street or sub-division.

Florida

Somewhere on the west coast of Florida, actually more of what people call Southwest Florida.  All I will say about the weather is that it wasn't -20.

I will write more soon

Weekends...

This was a good weekend, and I have to say I enjoyed myself.  I had tasks to accomplish, but they weren't too onerous and they were accomplished.  I walked/ran 17 miles, some of it up hill, since Thursday, so I have been working out.  I had a minor thing done to an errant eyeball, and it went well, and my Ebay adventures, while not glitch free, were profitable. And on this snowy blustery day I was outside only when I needed to be and have enjoyed my time in front of the fire with a book or three.

I ate well, too.  I regaled readers about last night's dinner, but tonight's was almost as good.  I saw a small little hunk, a solitary person sized hunk, of corned beef and I made corn beef with potatoes and carrots.  The meat melted and parted under the gentle weight of a fork, and the potatoes and carrots needed only a hint of Irish butter to be moist and tasty.  It was more than gastronomically satisfying--it filled my house with gentle, warm, smells, and it more than warmed me on a cold day.

I read a lot, more so now that in the past few years.  More time in some ways, but also it is easier with Kindle.  Though my house is filled with books, my IPad is filled with more.  Some it is what snobby folk might called literature, but far more seems to be just books.  I tend to read series by solid authors--since Christmas I have read a book shelf full of, among others, Michael Connelly, J.A. Jance, Peter Robinson, William Krueger, John Sandford, and lately, John D. MacDonald.  I know--hardly literature.  But with my impending Florida trip, I have really enjoyed MacDonald's Travis McGee.  McGee waxes philosophically as he tilts at windmills and beds tan, sandy-bottomed lasses.  These 21 books (I've read 14 so far this year) are so embedded in the 1960s that they truly do make me laugh.  I am old, but these are historic even for me.  He writes about "square" people, and the cars are Falcons and sporty Sunbeams and people drink highballs and he laughs at people who aren't as tan as he is and he takes his retirement a chunk at a time, living well on his salvage business.

Of course I have read them before, which is part of the fun and why I have enjoyed them so much.  My parents both read a lot and our house was filled with books--none by Sinclair Lewis or Proust, but lots of hard-boiled mysteries like these books.  I don't remember them buying these at bookstores, but they were always around.  I guess it is comfort reading, to read books again that I read first as tattered paperbacks in the 1970s.  Trav (his friends call him that) would have been the same age as my Dad--I wonder if he wanted to tilt at windmills, too.  Still, these books are fun tie to a different era and to my Dad.  Truly comfort reading.

It is a blizzard!!!

So it's not New Haven CT with its three feet of snow, but there is significant snow falling in St Cloud.  Normally I would stray off the beaten path a bit more than this, but after a very dicy drive home from the store, less than a mile away, I decided I was done driving for today.  I came in, put on a hat and found a camera laying around and went back outside to find a photo as close to home as possible.  By the time I got back close to my car, probably 30 minutes tops, there was an inch of fresh snow on my recently clean car window.  It has slowed a bit, but it is still kind of wintery out there.

Hey, who cares?  One week from today I will be in Florida, sipping tropical-type drinks and eating mahi-mahi.  Well, probably not that, but I will be warmer.  I have tickets to two spring training games and plans for at least some beach time.

Having sole

Well,  I did have sole.  For dinner.  It was one of my more successful meals, I think.  I had sole flash fried after being dredged in corm meal and dill.  The pasta was linguine dressed with ricotta cheese, peas, olive oil and sea salt.  Lemon juice was drizzled on both the fish and pasta.

It was simple and quick--I don't think that it took more 12 minutes to cook the pasta and fry the fish, and it wasn't even that bad for you.  I suppose I could have grilled the sole, but I lost my grill somewhere, and grilling such a delicate fish would have been a bit of a challenge.  Hey, my cholesterol is 58, so what is a bit of oil?  And the fish had Omega 3's so I am in the clear.  I would try this again, I think.

I was out driving around this morning trying to find a photo and all I really found was a place to eat.  It was one of those diner-type places where they call you "hon" and keep filling your coffee cup so it barely cools enough to drink.  Pretty plan food, but fine people.  Of course I was a stranger and waitress Cindy had questions for and about me.  It was pretty funny.  She asked me if I left the wife at home, a very not so subtle way of asking if I was married.What does one say?  When I told her no, I was single, she said well, that is a shame because there are a lot of nice girls around.  I was saved by a horde of kids and a mom looking for pancakes, so I never had to hear about or meet any of the nice girls she had in mind.

Of course the unspoken question was "Why are you single?"  I could have told her about my very nice 5 piece set of matching baggage but I am sure that was and is too much information.  Funnier still was "This American Life" on public radio this afternoon.  They talked to some actual rocket scientists who were all single and they quantified why they were, and almost put it in a formula.  If I followed this, it would work like this.

St Cloud has about 130,000 people in the metro area.  Let's say half of those are women, and trust me, that is my target population.  That means that there are 65,000 females.  If you look at the age distribution of that portion of the population, roughly 45% of these women are under 30, or probably too young even for me.  Another 25% are over 55, so let's just say that only about 23,000 are in any type of a  potential dating pool.  I am a reasonably educated person, so let's say that my potential date would have to have at least a BA or BS.  At best, only 25% of the population has a bachelor's degree, so the pool is now down to 5600.  Graduate education would be nice, but only about 5% have a master's degree, so leaves about 280 potential dates.  I think that we would have to assumes that some of these women, probably 60% of them, are married.  We are down to 112 or so potential dates.  Take another 10% out for those who have other orientations and we have about a 100 potential women that I might even potentially date.  Education isn't everything but let's say I was looking for someone with a similar educational background.  Only 1.5% of Minnesotans earn a degree beyond a Masters.  Sigh.  I am really looking for  one out of between 1.5  and 100 women...

Of course this is a rough way to sort this all out, but it does kind of put it in perspective.  And of course it would assume that I wasn't too short, too tall, too fat or too skinny or too young or too old for any of this group, a flawed assumption if there ever was one.  Of course, I am laughing about all of this because I am not so uncomfortable being single and do believe it isn't a flaw, no matter what Cindy might think.  But it is one more reason why it isn't good to know too much math and why it is never good to equate or involve math in affairs of the heart.