Florida!

It's Wednesday morning and I'm headed to the airport in about an hour so I'm going to whip out the writeup now because once I get back to Mass, I'm gonna be jammed at work, making up for being out. So let's get to it...

My flight down was uneventful and Todd was there to pick me up. It was rush hour so we sat in a bit of traffic before arriving at his and Kathi's house - and what a house. Huge, spacious, 13' (15'?) ceilings, in-ground pool within a lanai...I really need to do some upgrades to my house...

We kicked back a bit, and by that I mean; sampling some of the moonshine concoctions that Todd had created. And they were delicious! But it can't be just shots all night long so we were mixing things up with beers, too. O:-)

Todd grilled up some huge racks of ribs and we decided we had a long weekend ahead of us so we'd just relax for the night. Rented The Martian on TV and continued with the libations into the evening.

Friday - time to pick up the bike!! Which of course meant it was pouring. Seriously! (My luck never strays far from my side). We decided to drop the bike back off at the house and go shooting, instead. We hit a local range, plinked off a few boxes, then went and grabbed lunch at this awesome place called Poe's. As in the writer. This place was awesome!! The atmosphere was dimly lit and the walls were decorated with pictures of the man, sculptures of his themes (crows, hearts), and posters of the B-movies his stories had inspired.  The menu items were all named after his stories/themes. I had The Telltale Heart burger and it was frikkin' awesome. The bathroom! The background noise wasn't music, it was Vincent Price, reading Poe's stories. The walls were plastered with pages torn from Poe's books. Suffice to say that I loved the place! 

From there we checked out the beach (next door), but the lousy weather had kept all the hotties away so we cleared out.

Next stop was a distillery in the area so we took their tour and sampled their wares. It was quite good! They had 5 different vodkas, a rum, and a gin. And they had mixed drinks using their flagship stuff, too. Whee!

From there it was up the street to a winery, for another tour and sample session. These guys weren't as carefree with the samples;  we could only pick 4 (they had about 20 offerings). The one I liked the most was their port so I bought a bottle of that and then we stopped on the way to get some dark chocolate to pair it with back at the house. Which we did.

Todd grilled up some monster steaks for us and then we all headed to their local Moose Lodge. I've never heard of this group but they were a lot of fun. I think the three of us were the youngest people in there! The older crowd comes out in drives....to sing karaoke! And these folks take it seriously,  and were very good at it. I finally got up the courage to sing (Blues Brothers; Soul Man), and it brought the house down. There were folks up dancing, laughing, clapping, and when I was finished, they came up and hugged me! It was really surprising, but this place was just that friendly. It was awesome. 

From there, we headed back to the house along with another couple that they're friends with,  for more cocktails and some intense rounds of...Wii bowling, lol.

I've never played it before but it was fun trying to get the ball to go straight when we could barely see straight, ourselves.

That went to about 3am and I had to turn in. The rest of them kept at it for a bit but I guess not much longer.

Saturday morning, Todd and I headed over to his friend Richard and Brenda's house (the couple who'd Wii'd with us, and we piled in to Richard's truck and headed to a different kind of gun range. This one was for shotguns! Sweet! I'd been told that we'd be shooting clay pigeons but not in a traditional skeet manner. This was WAY better! It was a wooded path, almost a mile long, which ran in a huge circle, and brought you back to the starting point. Along the way, there were stations which you'd launch the pigeons from and take your shots at them. Each station had two launchers so until one of us went first,  we'd had no idea which way they would come from, what direction they were launched in; toward you, away from you, across in front...or even if in the air or not. Yeah; there were a couple that launched them in a rolling pattern, zipping along the ground like a Frisbee on its edge. If it hit a bump, it would bounce in the air, if no bump; no bounce. Quite challenging! I'm very new to the shooting game so I didn't do too well. Todd did pretty well, and Richard did great, probably hitting 85%. It was a blast!  I will have to see if I can find a place like that close to home,  but I don't think I'll have much luck.

Oh yeah; while we were doing this shotgun stroll through the woods, it was snowing. Snowing! The other guys were saying it hasn't snowed here in years, so of course the blame rested squarely at my feet (my luck, continues!).

From there, we hit a tiny little place called The Jug. Those of you familiar with Lynyrd Skynyrd will recognize the name of the place (from Gimme Three Steps). And sure enough;  this place was tiny! Three steps would certainly have been enough to get out the door.

A quick lunch at a bbq place and then it was back to Richard's to clean the guns, then back to Todd's to kick back a bit.

That night, we were off to "Saturday Night Stakes". It's a monthly rotation where a bunch of folks bring their steaks, the host cooks them up along with sides, and then they play poker. Or, they do karaoke. This night, however, there were miscommunications, so neither the karaoke equipment nor the poker chips had been brought, so we hung out for a while (talking about how cold it was, how crazy that it'd been SNOWING earlier, and how it was all the fault of the guy from Mass), then headed off to the Moose Lodge again to close out the evening (I didn't sing, I figured the poor lodge members had been tortured enough from the night before).

Sunday! Time to gear up and head to Englewood! Geez, I sure wish I'd been able to pack my cold weather gear! Temps in the 30's and nothing but jeans and a thin pair of rain pants. The temps didn't even warm up that much, only into the upper 40's by the time I arrived. I was so cold on the ride that my entire body was shaking. Yay Florida, the Sunshine State...except when I'm here!  :-D

Karen had beer waiting for me and we settled in to watch the AFC Championship game with some friends of hers. We know how the game went so no need to get in to that.

After the game, we headed out to catch up with Diane at her place of work, had dinner and drinks while waiting for her shift to end, then did some of the Englewood bar circuit, which is always fun.

When the night had run long, we headed back to Karen's, and cooked up some sandwiches for a late night feed. Her dog Haley, is awesome and loves to play. Well, I got to running in circles around the house with her, and being slightly less than stable on my feet, managed to knock over a very nice candle holder that Karen's sister had given to her. It had layers of corn kernels, split peas, beans, etc, and looked very nice. Until I sent it scattering all over the floor. We managed to pick everything up and put it back into the holder, but suffice to say it did not hold any of its original charm any longer. D'oh. It was time for me to go night-night.

The  next morning, we went out for breakfast then headed over to Diane's to pick her up. Jay Mandello was actually there doing some work for her, so it was awesome to catch up with him and say hello. Then the three of us headed off to Punta Gorda;  An excellent resort / relaxation area which I will definitely have to check out again the next time I'm down there. We started off at a place called Laishley that had a second floor that looked out over the port/coast area, and was very beautiful. Then it was off to a place called the Wyvern which had a rooftop bar, but because the weather wasn't good enough (it was 65 and pure sunshine outside), the rooftop bar was closed. So, we grabbed drinks from the inside bar and then went up and hung up on the rooftop anyway. It was very beautiful up there, and that bar should have been open.

After that, it was on to a place on the water's edge called the Tiki Bar, and they had some very nice Tiki rum drinks which we made short work of.  This place will have to be visited again, too!  The drinks were cheap and they weren't stingy with the rum!

We then tried going to the El Jobean but they were not open, so we dropped Diane off and then Karen and I headed to a local wine bistro bar that she likes to go to for dinner. This place was awesome, food was delicious, the outdoor seating was awesome with propane fire pits, right on the water's edge.  When it got dark, they turned on these things they called "fish lights", which illuminated the water in green glowing balls of light.  The fish get attracted to them and you get to see them swimming around.  It was fantastic!

After dinner, it was off to meet up with Diane again, and we went to a place called the Sportsman's. We only hung out there for short time because Karen had to work the next day and I had to jump on the bike and head north again, so we called it a night relatively early and headed off to grab dinner at this Italian place she likes.  They had chicken piccata, which apparently Karen likes as well, so we each ordered that....and were dismayed to then receive chicken dish covered in mushrooms and thick wine sauce.  Hmmm...
"Excuse me, you brought us chicken marsala".
No we didn't, this is the chicken piccata.
What?  Chicken piccata has capers instead of mushrooms!
Well not this place.  This place doesn't serve capers, we serve mushrooms, and that's our chicken piccata.
WTF?  You can't just change a standard recipe and then call it something else.  If it's mushrooms and a creamy wine sauce, it's marsala!!
It's our piccata and it's what you ordered.
Whatever.  we were hungry so we ate it, then headed back to the house.
 

It was an early rise the next morning due to the aforementioned work / ride north thing.  The ride back up was fairly uneventful, but I did see one thing that was very interesting. There was a flat bed that had a gigantic great white shark on it. Not a real one, a metal one, and it's tail section was gone, exposing a ton of gears. The middle section was emptied out (just a frame), the top had a gigantic dorsal fin, and the head was a huge gaping maw, with edges burned black and red crimson cracks showing through the skin. My first thought was this was the shark prop from the second jaws movie when it bit the electrical cable for the lighthouse. But then I realized I was near Orlando so this thing was probably being decommissioned from one of the Disney theme rides. Still; very cool!

I hit a little bit of rain on the ride back up but nothing to severe. I got back to Todd and Cathi's house a little early, and Cathy said she would help me drop the bike off that afternoon, rather than waiting for this morning. That turned out to be very fortuitous because when we woke up this morning, it was absolutely pouring again. (Ha! I managed to avoid my usual bad luck for a change!)

I took Todd and Cathy out for dinner last night to thank them for their hospitality.  It was another Italian restaurant and they had chicken piccata on the menu.  I checked to make sure it listed capers instead of mushrooms, saw that it did, and ordered it.
And then received a chicken dish with capers...but no lemons or lemon flavoring.  *Sigh* Florida seems to have a problem with authentic chicken piccata.  But I digress.  The wine was good, we ate well, and then went back and watched some TV and had a bit more wine to close out the evening.

As I mentioned at the beginning, it's Wednesday morning.  However, Todd has now dropped me off at the airport (this post is running long so  I wasn't able to finish it at his house), and I'm waiting to board.  The clouds have cleared off, the sun is sweeping down, and the temperatures are rising nicely. The forecast for the days ahead is calling for sunshine and temperatures in the seventies here in lovely Jacksonville. I see that my luck has caught up to me once again, and the folks down here are happy that I am leaving.

I'm going to see if I can post this from the airport, & I will get the pictures posted when I'm back home. Stay tuned...