Category: Travel

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Blogging Career Driving Holidays Life Travel Weather

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

1.  THIS is the momentous 100TH edition of the ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’. That’s 96 editions here on WordPress over the past 23 months – and 4 editions before that on the MySpace incarnation of this here blog. This week also marks the end of the 2ND full year of ‘Grab Bag’ editions. Next week we begin Year 3. Thank You so very much for checking out this blog on a regular basis – and for helping to make the ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’ the flagship weekly series of this blog. It’s the blog of my Life.

MEMORIES –> Check out the very first edition of the ‘Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts’ from Tuesday October 16TH 2007.

2.  Well I ‘tweased‘ about this late yesterday afternoon, but now I’m not so sure about it. I’m referring to some cooler and dryer air that should be approaching us late this week into this upcoming weekend. Or will it ?  My amateur weather forecast now differs slightly from that of the National Weather Service. My ‘spaghetti models’ now struggle to pull the powerful cold front all the way through the southeast coast of Florida. If my forecast is correct then it won’t get nearly as cool and dry as it could otherwise. I do believe that Saturday and Sunday will be our coolest two days in a row since last May with Sunday morning being noticeably cooler. Expect Sunday morning temperatures in the upper-40s near Tallahassee, upper-50s near Orlando, mid-60s near Naples, and close to 70° here in Homestead.

3.  You know what was really cool about the very start of my recent holiday weekend road trip ?  On Saturday morning as I walked down to my car to kick it all off I glanced up at the sky and I saw a really nice hot air balloon up there looking down at my neighbourhood. When I saw that I just knew that the time was right to declare the start of my short little vacation. As I began driving northbound the hot air balloon drifted westbound over Redland.

4.  My 415.5-mile road trip was a smash hit – a successful dry run to a much longer road trip that I shall embark on in less than 38 days. I’ll be driving about 7 times that distance round-trip over the course of 10 days when I drive to and from the Dallas Texas area to visit my family for the Thanksgiving holiday. It will be the longest road trip of my entire Life – but not by a whole lot actually. I drove up to the Washington D.C. area a bunch of times when my family still lived up there (prior to about 13 years ago).

FACTOID –> My 415.5-mile road trip was completely toll-free courtesy of Krome Avenue, Tamiami Trail, and I-75.

5.  Please don’t misinterpret one of my comments from one of my blog posts from yesterday. While I have fallen in love with the greater Naples area, and I do plan to eventually move there sometime in the future that will not happen anytime soon. I’m thinking long-range here. I have a wonderful job over at the air base in Homestead. I’m a 25-year Federal Government employee, and although that’s a lot of years with the system I can’t retire anytime soon. Now that does not necessarily mean that I plan to wait until I can retire before I move to Naples – or even buy a home over there. I’m still many years away from such a concept, but I do believe that I will eventually become a resident of Naples or the surrounding area. I will also become a more frequent visitor of the area.

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Animals Blogging Driving Food God Holidays Movies Music Radio Shopping Travel Weather

The Major’s Walk-A-Thon: Special On-Location Edition – Southwest Florida

1.  It’s Columbus Day, and it’s a day of relaxation for me after a lot of walking and a lot of driving. I drove 415.5 miles over 37 hours. That’s about 3 weeks of normal every day Homestead driving for me, and it’s just as I had planned out prior to embarking on the road trip. 201.3 miles of driving occurred on Saturday as I drove from Florida City to Lehigh Acres by way of Everglades City, Naples, and Estero. The remaining 214.2 miles of driving occurred on Sunday on the return trip back home to Homestead from Estero (where I spent the night) – via Naples and Plantation Key.

2.  On my Saturday morning drive over to the southwest coast of Florida I stopped for brief visits at the Big Cypress National Preserve Oasis Visitor Center as well as the Everglades National Park Gulf Coast Visitor Center just south of Everglades City. I don’t think that I have ever been to Everglades City before. (If I have then I don’t remember it.) It’s very small and very historic. About 500 people live there full-time. I plan to return back there during the cooler winter months to walk around the historic downtown area and check out the museum there.

3.  After a MASSIVE Lunch at Pinchers Crab Shack at Tin City on the waterfront in Naples, a walk to the end of the long city pier over the Gulf Of Mexico, and a nice scenic neighbourhood drive along the peaceful and quiet south coast of Naples I proceeded up to the big movie theatre north of Naples to get out of the mid-90s heat and sun – and to see the current box office smash “Zombieland“. It was campy and hilarious – perhaps a future cult classic ?

4.  It was so great to hear my radio station – The Call – over in southwest Florida. They just recently moved over from 107.5 FM to 107.7 FM in Naples. It’s an extremely weak translator station, and it was a bit ‘staticky’ all around the city – but a weak CALL-FM was definitely better than no CALL-FM. Up closer to Fort Myers I picked-up the much stronger 91.9 FM signal of The Call. It sounded great up and down I-75. On Saturday night I made my way over to Lehigh Acres (10 miles east of I-75 and Fort Myers) to attend a rock concert at a church featuring Jubilee, Horizons Fall, and Manic Drive. Rob from The Call was there. It was cool to hang out with him for a little while. All three bands rocked the joint hard and LOUD !

5.  On Sunday morning (after church in the park) I visited the Naples Zoo to check up on my animal friends. I then walked around the Coastland Center Mall to cool off a bit before making the return trip back to the southeast coast of Florida. This was my first visit over to the Naples area in about 20 months – way too long. My next visit will be much sooner than that – hopefully sometime during the upcoming cooler and dryer winter season. I think that it’s reasonable to state that it’s no longer ‘possible’ that I plan to eventually live in Naples, but that it’s ‘probable’. I fell in love with Naples all over again, and I wish to live there in the future. There is so much that I wish to see and do over there, so that will justify my more frequent visits to the area, and with each new visit I’ll be looking around for potential new neighbourhoods to call my future new home.

LATER TODAY – 2 MORE BLOG POSTS:
– ‘Celebration Community Beach Church At The Park’
– ‘Life Pointe Church Plantation Key Lime Pie’

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Blogging Driving Food Health History Holidays Music People Travel

Thursday Night Mini Thoughts

– Let’s get spontaneous.
– Let’s get ridiculous.
– This morning at 7:30 AM I already had The Big Cheese on my mind.
– I convinced 5 other coworker dudes to eat Lunch there 4 hours later.
– And so we came, we saw, and we conquered !
– We ordered 2 extra large (16-inch) pizzas for the 6 of us.
– One had pepperoni on it, and the other was full of sausages.
– One dude ate more pizza than all of the others.
– Guilty !
– There were 20 slices in all, and the other 5 dudes ate 3 slices apiece.
– That left 5 slices for moi.
– That was some tasty pizza there !
– I’m lookin’ forward to this upcoming holiday weekend.
– It all starts for me at 11 AM tomorrow (Friday) morning.
– But it starts off with a dental cleaning appointment.
– On Saturday and Sunday I’ll be on the road visiting places.
– It’s sort of like a dry run for a much longer road trip I’m taking in November.
– This blog will go dark for those two days.
– I mean you’ll still be able to access it, but there will be nothing new posted on it.
– Actually I’ll be tweeting, so you’ll be able to see those here on the blog.
– My antiquated cell phone is born again due to its ability to tweet.
– On Monday I’ll blog all about my road trip.
– But before then tomorrow night is Disco night here on the bell-bottom blog.
– I’ve got ABBA with their biggest worldwide smash ever !
– You can dance – You can jive – Having the time of your Life.
– You won’t regret it pal.
– Since there is no ‘Saturday Night Retro’ this weekend I’ve got a treat for you.
– I’ve got Mr. David Hasselhoff with a big hit that he had back in 1997.
– It’s a spirited remake of a very well-known early-1970s pop smash.
– Check out the low-budget production values of this music video:

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Career Driving Politics Travel Weather

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

1.  “Chris – Your gray facial hair has put you in a rocking chair. Your beard is weird.” Someone actually inquired about my gray beard today at work. First of all – I don’t have a beard. I shaved last Saturday afternoon as part of my twice-per-week ritual, so I have a mere three days worth of facial growth. Second of all – I can confirm that my three days worth of facial growth is actually more gray than not. Sometimes I get mistaken for a guy in his mid-20s. Sometimes I look my age.

2.  I ‘tweased’ about this on Twitter last night. I’ve been working on my winter season weather forecast for America’s Riviera over the past couple of months or so. Here’s what I think. I’m looking for a consistently cooler and wetter November through April. I don’t think that we will see as many sudden frost and freeze events as we did last winter, but I do think that our milder cold snaps will last for extended periods of time. We could actually experience a month-long period of continuous below normal temperatures and above normal precipitation.

3.  It was another wacky day at work today – perhaps a tad bit less wacky than it was yesterday (Monday). Sometimes what happens in the last 5 or 10 or 15 minutes of the work day – whether it be positive or negative – determines how I feel overall of the day in hindsight. Today ended on an unexpected high note during the last 15 minutes. That turned an otherwise blah day into a wacky but happy day.

4.  I’m going on a 400+ mile / 37-hour road trip during this upcoming holiday weekend. At least that’s what I’ve got planned out. Anything can happen – and it probably will. I’ll be hangin’ out for much of that time over in the Naples area. I can actually see myself living over there in the future whether it be part-time or full-time. I once lived in Melbourne and commuted to my job way over in Tampa for about 7 months after Hurricane Andrew. I basically lived and played on the east coast during the weekends and lived and worked on the west coast during the week. I can actually see a reverse scenario for me sometime in the future where I live in two homes on two coasts of Florida.

5.  It’s Election Day all across the City Of Homestead, but I didn’t vote in this one (absentee or otherwise). The truth be told I’ve lost interest in city politics. More than a decade ago I actually considered a run at City Council. Nowadays I don’t even watch the meetings on television or online. Maybe some day I’ll come back around and show an interest in it again, but not right now. I have a fantastic journey that I need to concentrate on more than any other entity.

That’s the ‘Grab Bag’ for this week. I thank you so very much for your continued interest in my Life, and I surely hope that you stick around to see what happens next.