Category: Travel

Another Cold Morning !

It’s another cold morning here in America’s Riviera – mid-50s with wind chills in the low-50s. We dropped down to 51°F on Wednesday morning, and 56°F on Tuesday morning. Now you may think that temperatures at dawn in the 50s is a heatwave for you, but here at sea level at 25.5° north latitude (near the Tropic Of Cancer) that makes for a cold morning. Our average minimum temperature for the entire year (right now – mid-January) is right at 60°F, so once we drop below normal – it’s cold outside !

When we drop into the 40s – now that’s downright frigid. That’s “severe weather” for us. We’ve had two such mornings so far – one in late-November and one in mid-December. Last winter we had 12 such mornings in the 40s. The last time we hit the 30s ? February 20TH 2015. Most of us hibernated that day.

South Floridians don’t dress like everyone else in North America. When we hit the 50s in the morning we’re all bundled up as if there’s a raging blizzard out there. When we reach the 40s we start calling in sick (cold) from work.

YES – This is the exciting time of the year where our weather changes rapidly based on approaching and passing cold fronts from the northwest. Once our rainy season gets started in mid-May – well then we pretty much know what to expect for the next 5 months after that. We can expect everything – except for cold temperatures. During the rainy season we’ll be stuck in a narrow 20°F range from 73°F to 93°F day and night.

Uh-oh. We just dropped another degree as I wrote this blog post. It’s 54°F at 6 AM.

Winter Jam 2019

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I’m headed to Tampa Florida (5 hours north of my home) for the first time in a little over 12 years. I’ll be over there for just a couple of days, and the main event of this short visit will be this 5+ hour experience at the Amalie Arena with thousands of my brothers and sisters in Christ, as we praise and worship Him led by about a dozen artists. There will be singing, dancing, hand-clapping, and arm-raising as the Holy Spirit inundates the arena.

I’ll review the big show later this weekend on “Sunday Scripture”, but first it’s my normal Friday night blog post tomorrow night. I’m going #Retro back to Sunday January 15TH 1989. It’s the weekend that I began doing something for the first time ever here in South Florida – and I’ve been doing it almost every day since that weekend exactly 30 years ago. Find out what it is on my next blog post.

Nature Travel

My Flickr Photostream

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date December 20, 2018

All of my photos online are located at one central location – Flickr. It’s been around for almost 15 years, and I’ve been on there for almost 8 years. A lot of longtime Flickr users are now disgruntled ex-Flickr users because the new owners of Flickr recently imposed a new limit of 1,000 free photos (from unlimited). I’m beyond that. I’m approaching 2,700 photos. I’ve been a paid customer for many of these past 8 years, and they recently imposed a substantial increase for annual paid subscriptions. I don’t think the cost is outrageous (about 10 cents per day), and I don’t feel like starting over with storing all of my photos online elsewhere. I’ll be on Flickr indefinitely.

Check out my Flickr Photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmday6567. I’ve added 27 new photos so far in December – all from my recent vacation with family in North Texas. My goal is to add an average of one new photo per day / 30 per month to my collection. I’ll make that a New Year’s Resolution for 2019.

You can also keep track of my latest photos on the web site edition of this blog along the right-hand panel. You’ll see the last 5 photos added there.

You can have your Facebook and Instagram. I’m rockin’ the Interwebs with WordPress and Flickr !

Tags Photography

Career Military Travel

Happy Anniversary Weekend !

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date November 29, 2018

This is a huge anniversary weekend for me. I’ll observe one in this blog post, and then I’ll observe another one in tomorrow’s blog post, and then I’ll observe yet another one in Sunday’s blog post.

On November 30TH 1987 – the Monday after Thanksgiving that year – I boarded a plane in the Washington D.C. area (my original hometown) – for Miami Florida. I had never been there before, and I knew very little about it other than the fact that the weather would be much sunnier and warmer than the Washington D.C. area. I arrived in Miami that night, and I awaited my military transportation from Miami to Homestead AFB. It eventually arrived, and I arrived on the base during the wee early morning hours of December 01ST 1987. I was Active Duty in the USAF back then – an A1C / E3.

Hurricane Andrew destroyed Homestead AFB on August 24TH 1992, but then it was partially rebuilt. (Its geographic location ultimately saved it.) I returned to the base almost 19 months later upon its grand reopening as Homestead ARS (and then Homestead ARB). I still work on the base today. Nowadays (and for the past 11 years) I crunch numbers and count money.

So Happy 31ST Anniversary to me at the airbase near Homestead Florida. I arrived when I was 20½, and now I’m 51½. I wasn’t expecting to spend most of my life working there, but that’s what’s happened. I thought that I had seen the last of the airbase after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, but here I am 26 years later. I think I have another 5 good years in me before it’ll be time to pack it up, retire, and move away from this Homestead.