While the Cat’s Away…

We spent a couple of days in West Palm Beach anchored while a cold front came through.  One evening we decided to dingy to shore for dinner. It was cold!!! 49 degrees and very windy. Aislin really really really wanted to bring Skipper along, which means eating outside, in the wind, on the waterfront.  While I won’t freeze for Skipper, I will freeze for Aislin, so we dressed for a blizzard and took him to shore.  We were quite a site, everyone else dressed in their Christmas finest at this nice downtown West Palm Beach restaurant and Kim and I in our foul weather gear.  Both kids were embarrassed to be seen with us…ahh the joys of parenthood.

The next day we took advantage of the hot beverages at Starbucks, along with the AC power and free Wifi.  We took every electronic device we owned— yep 3 computers, an iPad, 3 iPhones, and iPod touch, and 3 Kindles to charge them up and for the kids to do school.

I then took at Uber to the Fort Lauderdale airport, to fly to Orlando to work 9 of 10 days. And while I was gone…

Kim and the kids spent a day playing at the Hugh Taylor Birch State Park.

The Winterfest boat parade is a big deal down in Fort Lauderdale.
More than 1,000,000 people gather along the parade route during Winterfest. It is the largest live event in the State of Florida, and is the seventh largest one day spectator event in the United States.

Kim and the kids then headed down to Biscayne Bay in Miami and anchored at the Miami Stadium.

Benjamin has to take proctored exams for his classes. He arranged a week of exams at the Miami Dade Community College, and had quite an adventure doing it. Kim would dinghy him to shore, then he would get an Uber to go to the school. The first day he took an Uber to the wrong campus, then when he gave the second Uber driver the address to the correct campus the number was one digit off and he was dropped off in the wrong place. Then the third Uber driver finally got him to the right campus for him to take his exam. In addition to his tour of Miami, he is getting to practice his rudimentary Spanish, as none of the drivers speak English. He still finds a way to connect–one morning on the way to school he said he and the driver were both singing Feliz Navidad at the top of their lungs.

Bienvenido a Miami y Feliz Navidad