Southern Views

What a great day! I only drove for 6 hours and a measly 300 miles. I must say they were a significant 300 miles. My journey is now transcontinental. At about 1:30 p.m. Monday, Shirley and I made it to Jupiter, Florida on the Atlantic side of the state after 4,650 miles. What a good girl she is!

I spent last night in Ocala and had the pleasure of having breakfast with my cousin Don this morning. Don is my Uncle Bill’s son. Uncle Bill was my Dad’s brother. I wish I would have had someone take a photo of us because it was scary how much we both look like our Dads. Breakfast was really nice because it was one of the few times we have gotten together and just had a Don and Bill conversation. Maybe Phyllis and I, will fly out here to visit and see the Drag Racing Museum in Ocala. That segues into the news that Phyl showed her restored ’69 AMX at the Grass Valley Car Show and won for the Best ‘60s Car. Not bad for a show with about 400 cars.

The drive down to Miami was very nice and the weather held until just before I got to Broward County of “Cops” fame. I ran into about 20 minutes of light rain and that was it. I arrived safely at Broward County’s C. B. Smith County Park which has RV sites. And just so you know, I really fooled that Kansas cop because I was able to meet my connection, unload my stash and get the payoff. Wait officer, I’m just kidding. Please don’t put out a BOLO for Shirley. The Florida authorities will be contacting Phyllis in the next few days anyway because I blew through a toll lane on the Florida Turnpike. I went through the SunPass lane without a SunPass. Toll violations ARE photo-enforced.

Tonight’s game was a good one. The Marlins whomped the Padres so that gives the Giants a chance to made up some ground in the standings after the Giros beat the Phillies tonight. Josh Johnson pitched a complete game, had a career high 12
strikeouts, had three hits and drove in three runs, a one man wrecking crew.

I met another baseball fanatic tonight. Jason Glass is from Oklahoma and is also on a quest to visit all 30 MLB parks. He will be in Tampa tomorrow night. Jason is in year two of his three-year schedule.

I had a horrible seat, right over the visitor’s dugout. The darn Marlin Mermaids kept dancing on the top of the dugout and it was very distracting. There was a pretty sparse crowd so I think every kid in my section ended up with a baseball being tossed to them by players and bat boys. What a way to recruit future fans. The park itself is old and is shared with the Miami Dolphins. The Marlins have 154 home games left before they move into their new ballpark in 2012. The fans were quite involved in the game and didn’t need silly gimmicks like flashing scoreboards telling them to make noise or the Kissy Cam searching for smoochers. The scoreboard itself was great as opposed to the one at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.

(checkout the moon over Miami on the scoreboard photo). The scoreboard tells a complete story and the out-of-town games are posted on separate scoreboards. OK, enough about scoreboards.

Tomorrow is a leisurely drive across the Everglades to Tampa, another 5 or 6 hour stint.