Fort Lauderdale – 2 kilometres walked, 30 kilometres driven
I awoke at dawn’s light to the sound of heavy rain and went to check on Magnus in the cockpit. He was sleeping soundly, but the edge of his single sheet had dropped down, allowing water from the small creek that always develops on the cockpit floor during rainstorms to leech its way up the sheet and into the cushion. I woke him up and sent him down below to sleep on the seats at the table then removed all the cushions and pillows and threw them down into the cabin to keep them dry.
The interior of the boat was moist, hot, and close as we could not open the windows due to the continuing rain. I made it worse by lighting up the gas stove and making a big egg scramble for breakfast which jacked the cabin temperature by at least five degrees. But, in my opinion, the eggs were worth it.
Yesterday we had written out a daily plan in our boat journal for the remaining days with Magnus here and today’s said “Shopping”. I’ve never appreciated shopping as an activity. To me, it’s an unpleasant chore you are forced to do, as infrequently as possible, and with maximum haste. But that opinion is not shared by others in my family; in fact, shopping is their hobby. Our first stop was the Goodwill Outlet Store, which was a combination of Krazy Binz and a violent American football game. To the sounds of gangsta rap, dozens of people in the warehouse-style store, some wearing protective gloves, were rooting through big blue bins of clothing, household items, toys, games, books, and other knick knackery, all priced at $1.97 per pound. Yep, sold by the pound. Many of the folks in the store looked exceedingly poor and were not there for hobby or sport – they had to be there.
Over the course of fifteen minutes workers rolled out an entire row of bins. I wasn’t sure what was going on as the bins were still half full. But a while later they started bringing out new full bins and all the customers in the store dashed over, literally dropping whatever they had been looking at, and stood eyeing up the items within the new bins and wiggling their fingers, but not touching anything. The crowd gathered like this until nearly everybody in the store encircled this row of bins, like rugged linebackers squaring off at the line of scrimmage. I was scared for their safety. The last two bins were brought out, completing the full row. Still they waited. Then, the supervisor who had been directing the work looked down the line of scrimmage, across the anxious faces, waited a few strategic seconds, then gave a slight nod. People went mad, digging into the bins, throwing clothes around, holding items up to themselves then tossing them either into their own personal pile or back into the bin. There was elbowing, shoving, pushing, and some profanity. It was crazy! I saw my family in there, up to their elbows in clothes, getting knocked around as the rookies, loving it all. I just kept out of the way and took photos from a safe distance.
Our next stop was a mall and along the way Ana signaled to change lanes and started to move, then a fast moving bike came ripping up in the lane and had to swerve out of her way. She didn’t see him as he was wearing black and moving very quickly. And here, I must take an aside.
I wrote about my impressions of Americans the other day and there’s one thing I forgot to mention. They turn into jerks as soon as they get inside a vehicle. We have seen so many drivers respond to another driver’s mistake or bad decision with yelling out the window, flipping them off, blaring their horns, waving their hands and shaking their heads, pointing and screaming. They are downright hostile when they are in vehicles and it’s so easy to see how road rage can happen, made particularly more risky when half the population are driving around with guns. This guy on the motorcycle who had a close call started doing exactly that – yelling at us, waving his arms, shaking his head, then he even slowed right down and got up beside us. I rolled down my window to see what he’d say. He didn’t say anything, just had a look, shook his head, then took off. I suppose he was trying to scare us, and maybe he had a gun tucked into his motorcycle jumpsuit, ready to shoot out our tires if we gave him any lip. It’s so unnecessary. People make mistakes on the road, it happens to everybody, every day. From what I can see, life is much safer on the public transport or, better yet, traveling by foot.
The ladies and Magnus got out at the Coral Ridge mall and I drove back to a Harbour Freight we had passed earlier, curious as I had never been inside one before, but I knew it was a store similar to Princess Auto. Bunch of junk. All cheap, Chinese-made crapola. I returned to the mall, waited for a while, then when the gang returned with their treasures we continued onto a different mall, but not before doing an ocean drive-by and getting out to watch a bunch of kite surfers taking flight off the huge waves.
After our stop at the massive Galleria mall in Fort Lauderdale, we drove to Smokers Family Park and filled up our four 7-gallon water jugs, then returned to the boat after several trips back and forth in the dinghy to transport everybody and everything. The rain and clouds had finally passed and it was a pleasant evening. As I was filling up the boat's internal water tank from the jugs, I was surprised to see a dolphin surface – the first one we’d seen in this anchorage. I hollered at the kids to come and see and they did manage to get a look at the dolphin as it swam towards the bridge. It wasn’t long before more dolphins appeared, and Stella and Anna saw one surface directly beside our boat. They were overjoyed! I was so happy they got to see some of these beautiful creatures. Daily Dolphin is back!
I had something special planned for dinner tonight – authentic Rochester Garbage Plates. You take a big scoop of macaroni salad and an equal measure of French fries, home fries, or tater tots. Drop a barbequed cheeseburger or hot dog or both on top of this. Sprinkle on a handful of chopped raw onions, then apply a large dollop of spicy meat sauce over the pile. Decorate with strings of mustard and ketchup, serve with day old Italian white bread, and you have yourself a garbage plate. Delicious!
I went to bed shortly after 9pm but there was all sorts of activity happening on the boat until after 1am – kids on deck, laughing, stomping around, Ana back and forth between our room and the rest of the boat. I have no idea what was going on.
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