Fort Lauderdale – 9 kilometres walked
It was a slow morning on SeaLight after last evening’s libations and frivolity. Our only mission today was to do laundry before our friend Tony arrived mid-afternoon.
From our location at the mooring field, everything is a long walk, which we don’t mind at all, but it does take time to get places. I had a look at the bus schedules for Sunday but they were infrequent and didn’t quite line up with our schedule, so we foot-powered our way to the Downtown Coin Laundry, dropped in two loads, then walked down the street to Einstein Brothers Bagels for a coffee and what may have been the most delicious bagel we’ve ever eaten – a toasted cheese bagel with bacon, lettuce, tomato, and this incredible flavourful cream cheese sauce Yiddishly called “shmear”. We had a nice chat with Magnus on the phone and got the updates on his final exams and school projects, work, and his final preparations for the upcoming semester in Edinburgh. He is very excited for his trip to visit us and escape the cold winter weather for a week.
We returned to the laundry to transfer clothes into the dryers and wait for them to finish. I think laundromats are one of the rare few places left for random human contact – lots of people sitting around in close proximity with nothing to do, and unlike a subway or bus, conversation is not discouraged. Although we didn’t meet any new friends, I did see strangers talking to each other, and everybody seemed fairly happy despite having to do laundry on a Sunday. I wonder how many fabulous romances have been borne from a sock exchange in a laundromat?
During the walk back we noticed a sign for a Estate Sale so we bee-lined through the quiet street like dogs on a scent trail. We found it – a classic Floridian ranch, large, with gardens and clay roof tiles. We walked through the open front door and were met by a strapping young lad.
“Morning!” he said.
“Hi! So everything’s for sale?” said Ana.
“Everything. Furniture, paintings, televisions, kitchen equipment. She’s all coming down.”
“Coming down?”
“Yes. Going to be demolished. Make me an offer on anything.”
We walked through the house, dumbfounded. It was a beautiful place that just needed a bit of updating. Besides the lovely pool in the backyard overlooking a canal, it was large, roomy, had top of the line kitchen appliances, three bedrooms, and tranquil spaces. It seemed incredible that this perfectly good house was going to be destroyed.
From here it was a short ways to the boat, and by the time we had unpacked the laundry, I received a text from Tony saying he was minutes away. Tony is a great friend of ours from Brantford and we’ve had countless adventures over the years (most of them recorded here…) including an extended trip to Southeast Asia, Mexico, several sailboat repositionings, cruising the North Channel, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario – the list goes on. So when he told me he was going to fly here from southern Texas where he is currently snowbirding, I was thrilled. He’ll only be with us for a couple of day as he’s traveling back to Canada for Christmas on the same flight as Ana.
The three of us got settled in the cockpit and I put a cold Life in the Clouds IPA in his hand then we visited and chatted until it was nearly dark. Tony’s spent ample time on SeaLight so needed no introduction to the boat. We shared details on our respective trips through the US (his in a motorhome, ours in a boat) and discussed plans for the coming months. It was great to see him again as it has been a while since we’d spoken in person.
Ben rowed over with two oversized cans of cold Yuengling and joined us for a chat, then we put tactical plans in place for a daring dusk water extraction mission, to test out our new water jugs and to fill his tanks before their expected departure tomorrow. A few days earlier we had located what could be argued was a public water tap – a perfectly visible functioning tap on a vacant lot, and a much better option than the 8-mile dinghy ride it took to fill jugs the last time.
We put on our team balaclavas and black jumpsuits then applied black and green facepaint to each other. I made Tony look like a commando raccoon, Ben made Tony into a Talaban circus clown, and I don’t know what Tony crafted me into, but the both of them were laughing pretty hard. We snuck across the park, racing from palm tree to palm tree for cover, then waited for a break in the traffic and backflipped across Las Olas Boulevard then ducked behind the large garbage dumpsters near the tap and started filling the jugs.
Halfway through an elderly couple passed by and noticed us in the shadows. Ben looked up to the electrical pole and put on his loud municipal worker voice.
“Yep, she looks like a right mess up there I’d say,” he said, pointing.
“That damn day crew, look at the mess they left,” Tony added, exasperated, with one eye on the pedestrians and one on the electrical pole. “That’s why they send in the night crew, eh. Clean up the mess from those morning idiots. Well boys, probably time for a coffee break, eh?”
The couple completely ignored us and kept walking. Our ruse worked.
We capped off the jugs, then waited motionless and invisible for a break. When the break came, we slogged across carrying 125 pounds of fresh Fort Lauderdale water in a decidedly non-ninja fashion with our arms lengthening slightly with each step. We made it to the park and didn’t see any cop lights or hear sirens so we kept moving and soon made it back to the dinghies, loaded them, nearly fell in the water a couple of times, then motored them like barge tugs back to the boats. Ana was so delighted with the success of our mission that she loaned us her nail polish remover to take care of the facial grease paint.
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