Alea's Birthday

This week included Alea's birthday, so she and her siblings gathered together in Oviedo to celebrate (which means that her brother Joe flew in from Grand Forks, ND, since Ann and Jean live here).  So the first half of our last week of snowbirding for the year revolved around various events that were planned for their week spent together.

On Monday Joe, Alea, Jean and Ann did some reminiscing, visiting places where they had lived, the campground that their father managed back in the 70s, and various other places in Orlando of significance to them as they grew up.

A pit stop on Memory Lane: Jean, Alea and Joe.

On Tuesday, Jean, Alea, Joe, George, Katie and Meghan drove to Tampa to see a spring training game between the Yankees and the Mets.  It is amazing that the cost of mid-range seats to a spring training game is $30 each, plus another $10 for parking and the cost of overpriced concessions and souvenirs.  Still, by all accounts it was a fun outing, though it meant spending hours on the freeway getting there and back.

Alea, Megan, Katie and George watch the Mets vs. the Yankees in spring training.

I spent the day doing chores.  After about seven weeks,  our Toshiba laptop has finally been repaired.  That amount of time is almost exactly half of the time that we've owned it.  Of course that meant several hours of reinstalling software and reconfiguring things to meet our needs.  Just upgrading to Windows 10 would have eaten up 60% of our normal monthly Mi-Fi data allotment, so we were grateful to be able to be able to use Jean's broadband for that purpose, so that we could save our data for when we are back on the road.

A big problem for us with the laptop is the automatic software updates.  If we automatically connect to the internet we have little control over the updates getting downloaded, which sometimes can take a big chunk out of our Mi-Fi data allotment.  So we've configured the laptop so that we have to manually connect it.  We mainly purchased it as a writing tool, and that rarely requires that I be tethered to the internet.  And its secondary use is to play our selection of exercise videos - ones that emphasize strengthening parts of our bodies that aren't helped by our hours in the saddle.  Again, not something that requires us to be online.

On Wednesday, we went to Wekiwa Island to go canoeing for a few hours.  We had checked ahead of time to make sure it was okay to take the dog with us in the canoe, which it was.  But just upstream from where we put in was the boundary of Wekiwa Springs State Park, where we were greeted with a "No Pets" sign.  We went in anyway.

The temperature was pretty much perfect - in the mid 70s with plenty of shade in places.  The notable event took place floating downstream after getting to Wekiva Springs.  Alea had noticed two deer on the shore of the river, which ran upstream behind our canoe and that of Joe and Jean, then they splashed into the river in front of George, Katie and Megan and swam to the other shore.  Our only thought was that the deer must be very used to the heavy boat traffic in the area.

In the evening, Joe treated us to the big birthday celebration at Colorado Fondue.  That's always a fun way to celebrate with a big group because you just pick a package that includes a variety of appetizers, entrees and deserts, and folks can always find something that they like.  It lessens the possibility of a complex order getting messed up by the wait staff, and helps to maximize the time spent conversing and reminiscing.  Of course no visit there is complete without a photo under the moose head.

Megan, George, Katie, Alea, Steve, Joe and Jean with the moose.