We drove over the Lions Bridge one last time today heading home. That’s the only picture from the day.
That and K’s cute obsession with taking pictures of backflow preventers that are so different from what she’s used to working with Greenville Water. “Why are they all out out of the ground?” was a common question. No one in the car could answer.
We spent the morning at the beach again, but no photos. The kids and I spent the whole time in the water, boogie-boarding, floating, splashing, and just being generally full of ourselves. K, on the other hand, spent most of her time covered: a long-sleeve sun shirt, umbrella, and lots of sunscreen. She got burned yesterday and did not want to make it any worse.
In the evening, we headed downtown. We caught a short bit from a great street band:
And, of course, there were fireworks.
The shells on the beach just at the edge of the surf were visible for only a few moments before the white bubbles and turbulence hid them again.
In the brief time I could clearly see them in the shallow water, it was obvious most of the shells were only fragments, often smaller than the smallest coins, slivers well on their way to becoming grains of sand. Every now and then, a shard would catch my eye, and I would think, “I might try to grab that one” just before incoming wave hid them once again.
By then it was too late: once the water cleared up, the tide would have tkane the shard so far away from its original position that finding it was all but impossible. Another might catch my eye, but then the process would simply repeat itself.
To get a shell required calm and patience followed by a paradoxical ability to move quickly when needed. Hesitation meant the loss of the moment. In some ways, that’s a metaphor for live in general for many people. Everything is about getting the right moment, and when that fails, increased stress is the outcome.
Yet the older I get, the more I realize the error in living like that and the unnecessary stress it causes. Yes, I might not get that exact shell that I wanted, but there were plenty of other shells that were just as lovely, often more so.
In the evening, after we’d spent a few hours back at the Airbnb, after we’d spent some time downtown and had dinner, we headed back to the beach.
I took a few pictures:
and the Boy took a few pictures:
A short walk to end a lovely day.
And we got home, and I saw the fantastic news from the Tour de France: Mark Cavendish got his record-breaking 35th stage win, assuring him the historic title “The Greatest Sprinter of All Time!”
Almost as enjoyable as watching the win itself was seeing the other riders’ reaction to the amazing win.
We left our lovely hotel room with an incredible view to head to St. Augustine for the second half of our Florida vacation. It’s the second time we’ve been to St. Augustine as a family, the third time for the kids and me. That is to say, we really like St. Augustine.
Along the way, we made perhaps the most important stop of the whole week: a few hours in Gainesville. What’s so special about Gainesville? Well, it has a fantastic Korean restaurant, as we discovered for lunch. And rocker Tom Petty is a Gainesville native. But neither of those was the real reason we went to Gainesville. Our primary motivation has to do with our daughter, who is going to college in about a year. Going to college in about a year. Her number one choice of colleges: University of Florida, which is located in — guess — Gainesville. She wants to study bio-engineering, and Florida University has one of the best programs in the nation for that.
So we stopped by for a tour of the university. I tried not to talk too much or take too many pictures. The Girl remained relatively quiet during the tour. But we came away with a positive impression: the parents are happy with some of the safety programs the university implements; the Girl is happy with the college as a whole, especially one of the enormous chemistry labs we got to take a peek at.
Afterward, we headed to St. Augustine and our lovely Airbnb spot: a bungalow in an absolutely beautiful part of town. Walk to the end of the street, and this is the street we see:
Yes, that’s a peacock taking a stroll down a Live-Oak-lined street. It’s positively bajkowy.
Lovely houses as well. And the peacock? They’re from Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park, an ethnographic museum literally at the end of our street.
We weren’t planning on visiting any real attractions while in St. Augustine, but since it’s just down the road, we’re thinking we might. We’ll definitely visit the Cuban coffee cafe down the street.
A games night rounded out our evening: our Airbnb has several entertainment options, including a ping pong table. Poor K gets knocked around in board games, card games, and our front-yard badminton games, but she really knows how to play ping pong.
“Don’t worry,” she assured us, “I’ll take it easy on you.” And proceeded to trounce us all one after another, beer in hand.
Today was not actually a St. Petersburg day: we decided we’d do something un-Scott-like. We thought about this nature outing, we considered that nature outing, but in the end, we went full-on American and spent the day in Busch Gardens in Tampa, just across the bay from St. Petersburg.
K had never been on a single roller coaster in her life. Not one. Ever. So we were all excited to see how she’d like an amusement park with something like eight or ten coasters.
We arrived and went to the first coaster right out of the entrance, the Iron Gwazi. According to the park, it is
North America’s tallest and world’s fastest & steepest hybrid coaster. The award-winning Iron Gwazi takes thrills to new heights, plunging riders from a 206 foot-tall peak into a 91-degree drop and reaching top speeds of 76 miles per hour.
Having that as your coaster ever is like taking someone who has been a teetotaller who’s interested in having his first taste of alcohol and giving him a shot of 70% sliwowica.
This is what it looks like:
Such a film fails to capture the excitement of that first drop. It’s difficult to describe that first drop: you think it should be over because how long can you remain in a verticle (well, almost verticle: it’s 91 degrees steep) drop?
As we were waiting in line, we got to talking to the folks standing in front of us, a man and his son or stepson (I couldn’t tell–the language he used was a little ambiguous). He commented on K’s bravery for picking the Gwazi as her first coaster ever.
“You’ve never been on one and you picked this as the first coaster of your life?
K’s verdict at the end? “If I can do that, I can do any of these rides.”
