There are major brush fires happening in central and western Florida right now, and the wind seems to be just right to blow all the smoke our way. Sure makes for a dramatic-looking sun.
This is sunrise ... not sunset! What are we doing up early enough to see sunrise, you might ask? Well, Bill, the manager here has been walking every morning for the past year or so. He convinced Jim and me to join him. So, we're up and walking at 7am! Jim and Bill walk a 3.5 mile route. Odie and I do about half of that. I'm confident of the mileage because I used Google Earth to measure it. I used the same technique that I recorded in this video about Peace River.
Our dive club - Kayuba - has been launching our kayaks from the north end of Fort Lauderdale beach and going diving on the reefs that are just offshore since 2000! Very few people in the world practice this sport of kayak diving, and very few places in the world accomodate it like Fort Lauderdale Beach.
The Fort Lauderdale city council has a vote scheduled for this coming Tuesday, May 1, at City Hall. If it passes, this would effectively close the beach to kayakers. We are desparately hoping that they just don't understand the implications of what they're doing. What they are actually voting on is to put lifeguard stations up at this stretch of beach. That sounds fine. But, the problem is the law that states "No kayaks can launch from a guarded beach."
One of Kayuba's members arranged for a newspaper photographer to meet us all at the beach yesterday. We're hoping for a nice article in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel to explain the situation and help prevent what would be, for us 'Yakkers', a disaster. A bunch of us showed up at the beach to show our support whether we were going to dive or not. For more information on the issue, and what we can do, see www.kayuba.org See all the photos I took Saturday on my Web Album.
Saturday morning turned out to be perfect for a dive. A picture postcard day worthy of the Chamber of Commerce.
You don't have to dive to enjoy kayaking in the ocean.
And, you don't have to kayak to enjoy diving from the beach!
I've been diving with Debbie in the early 80's. I'm so excited she just got a kayak. The biggest question she had was whether she could load the kayak on top of her car by herself. She found this interesting gadget called a Hullivator, with hydraulics to help her get the kayak up and down. Pretty cool! Unfortunately, she couldn't stay and dive with us, so I didn't get to see it in action.
Oh Boy! We're goin' divin'
When we got back in, we were treated to a rare sight of a group of manatees cruising down the beach.
If you've been following this blog for a while, you know how much we like kayak diving. Here are some past blog entries:
Blessed are the Impatient for they shall get bent out of shape just enough to do what is otherwise not possible.
Ha! I love it! Yes, I agree completely. We must not get SO laid back and flexible that we go nowhere. It reminds me of my favorite philosophy, Taoism. Taoism makes a lot of analogies to water. "Going with the Flow" is another way of saying, Be Flexible. But, there must be positive action. 'Going with the Flow" does not mean sitting on your rear, waiting for something to happen; it just means that in your action, you're flowing with, not fighting against, the universe. If you agree, you might enjoy one of my favorite books: The TAO of Abundance.
Our cell phones are our only phones. Us, and every other full-time RVer we know! We went with Verizon when we first started this lifestyle 4 years ago and we've been pretty happy. We have a national plan with no roaming. That means we can use our phones anywhere in the US, provided there is signal. If we're in an area that would normally work, but incur roaming charges - ours won't work. We don't use our phones that much since 90% of all our communications is via computer.
If only Verizon plans had 'rollover' minutes we wouldn't think of switching. Our plan includes 1500 minutes/month shared between the two of us. Often, we only use 400. Occasionally we do go over the 1500, and, boy do those extra charges hurt! Our normal bill is $115/mo. Way too high, in my opinion, for our normal 700 minutes. But, I can't lower the plan because of those 'sometimes' that we go over. We've had $300+ bills when overages apply.
No cell service works *everywhere*, but consensus has been pretty clear that Verizon is the best for nationwide coverage. The landscape is different now though, than it was four years ago. I'm looking at AT&T/Cingular because they have rollover minutes. If we sign up for a 700 minute plan, and only use 500, the extra 200 'rollover' to the following month. That would sure be nice! But, it's coverage that counts when you travel. From their coverage maps, it still looks like Verizon is the winner.
The maps don't tell the whole story though, let's hear from people who actually use the service. My latest issue of Kim Komando's newsletter included links to this handy service that compiles customer comments about their cell phone service and allows you to search by area. Or, you can see a map with the cell towers.
So, I picked a place I know we'll be this summer - Redmond, Oregon - I googled for the zip code - 97756 - and I checked it out. Here are some of the comments:
"Cingular: I get great service all over central oregon"
"Cingular: This phone works fine in Lapine, but at my house I have to lean against a certain window to get 2 bars. The old TDMA was fine, but when I switched to GSM is hardly works at all.
"Verizon: Verizon is horrific in Bend. Treo is impossible to use as it locks up and is worthless. Over 1000 people work at the Bend Airport, but Verizon does not support the area"
"Verizon: My reception is good"
Well, that doesn't help much does it? If you read a lot of these comments, you learn that the particular phone makes a lot of difference as well. We learned early on that having an external antenna like this Wilson Trucker cell antenna, makes a LOT of difference.
I think there's even more to learn about cell phones than about Wi-Fi! If you're going thru this process too - good luck! And, let me know what you find out.
The tag line on my email signature for the past few years has been,
"Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not get bent out of shape."
There's a double meaning here, both mental and physical. In the RV lifestyle, you'd get 'bent out of shape' real quick wthout a flexible mental attitude. We had planned to make a quick stop in Fort Lauderdale, then start heading west. But, now it looks like we're going to stick around for a while. A hard look at our finances, and a desire to spend some quality time with family, makes it logical to stay here for a couple months instead of a couple weeks. Having a flexible mental attitude means that, instead of being disappointed, we're looking forward to doing some diving, reconnecting with friends, and doing a lot of catch-up work.
I'm working on our Geeks On Tour tutorial videos . I'm using Coldfusion to put the listing into a dynamic, database-driven web page rather than static HTML. This will open up lots of other options and I can start creating more videos on a systematic basis. I'm excited to have the time to work on this. I'm also putting sample videos on YouTube. They don't look very good there, but, I figure it may be a good promotion. You can get the idea of the video on YouTube (or Google Videos), then, if you want to see the high-quality version - you go to www.GeeksonTour.com. Here's my latest sample. It's on Google Earth.
Jim is working in the office here in exchange for our space rent. The minute we showed up in the park, they offered him the job! Flexibility means being open to what comes your way.
One of the other things I'm looking forward to is taking some classes with my old Kundalini Yoga teacher. I believe that flexibility is key to physical health. I even have a simple 15 minute yoga routine worked out that I can do in the motorhome. But, I haven't done it in months! I started again this morning. This is a particularly good exercise for me, it's called the Camel pose.
Then there's the good ole shoulder-stand. This one really gets that blood and energy flowing between my shoulder blades and at the base of my neck. That's the area that needs the most help after hours and hours at the computer. Good stuff!
And, you know what? After working on my physical flexibility, my mental attitude improves as well.
Before you go thinking, "Looks like Chris is done RVing, she just wants to stay at one 'home' and live a 'normal' life. That isn't true - what fun is being 'normal?' We are definitely going to be in Oregon this August, where we'll be giving our seminars again for the FMCA convention. Then, in October, we're scheduled to give our seminars at the Datastorm rally in Tucson. I'm really looking forward to getting back out to the west coast. I think it's common for full-time RVers to slow down as the years go by. At first we think we have to cover the whole country right away, then, we start realizing that we have *years* to do this. We can relax and spend more time at each place. And, for us, we have to work on marketing our business ventures (videos, CD's, seminars, Datastorm installs) so we can afford to stay on the road.
Lynne and John are visiting us for the weekend. We're hoping to go kayak diving, but so far the wind has been blowing too hard to make that possible.
When you live and work with the same person in this small box called a motorhome, you relish the opportunity for a different companion. When Lynne, John, Jim and I are together, we tend to split up according to gender. Yesterday, we included my Mom, and had a girl's day out. First came shopping. Blue Water Books and Charts is just an amazing store of everything nautical and I had to show Lynne. It's owned by a friend of mine, Vivien, and she happened to be there, so we also got to chat a bit. When we came out of that store, we noticed Total Wine in the same shopping center. Uh-Oh. I'd heard about this store. 8,000 wines. This stop took a while!
Our eventual goal was the beach. We went to the very south end of Fort Lauderdale beach. It ends at the inlet to Port Everglades. Here's a great photo of the port taken by our neighbor in the park, Bryan. He was on top of the big, high-rise condos that line the entrance to the port.
View of Port Everglades from atop Point of the Americas condo. Photo courtesy of Bryan.
Looking south from Port Everglades.
Looking north - Fort Lauderdale Beach.
Cool photos, thanx Bryan!
We were apparently there at the same time that all the cruise ships depart. We sat on the jetties for about a half hour and saw 4 ships go by. Actually, Lynne and Mom sat on the jetties ... I had to snap a few photos!
I don't know where they're all going, but they looked like they were following a well-worn road. Straight east for a while, then take a sharp right.
