Saturday, May 10, 2008

First Dip of the Year


Wednesday of this past week we took off work early and went to the beach. It was our first dip of the season. We are wimps and wait for the water to warm up. It is rare that we make it into the ocean before May so we are pretty much on schedule. Also the summer months are wonderful at the beach as the snow birds are gone and there is plenty of sun, sand and surf for us regulars. It was absolutely perfect Wednesday. The tide was out so that meant that along the shore the shallow water was quite warm. One could walk way out into the ocean and still not have the water over your head. And the sun was nice and warm without being brutal. One of those days when we say to ourselves, “This is why we live in Florida”.

One of the fun things Wednesday was to watch the large pelican birds dive for fish. They are so beautiful and look like bomber planes zeroing in on a target. There must have been a lot of little fish swimming around as we did not see any larger ones, but the pelicans were all around and diving frequently. We kept hoping they would not mistake us for a big fish.

A friend of our just bought a new scooter, (Roketa Maui 50GL), and has already emailed us that he has put 70 miles in 4 days just running around in his neighborhood. I bet he thinks up errands to run so he can ride it. We were emailing back and forth for a week or more as he was trying to decide what to buy and then what color to get. It was funny because he wrote us to ask our opinion of the color. The choices were Red, Yellow, or Blue. Afraid our answer just made it more difficult. We told him that the blue one was very pretty, the red one was more orange, the yellow was nice and bright and the advantage of the red and yellow is that you would be more easily seen on the road. Poor Guy! Well it got settled by the dealer, as they only had blue in stock, so blue it was. The blue one was really the nicest of the colors so he lucked out.

For the past week or so when we finish tennis, there has been a silver Kymco People scooter parked next to us. We park near the bike racks so the poor bicycle riders are being crowded a bit. But we always park far enough away from the racks so we do leave them open for the cyclists. We usually play early at 7:45AM but today were playing at 9AM so up rides the Kymco at about the same time as us. We were happy to meet and exchange stories about our scooters. He had bought his scooter second hand from a lady that hardly rode it and had just had it serviced. It is a 2 stoke so he was telling us that it goes up to 42 miles per hour instead of the 30 plus with the 4 stroke machines. He said that comes in handy when he has to take a short strip of a busy road on the way to the tennis club.

Our scooters have attracted quite a bit of attention and the first question everyone asks is, “how many miles to the gallon?” When we tell them, we can see them calculating how much money they would save if they bought a scooter. We expect to see more scooters at the tennis club soon.

3 comments:

irondad said...

The ocean never warms up here on the Left Coast. Top temperature is about 52 degrees. Tried body surfing once. Next time I do it I will have an electric wet suit!

Did you take the Pelican photo? Awesome picture!

Anonymous said...

I agree Heinz & Frenchie. We will definitely start to see scooters popping up as the fuel prices continue to lighten our pocket books.

Heinz N Frenchie said...

irondad, did you have icicles on your nose? No the pelican photo is not ours.

sarch, guess you are seeing more of them too. We certainly see them everywhere down here.