coincidences…….

You may remember reading one of my January blog entries about George, the inspiring WW2 Battle of Midway pilot that we got to know many years ago. One of his greatest stories was about ditching his plane during the Battle of Midway and because it was fitted with a top secret bombsight he had to get back inside the plane and destroy it before swimming back to the life raft so that it couldn’t fall into enemy hands.
On my recent trip down to Florida one of the books I took with me (and by that of course I mean downloaded onto my iPad!!) was Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand – fabulous book for a plane ride because I just couldn’t put it down. It tells the story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner from California who was shot down during WW2 and you’ll have to read it yourselves to find out just how incredible it is but I will tell you that his plane was fitted with the top secret Norden bombsight which he had to destroy when he crashed. I was so excited to read this and realize that this was exactly what George had been talking about.
Roll forward to this week…… it’s Thursday and I’m off to my volunteer thing and David decides to go to the Museum of Flight with his Dad. It’s a great museum and I haven’t been for a long time so David shows me some of the photos he took…….

now that’s cool!

soaking it up ;)

After yesterdays storms it was nice to see the sun come out today so we headed over to the Olympic Sculpture Garden this morning. Here is part of Richard Serra’s Wake……
and then we headed north on the Elliott Bay trail for a bit. David bikes on this all the time and it’s great for rolling too, especially in todays Seattle sunshine. David’s Dad is visiting us this week and if this next picture doesn’t make you worry about genetics then nothing will!!
And clearly, if we weren’t already aware that summer is closing in on us, the sight of one of the first cruise ships of the season at Pier 91 would remind us of that fact!

enjoying it while it lasts

It was the big West Seattle garage sale today – over 200 places all holding one from 9 – 3 so there were lots and lots of people walking around and lots of deals to be had. I helped out with the one at the Log House museum where I volunteer with lots of other community minded people. That saved me from visiting any of the others and finding stuff I didn’t need. I helped set up for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon and did the 12 – 4 shift today – time well spent helping raise a little extra cash for our budget.
We had fabulous weather and it’s supposed to be our last hot, dry, sunny day for a while so having rolled all the way home in 81 degrees I am sitting on the deck cooling down with a Haagen Dazs ice cream bar and enjoying this view before I break out the chilled wine and start watching the baseball game.
David is in Atlanta and it’s only 70 there so my happy hour on the deck feels extra nice and OK, there was just ONE book I had to have! Pretty restrained for me if I do say so myself

Just in case you missed it…….

We tied Phoenix for the hottest place in the nation yesterday!!
A little cooler today and that meant I could get outside and get my roll in before the sun broke through again. Didn’t bother to even open the door when I was on my bike trainer yesterday because it was hotter outside than in. It seemed a little over the top to turn the air conditioning on just so that I could work out in the cool but I did think about it!
Somehow I managed to get the door to my wheelchair lift out of synch again and when I got home today it wouldn’t open for me at all (no matter how many times I kept hitting the button on the remote!). Luckily the nanny next door was just taking the kids out somewhere so I grabbed her and she very nicely opened my garage door and pushed me up the slope to it. That saved me from waiting for a complete stranger to wander by and then trying to persuade them that this really was my house and that it was OK for them to get me inside……….like that’s never happened before!!

a second sunny Sunday ;)

last week’s was an entire continent away at Cedar Key, Florida but it is almost as warm up here in Seattle this weekend ……a little rarer of an occurrence! I had never been to the Gulf side of Florida before and Cedar Key was a mere hour and 15 minutes out of Gainesville so we hightailed it over there after our Sunday brunch last week. There was a great pier with lots of people fishing and we went out on a 2 hour boat ride and saw lots of dolphins and so many birds, to say nothing of keeping nice and cool in the heat Those were the pictures I was waiting for someone to download but strangely enough (ha!) many of them appear to have been somehow deleted before I could get my hands on them, grrrr…… but here are a few that survived the random culling….
baby bonnet head shark caught from the pier (not by us!)

horseshoe crabs

lots of pelicans hanging out as we prepared to take a ride with Cap’n Doug


oh look – an actual picture on the boat that didn’t get deleted!! And yes, that’s Taryn & David.

more birds on posts…..but no Magnificent Frigate Birds because although they winter there apparently it’s rare for them to actually stop flying. We did see lots of them overhead but you’re right – no pictures!

Off the boat and heading home we saw a car stopped and a guy taking pictures so we pulled over to see what of… and it was this dolphin in the Back Bayou….. and this splash is him catching fish!

looking out of my window

the USS John C. Stennis is almost at Bremerton aka ‘home’ and what a beautiful Pacific Northwest day they have for it Read this link to see how they got to end their 8 month deployment.

Navy cruise unites families with sailors returning home.

who knew Florida had prairies??!

not me for sure but last weekend Taryn and David took us off to Payne’s Prairie, a Florida State Park where, on a previous visit they had seen…..wait for it – a herd of bison!!!! Not what I would have expected but as you can see from these pictures, our wildlife viewing was a tad more of the expected Floridian variety but exactly what we wanted to see of course

gators (and accompanying egrets) are in the 2nd and 3rd pictures in case you missed them!

yes I’m back……

….but still waiting for someone to download pictures that he has on his camera and phone so that I can use them! Helped myself to what was on his computer but there are others not there yet, maybe by tomorrow!
I do have this one of the great souvenir we brought home from our trip though.
Saw this guy with an assortment of great wooden bowls at the Haile Saturday Farmers Market in Gainesville. Turns out he makes them all completely by hand – see the shavings and some of his tools in the background? This one is a biscuit bowl – he found an older lady who had an original one and she let him copy the exact dimensions and told him that you put flour in it and then just added the wet ingredients (lard and buttermilk is what he said), held it on your hip and used your other hand to make the dough. Looked great, loved the story, had to have it. Oh, and the wood is from a sweetgum tree – not a lot of those up here in the Pacific Northwest!
Nice as it is to be home, apparently we are missing big things going on in Gainesville today!

Andersonville and Plains

So the main reason that I wanted to drive to Gainesville out of Atlanta instead of fly was so that I could visit Andersonville. Having not grown up in the States the American Civil War didn’t figure much in my school history lessons so it was all new to me when I moved over here. One of our good friends (that would be you Frank!) gave me The Killer Angels to read years ago and of course I couldn’t put it down and it was instantly vaulted to close to the top of my favorite books list. Not too many civil war sites of note out in the Pacific Northwest so I was thrilled to get the chance to visit this one. As if the Andersonville story wasn’t enough the museum built on the site has been dedicated to all American POWs and covers their stories through too many wars.
To say it is moving would be putting it mildly

Once we looked at how close it was on the map, of course we had to go to Plains too!

heading South…

OK so we eventually made it to Atlanta last night after maintenance issues that delayed our original flight by 5 hours and saw us catching another one by the skin of our teeth. Sadly the bar and restaurant were closed by the time we got to our hotel but at least we made it down here
Today we headed south and our driving route took us past pecan orchards

peach orchards

and cotton fields

We had almost reached where we were headed for when David noticed lots of people going in and out of this restaurant

in Montezuma. The man has good instincts because my collard greens, black-eyed peas and fried cornbread were just fabulous

to say nothing of their coconut cream pie…….yuuummm!!

More of our Southern Georgia adventures tomorrow!