On the Road - at Marie's

We got to Florida, this visit, in April. We said we'd be staying until August, or whenever the first hurricane threatened. Given the last two hurricane seasons, we didn't really expect to make it till August - but it's been a very calm season - only 2 named storms so far, Alberto and Beryl, neither of which made it to hurricane strength or even came near S Florida. I sure hope the rest of the season follows suit since people and property in South Florida are extremely hurricane weary. So, our scheduled departure date was yesterday, August 1, the same day that the next named storm appeared: Go away Chris! OK Our first stop is Marie's house in Jupiter, FL - just over an hour away! That's how I like to travel! Get on the road, but don't go far. Marie is the friend we introduced to kayak diving a couple weeks ago. She has a very interesting job devoted to urban planning for sustainable communities. She works for the Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions and specifically the Abacoa project which is a planned community in Jupiter. It's so nice to see someone actually *doing* something to further the goals of the environment unlike me who just talks about it! And she's so practical ... she knows that the missing ingredient in reaching that goal is political will, so she founded an institute devoted to inspiring politicians - Public Officials Design Institute. Go Marie! I've known her since the early 80s, and even though we've gone for years without seeing each other or talking, somehow we've kept in touch (isn't email wonderful!). It's never a dull moment with Marie. She suggested we take a picnic to the beach which is only 10 minutes from her house. This was our first driveway stay where we slept in the house instead of the motorhome. We almost didn't come at all because we thought about how hot it is and the fact that we can't run our air conditioning unless we're plugged into 30amp power. A household outlet won't do. Marie said, "I just had a special electrical post installed to use a generator during power outages, let me call my electrician and see." Sure enough, it's a 30amp outlet - so we said great! We'll be there. Unfortunately, the outlet is different than our plug, so we took her up on her offer to sleep in the guest room. Everything works out.