Space age technology on a 100 year old farm

 Chloe runs a B&B Inn called Big Mill. She grew up there as it was her family's farm, started in 1920. Chloe may have started as a farm girl, but she is thoroughly modern and has learned a lot about how to use social media to promote a business. We met Chloe through Martin Brossman who teaches marketing for small businesses at the University of North Carolina. About 10 years ago, Martin invited us to join a weekly discussion group about technology. Chloe is part of that group, and we've been seeing her online every Friday morning since.

Her property is conveniently placed on our route from Fort Lauderdale to New Jersey so we take advantage of her RV hookup space and enjoy spending a couple of days with Chloe. 

Jim was also quite interested to see how her brand new StarLink internet system was working. He got to help with a couple of the cable connections from the satellite to her access points. Luckily, I was inside the RV doing some work and didn't know he was out climbing on roofs!

Since we had such a comfortable, friendly place to stay - and good Internet - we decided to stay put for a couple more days and do our live-streaming YouTube show from here. You can see the show at Road Trip - our favorite apps and maps.

Being tourists

 When we left Alex's our plan called for a stop in Charleston, SC. We've been there before - even stayed in the same campground - but we've never taken the tour out to Fort Sumter where the civil war began. This time we did. We knew that St. James Island was a nice campground from a prior stay and it did not disappoint.

They even had a shuttle from the campground to town so we didn't need to drive. I love that. We picked up the shuttle at 9, then made it back to the pickup point at 4pm for the return trip. In the interim, we walked around Charleston and took the ferry out to Fort Sumter. learning some history along the way.

Walking around Charleston

Fort Sumter, notice the tik mark on the flag post

I just love learning history where it happened. Fort Sumter was actually shot to smithereens during the civil war. The walls around the fort were originally up to the height of that tik mark. Wow. Then they were destroyed completely and now they'be been rebuilt. 

The most interesting story was about a slave named Robert Smalls. He was "rented out" to the Confederates as a pilot. He knew how to navigate the navy ships in Charleston Harbor and the captain trusted him so much that he left Smalls in charge when he and his crew had a night on the town. While the captain and crew were getting drunk, Smalls gathered his fellow slaves and their families and piloted the ship back out of the harbor. He knew all the proper signals to make the confederates at Fort Sumter believe that the captain was in charge. He comandeered the ship past the port and out to a waiting Union ship where he turned it over in exchange for his freedom and that of his companions. 

What a story! And it's not over. Smalls ended up going to Congress and later buying the plantation of his former owner. I've looked for a book or a movie about him but no luck.  Here's the blurb on a poster:

Road Trip

 Jim's High School reunion is in Long Beach Island, New Jersey on October 7. Chris is attending the Google Product Expert Summit in London on October 14. Our plan? Take a road trip with the RV from Fort Lauderdale to New Jersey, then fly out of Newark to London and back. We can leave the RV at Jimmy's house on LBI. Then finish our road trip by driving home. Pretty much the same thing we did last year to go to Phil May's birthday party in Bexhill. We liked that so much, we figured we'd do it again!

First stop was to visit Rod and Natalie. They recently sold their house in Coral Springs and moved to the Jimmy Buffet 55+ community called Latitudes in Daytona Beach. Cool place. You can get around with just a golf cart. Go to the pool, the restaurant and community center with live music every night, even the Publix. 

We had a great time talking to Rod about his virtual reality programming gigs. He creates virtual worlds to be the background for a meeting platform. He said we could see a demo by just going to a web page, but I don't remember the address :-(

Then, we visited with Robin who was camping at Gamble Rogers State Park. Beautiful day!

She manages this large camper trailer, the truck to tow it and 2 big dogs - all by herself, and seems to be reveling in it. We see her every Friday morning on zoom with our tech-sharing group. 

More visiting

Next up was a mini-Nova Palooza at Alex's house in Melrose, Florida. Alex is my go-to person for conversations about life. We talked about living in places like Latitudes, vs. a house in Melrose, vs. a retirement home like Oak Hammock in Gainesville, vs staying right where we are in Fort Lauderdale.

So many pros and cons. We've had it so easy thus far. Never had to really make decisions about where to live - things just kind of fall in my lap. Now I believe that decisions should be made about the last stage of life before those decisions are forced on us.

We're in the Bahamas - that means diving!

 No way we were going to the Bahamas and not go diving. We arranged 3 more nights at the Golden Palms B&B and booked 2 days of diving with Stuart Cove's Dive Bahamas. They've been around a long time. We've gone diving elsewhere with people who worked at Stuart Cove's and I think they've given presentations at our dive club in the past. Anyway, it was an easy choice when we decided to go diving in the Bahamas. The only other time we dove near Nassau was on the liveaboard Blackbeards. 

They picked us up at the B&B and took us to the boat.

I thought it was interesting that they only took credit cards or online payments. What a different world it is than the one I grew up in! The Bahamas has it's own dollar, but apparently it is pegged to the US dollar because we did not need to change any money. We used American dollars and gave the number that was quoted wherever we went - except here😂. 

We had nice weather, and not too many divers on board, so it was relaxed. We did reefs and wrecks. I'm not a huge fan of diving wrecks, but these were more interesting than most. We had sharks on every dive, and at least one turtle. So good to get in the water!

Dives we did. Day 1: 20 pumpkin patch, 25 mikes reef, Day 2- 17 twin sisters, 26 the ridge- wall next to tongue of the ocean. Numbers come from the image above. 

Here's the gps marker from Jim's dive computer/watch. Showing Aug 22 Dive at Twin Sisters dive site near tongue of the ocean! Jim tells a story about his first wall dive back in the 70s - on tongue of the ocean.

And, here's a video Jim put together on his Pixel phone - this was his first dive using the underwater housing for his phone.

Bahamas hosts a plethora of Toastmasters

We are no strangers to the Bahamas. We are scuba divers, and the Bahamas has some of the best scuba diving in the world. Jim's and my first boat trip together was to West End near Freeport. But, we've never been to "this" Bahamas.

Not our normal dive!

This is the fancy resort convention (ie expensive) Bahamas. It is beautiful and the convention facilities are as good or better than anything I've ever seen before.

There are about 1,000 people attending the convention and they are from all over the world. The opening ceremonies included a parade of flags - over 100 of them - that is only rivaled by the Olympics. There are also a LOT of Toastmasters right here in the Bahamas. Most people I know back home don't even know what Toastmasters is, but here in the Bahamas it seems to be common knowledge. When we passed thru customs and said the purpose of our visit was to attend a conference the agent asked if it was for Toastmasters. Our cab driver said his brother is a Toastmaster and is attending and he told us all about Tony Longley, the director for the area. According to our taxi driver, Bahamas is the largest center of offshore banks in the world and Toastmasters is encouraged to help prepare people to be successful in business.

In addition to the parade of Flags, the opening ceremonies included a speech by the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, Philip Davis. He tells of his 40+ years as a Toastmaster and how he was instrumental in changing the status of the Bahamian clubs from 'undistricted' to part of District 47 along with Florida. Clubs must have a district in order to send speakers to the International Speaking contest. Semifinals for the contest were held yesterday and one of the winners, Anastarcia Palacious, is from the Bahamas. That's a big deal - these speakers are 'knock-your-socks-off' good.

I first joined Toastmasters because of my 5th grade teacher, Lillian Smith. This was in 1964, before women were allowed in Toastmasters, they had their own 'Toastmistress' clubs. I was living, and attending grade school, in Anchorage Alaska and Mrs. Smith was involved in a Toastmistress club that started a junior auxiliary. She made me join and I soon became the president!

I joined again in Morro Bay, CA when I was a lawyer in 1981. This time it was the regular Toastmasters. I was so impressed with the other members. I loved hearing their stories and telling them mine. When I moved back to Florida I checked out the local Toastmasters, but it took me till sometime in the 90s to find Earlybirds where I felt right at home. Jim also joined, so it became a staple in our lives. We even visited Toastmaster clubs as we traveled. In New Jersey, Arizona, and even in Brisbane, Australia.

Even though I've been involved in TM for a long time, it was always just about enjoying the speaking and the comaraderie, I really never paid much attention to the organization. Being at the convention is teaching me what a cool organization it is. Founded by Ralph Smedley in 1924. I looked him up and I liked what I found: 

Ralph Smedley on wikipedia: The father of Toastmasters, Ralph C. Smedley, was known to be a modest and quiet person. A tireless worker with a passion for helping others to realize their full potential himself, he was far from flashy or flamboyant.^[1]

He had always been determined to make Toastmasters, his brainchild, a success.

Toastmasters[edit]

In 1903, at YMCA, he saw the need of interpersonal skills pertaining to communication, management and leadership in the community. In order to aid people to learn how to speak, conduct meetings, plan programs and work on committees, he started the speaking club - The Toastmasters Club 

From that humble beginning, toastmasters now encompasses 280,000 members in more than 14,700 clubs in 144 countries.

Jim and I are proud to be in that number.

Over the 4 days of the convention Jim and I helped out with different functions as "Helping Hands" volunteers. Mostly at the registration desk.

We also attended educational workshops. My favorite by far was called "No Joke: Engaging your Audience like a Clown (not the creepy kind.) The speaker was Don Colliver. He was so good, I went straight to Amazon on my phone and purchased the kindle version of his book Wink. He gave some concrete techniques to be more effective and get some laughs in the process.

The primary purpose of the convention is to crown the World Champion of Public Speaking. There were several sessions where the semi-finalists gave their speeches, then the winners of that took the stage on the final day. WOW I think I'm pretty good at public speaking ... right now I feel pretty low on the totem pole. These folks are phenomenal. You're laughing, crying, on the edge of your seat, and feeling inspired. There's a lot to learn. The word I'm taking away from this whole even is "engaging." That's the goal of public speaking - to Engage your audience. 

On Saturday, 8 speakers competed and Jocelyn Tyson won the championship. We felt privileged to be able to witness this event.