March 29, 2011 The party’s over…

The storm is gone – the first significant rain we’ve had since Tallahassee. I pull my awning out so it can dry and try to figure out, unsuccessfully, why this particular piece of aluminum keeps becoming stressed to the point that it breaks. John comes over and offers some help and some wire-ties to secure the thing. But this can’t be solved now, so once dry I simply retract it and secure it for the drive home. (Many of us scrambled with our awnings that night, but I’m the only one that seems to have had damage.)

The day is a slow one for most everyone as we wait for the evening’s farewell banquet and the formal end of our Florida Fantasy WBCCI Airstream caravan. The temperature is in the 80s and the humidity has become uncomfortable. Probably time to blow this state.

To kill time, Marcia and I drive to Sombrero, a Marathon Key beach on the Atlantic side, for lunch and some brief beach time. White sands, no admission charges, and no crowd – the only complaint might be that there is little shade, we are far south, it is about noon, and we are gonna get sunburned.

We walk on to the sand and before us on the narrow beach is a twenty-something woman with a great tan and very white breasts; this I know because she is not wearing a top. Marcia plants herself about twenty feet behind the woman and gives me a look and smile, thinking I will be a bit uncomfortable. I am a bit. We place our full-size folding chairs in the sand, pull out our books, and get some sun in a pleasant breeze.

Between paragraphs I gaze to the ocean. I’m rewarded with the sight of a 3-foot very oval fish leaping into the air and back into the sea. This just isn’t California in many ways.

After a half-hour I get nervous about my exposure without sunscreen and we leave. As we leave I tell Marcia I’m also concerned the topless woman will sunburn but that conversation goes nowhere. If life had taken a different pace, she could have been my daughter or granddaughter, so my concerns are warranted.

We spend the rest of the afternoon in camp getting the trailer in order for our long trip home.

The farewell banquet is at the Key Colony Inn where we all converge about 4:30 PM. Dinner is okay to good but the company great, our fellow caravaners cleaned up and in their best clothes. Everybody is saying their goodbyes, particularly to Al and Gracie, as this is the next-to-last caravan they will be leading in a 20-year unpaid career of doing this (their last is Newfoundland this summer).

We have made many new friends and look forward to seeing them again in California or somewhere down the road.  As Airstreamers frequently say, have a good trip and keep the shinny side up.