February- Early March in Southern Florida

Resting on Bradenton Waterfront (Cool Breeze)

In late January Paula and I again met up at her parent’s home in Bradenton, Florida.  (She had spent the early winter in Vermont).  Except for a couple of days when I snuck out to nearby Lake Manatee State Park, 6508 Tahitian Drive was our cozy winter home until the middle of February.  The Cozzy’s and friends at Hawaiin Village were great hosts, and ace mechanics!

Tom & Regina Cozzy

Dad, can you help me with my brakes?

We did punctuate our stay with Tom and Regina Cozzy by traveling to see Joanne (former Pines Bus. Mgr.) and Mark Blair in Cape Coral on Super-bowl weekend (160 mile round trip). 

The following weekend, we also  motored down to  Everglades City, at the southern tip of the Gulf in Florida, to attend a Seafood and Music Festival (300 mile roundtrip).

Everglades City Seafood & Music Festival

The seafood festival weekend involved a long motorcycle ride with alligators lining the highway in places.    

                                                 

The first evening in the motorhome in Naples involved being  awakened by gunshots, while the second was more restful in the parking lot of a large community church only a mile away from the previous spot.  

We attended services there on Sunday morning, before heading back to Bradenton.  {Please note that churches where we occasionally parked on a weekend were very welcoming to us, especially so if we attended a service and shared our story with them.} 

Grassroots Festival in Miami

On February 12 we drove southeastward via the Immokolee/Seminole Casino and then into the Big Cypress National Preserve where we stayed two nights at the Midway Campground.  On the 4^th morning, we drove U.S. Route 41 across the northern side of Everglades National Park through Miami onto the Rickenbacher Causeway and Virginia Key [def. = a small flat island near the coast].  The following 8 days and nights we were camped at the Grassroots Culture Camp and Bluegrass Festival.

This experience reminded me of Woodstock, as the festival was full of ‘free spirits’, and probably more marijuana than alcohol.  People of all ages and persuasions practiced yoga, slept in tents and vans, shared in the group meal preparation, and listened to bluegrass into the early hours of the morning.  Paula and I enjoyed ourselves (and Paula demonstrated a lot of patience) as we attended several days of duet singing and  

"The School of Rock"

Grassroots Festival "Midway"

songwriting workshops.  {Ask about "Poetry in Motion" and "More Than a Feeling" when we return.}  We both had similar favorite performers during the festival, but "The School of Rock" was my favorite musical group.  They were a band of teens from an area arts high school, much like the group that actor Jack Black led in a movie of the same name as the group.

Short sidetrips to Key Biscayne to have lunch with my niece, and an evening ride into Miami Beach to have dinner with Paula’s brother were especially nice diversions while we were in the area.  We also attended the morning worship service at an Episcopal church in Key Biscayne, where they honored visitors with a small bag of chocolate chip cookies!  (How about that for luring the lost sheep!)

Jerry, Paula & Bro Chris

Tim, Paula, JC and Niece Christine in Key Biscayne

Latest News from Son Chad

My son Chad, whom many of you have met, is now advertising on etsy.com for color illustrations of pets and homes.  If any of you are in the market for a gift of this type for a family member or friend, I hope you’ll think of him to provide such. 

Here is his current portfolio website and link to his etsy.com page:

http://chadlewishess.tumblr.com/ 
www.etsy.com/shop/ChadLewisHess 
 

The water color above is one that he did from the photo for a person that was evaluating his talent.  He is really quite a gifted artist  (BFA in Fine Arts from the School of Museum Arts and Tufts University in Boston), and was encouraged by artists and friends in Los Angeles to pursue this venture.  His father wishes him the very best!

Lake Okeechobee and the Treasure Coast

After leaving the Miami area on February 23rd, we drove northwest toward Lake Okeechobee and stayed in the Palm Beach County's South Bay RV campground for a short week.  This is a very agricultural area dominated by sugar cane and seasonal vegetables.  The towns in the area are obviously economically depressed (a large fruit and vegetable processing plant closed down about 5 years ago in Belle Glade).  There is a very evident migrant worker population in south central Florida, and Spanish is the language most often spoken in stores and businesses.

South Bay RV Campground - Lake Okeechobee Levee in Background

  

We left the Lake Okeechobee area and headed northeast to Stuart, Florida, and what is referred to as the Treasure Coast (due to Spanish galleons filled with treasure that sunk here during hurricanes in the 1800's) .  I'll fill you in on the rest of March around Easter weekend!  Hope you are all well.

Tim (and Paula)

12-ft Alligator

SLOW AND PEACEFUL JANUARY IN FLORIDA

Hello friends!  January has been passing by very slowly as I conclude visiting my brother in Port St Lucie, Florida.  It is the height of golf season for Terry, but my days have been spent reading, bicycling, and listening to music at a popular Saturday morning farmers market on the waterfront in Fort Pierce.  Terry and I usually sit down in the evening and watch a movie on TV and go over our days, if they were not spent together.  Most of what follows, I did not share with him...

Slowing Down

Scene of Near-Miss Bicycle Accident

Almost ran into a person on the corner in front of the library, as I was riding my bicycle the other day.  It was one of those wide walkways down here in Florida, with apparent room for both pedestrians and cautious cyclists.  I yelled ahead and told him that I intended to turn right where he was standing on the corner, hoping to get him to move one way or the other so that I could continue on my way unimpeded.  I thought “surely he must realize what my intentions were”, but after slowing down as much as I could without stopping, he still hadn’t taken a step and actually appeared to be shaking ever-so-slightly.  It didn’t seem as though he were capable of making a decision as to what to do, so at the last second I had to stop a few steps in front of him and dismount.  With some aggravation and an “excuse me please”, I finally convinced him to move ½ step so that I could turn the corner and proceed right down Ravenswood Drive.  

As I peddled away, all I could think of was the fear that I saw in this individual’s eyes.  I expected the person on the corner to be ‘normal’ like all of the other pedestrians that I had encountered on the streets of Port St Lucie.  If his reactions had mimicked those I anticipated there would have been a “hello” and a tip of the hat.  It made me feel bad.  How often are our actions misunderstood by, and perhaps hurtful to others?  What can we do to prevent this or at least reduce its frequency by caring more for the people we come across in our daily lives?  Perhaps just slowing down a little and being more observant, while wearing a kinder cloak or mantle would do the trick.  Will I be ready next time for my encounter with someone just a little bit different?

The 2-Minute Warning!

I’ve been watching so much football this winter while staying with my brother here in Florida, that I couldn’t help make at least one comparison between the game of football and our lives in general.  

I used to be the only one who knew the official time!

In most professional, college, and high school football games, the two-minute warning is given when two minutes of game time remain on the clock in each half of a game.  The origins are from the days when one of the officials actually kept the time remaining in the game on a watch or timepiece.  The purpose of the warning was a checkpoint to ensure that the teams knew how much time remained in the game (usually more important to the team that was losing). Since the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, large stadium clocks have become official nearly everywhere through use of an official timekeeper.  The two-minute warning has been retained however as a commercial break during televised games, to serve as "tension building" time (for fans primarily), and a somewhat important part of the game's flow.
    

Often I get frustrated when I see football teams change their whole strategy during the final 2 minutes of a game.  One team employs a “prevent defense”, which hardly ever seems to prevent the other team from scoring.  The other team runs a set of plays called their “2-minute” drill, which often involves a lot of passing and frequent scoring of touchdowns.  If it is so easy to score, why didn’t they just play like that during the whole game, rather than waiting until only 2 minutes was left?

But the 2-minute warning would appear to have outlived its original usefulness in football.  Let's think about a 2-minute warning in the context of our lives.  I bet many if not most people would rather have a “two-minute warning” before their death.  Is that what a doctor gives to some when they tell them that they have 3 or 6 months to live from an inoperable form of late-stage cancer? What would you do with such knowledge?  Does that give us time enough to go through a "2-minute drill" to score favor with God, or even to prepare and execute a short bucket list (for example, visit Paris, go sky diving, or apologize to a family member with whom we’ve been on nonspeaking terms)?

So wouldn’t the same seem to imply to our lives?  Why should we wait until the very end of our lives to do the things that we should have been doing all along? Isn't that what God expects?  Why not go see something that you’ve always wanted to see, or do something that you’ve always wanted to do?  Why not forgive or go visit that family member now instead of waiting?

Sarah’s Kitchen

This organization, which was begun in 2009 by a group of spiritually motivated laymen and clergy, is an interfaith group representing 30 churches in the Port St Lucie area welcoming and providing hot nutritious meals to those who are hungry and struggling financially. In response to God’s Love and in the scriptural spirit of hospitality, volunteers meet each afternoon to prepare and serve 

Volunteers Preparing an Evening Meal

these evening meals.  They believe that everyone can make 

a positive difference in the lives

of others.  Several Monday 

afternoons this winter I have had 

the opportunity to assist with the preparation of meals in the kitchen of the First United Methodist Church.  Over 1,200 dinners are served weekly by Sarah’s Kitchen at First UMC and at other churches Tuesday through Friday.  It has been fun, and I met a lot of wonderful people from the community of faith.

 

Well, I'm leaving tomorrow (Jan 23rd) in the motorhome to meet up with Paula again in Bradenton, Florida (on the Gulf Coast), where we'll start the next phase of our adventure by celebrating her mother's birthday!  We anticipate spending the next month in Bradenton, Cape Coral, and Everglades City before venturing to Miami for an 8-day Virginia Key Grassroots Music Festival.  I'll post next after that festival!  Take care.

Love, Tim

Vermont December Interlude

Hello from Florida again.  Earlier this month, I flew from Palm Beach to Vermont for two weeks. 

Burlington Airport

Luckily all flights to and from were routine and on time, so I'll not be sharing any airline horror stories.  Carla, one of my best 'buds' from Waterbury, picked me up on December 4 and returned me to the Burlington airport in the wee hours of the morning on December 17.  That left 12 days for me to jam pack as much visiting and playing as I could.

The first morning Carla and I shared a breakfast bagel at KC's Restaurant on Stowe Street in Waterbury, while unbeknownst to us, Skip Flanders (another best 'bud') and friends were unloading Christmas trees off a large trailer at the Wesley UMC only a block away.  This tree sale is an annual large fundraiser for the local Food Shelf.  Later that day, I attended a lasagna supper, which was held at St. Leo's hall by Juniper's Fare (local charitable restaurant supported by Moretown non-denominational church).  The proceeds of this meal were given to the Wesley UMC to help complete their rebuilding efforts after the 2011 Hurricane Irene floods.  A wonderful example of the circle of love in this great Vermont community...

The following week continued to be filled with entertainment and action (and of course, food).  I was fortunate to catch: 1) the first 

and second wins of the season for the University of Vermont's (UVM) women's basketball team, as well as a men's team win; 2) a Bella Voce women's chorus holiday concert; 3) a holiday party at the Pines (senior apartment community to which I plan to return in June); 4) the Children's Christmas Pageant at Faith UMC in South Burlington; 5) several high school ice hockey and basketball games, and 6) a knock-down drag-out evening game of Mexican dominoes at friend Jan's house in Waterbury with Skip and wife Cathy. 

Sarsaparilla High?!

This latter contest followed a mean plate of tacos, ginger beer, and sarsaparilla (two nonalcoholic Australian beverages).  In spite of the good table fare, Cathy and I were whipped pretty soundly by both Jan and Skip though they play an odd version of Mexican dominoes called "Chicken Feet".  Sounds more like what Skip's feet looked like after the flood cleanup!

Yes!

On Friday, friend Andy Holt (played hooky from work? :-) )and I had a fantastic afternoon of skiing at Smugglers' Notch.  This proceeded a large midweek storm which dumped 8-10 inches of snow on most of the New England ski areas.  We topped off the day with a pizza and cold drinks at Papa McKee's in Richmond.  It doesn't get much better than that ... especially at 65!

The last few days before my return to Florida were filled primarily with dentist and doctors' appointments.  All went well.  The dentist re-attached a loose crown (with crazy-glue I think!), and my Dartmouth doctor suggested perhaps I should keep on motorhoming since my bloodwork results came back better than normal.  Only my local Waterbury doctor
provided any levity, however, which is what I always seek.  When I told her that my one foot felt sore or tender on occasion, especially after walking or hiking some distance, she said it was probably just normal 'wear and tear'.  When I asked her if that was the same thing as "old age", she winked at me (or was I dreaming that?) and repeated "just wear and tear".  

Back to Florida for Christmas and New Years!

I'll catch up with you in late January.  Stay Warm.

Love,

Tim

Autumn in the South



Florida! 





Sittin' Here Restin' My Bones...



Well, yes, of course it is a little warmer here in Florida than in New England.  Did you think I took a wrong turn or something?  I've been in the state since the last week in October, and the weather has reminded me of a Vermont summer.  My brother Terry, who joined me in northwest Florida (the "panhandle"), and I spent many pleasant days at St Andrews State Park near Panama City Beach and later visiting members of his extended family in Sopchoppy (south of Tallahassee).  We fished, biked, cooked out over a campfire and found a nice local place to watch the World Series outdoors on a big screen TV.  

 



Sopchoppy Campground







When Do We Do Our Best?

It was during this period of time that his
grandaughter, Jeanna, was running for her high school cross countryteam in District, Region, and later State competitions.  She ran her fastest race of the year at the Regional meet,  which made her family very  proud.  It also reminded me how often we just don't know what we ourselves are capable of accomplishing in life given the right set of circumstances or conditions.


From Sopchoppy, we drove the motorhome (and Terry's car) to Sebastian Inlet State Park on the Atlantic Coast, about halfway between Jacksonville and Miami.  This park is a very popular fishing spot on a barrier island, and includes access to both the ocean and to the Indian River lagoon.  Day and night, anglers sought jacks, Spanish mackerel, flounder, bluefish, sheepshead, snook, and many other species.  My largest 'catch' was a 6 ft stingray that fortunately broke off my line on the rocks at the base of the fishing pier, while I was looking around for advice!



Sebastian Inlet Fishing Jetty

  

Biked to Presbyterian Church

There was a small protestant church only a few miles away (biking distance) that provided a comfortable home one Sunday morning.



On November 17th, I drove the motorhome south 40 miles to Terry's home in Port St. Lucie.  The following day I dropped it off at a large RV dealer for repair (damaged side compartment due to an encounter with a large redwood stump in CA in August) and a furnace heating problem.  They 'promised' it will be ready for me in early January.  In the meantime, brother Terry and I will try to get in some quality time outside of his golfing and my 2015 motorhome trip planning. There is a very nice Saturday morning Farmers Market (with music!),and a large United Methodist Church in the area for Sunday 'festivities'.

 

Ft Pierce Farmers Market



I hope all of you had a nice Thanksgiving.  I'm sure we all gave the Lord thanks for his blessings for our homes, food, health, friends, church communities, and families.  Despite all of the problems comfronting us, I'm sure that we all have a lot to be thankful for.  Chad, my son, called on Thanksgiving evening from the West Coast, and we had a rich conversation. 

Several of you may see me during my short 12-day visit to VT in early December, primarily for doctor and dentist appointments...but I also hope to get in some visiting (and skiing)!  Then I will return to Florida and my brother, and await Paula's return later in January, when we will begin the second half of our 12-month motorhome adventure. 

Be Safe, and May God Bless

Love, Tim

Crawdads and the Western Gulf

Paula and I visited the Gruene (pronounced “Green”) United Methodist Church (UMC) on Sunday, October 21.  Gruene is a historic south central Texas town, started by German immigrants in the 1840’s between what are now Austin and San Antonio.  The Gruene UMC, begun in 2006 as a daughter congregation of the nearby New Braunfels UMC, is currently thriving with 3 pastors and a youth director.

New Gruene UMC

  During our short Sunday morning visit, they demonstrated a thriving outreach ministry with plans the following week to send out teams to:

1. clean a playground at St. Jude’s Ranch, a Christian-based center that focuses on abused and at-risk kids;
2.  deliver cookies and cards to local fire and police stations, and hospitals;
3.  paint interior walls and hold fellowship with youth at a family services shelter; and
4. frame a home for a new Habitat for Humanity project family.

Gruene Historic Music Hall

After the service, Paula and I attended the annual Gruene Music and Wine Festival a short distance away.  [Since we began the day with music and wine, we thought it only right to continue the afternoon in the same vein.  Forgive me Lord. :-) ]  For most of the afternoon, we listened to a variety of western, folk, and rock music groups perform at  both outside and inside venues (see photo of 1878 Historic Music Hall).  The wine and beer taste selections were primarily of Texas origin.

As planned, Paula flew out of Austin airport the morning of October 16th to spend a few months in Vermont with friends and family.

In Louisiana, I stumbled onto a barbecue cook-off competition sponsored by the Ponchatoula Chamber of Commerce and held at their Memorial Park on a beautiful Saturday morning.  Believe me, these people took their cooking seriously and were all members of the BCA (Barbecue Competitors Alliance)!  I was disheartened to find out that the competitors prepared their meats solely for the judges, and the Chamber had hired a local restaurant to feed the public (that was me)!  I nearly lucked out though when I sat down at a park table next to the daughter of the couple who were the head judges.  It seems that only moments prior, her parents had been looking for another volunteer judge! 

Ponchatoula BBQ Broadcast

Somewhat dejected from this lost opportunity, I found a shady picnic table and began to assess my situation.  I introduced myself and chatted with a local radio station DJ about our shared strong Christian beliefs, and befriended Lily (granddaughter of the judges) who had a leopard face painted on her by some artistic high school Key Club members nearby.  

Lily the Leopard

A couple of them were even undefeated Ponchatoula High School Green Wave football players who had knocked off a respectable 3-3 Slidell High School on the previous evening! Later that afternoon, I walked the mile back to the motorhome on the outskirts of Ponchatoula, and headed east to Mississippi.

Biloxi is a gulf-front community that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  It has a beautiful white sandy beach,

Biloxi 2014 Beachfront

but many of the hotels, casinos and stately older homes that had stood here in the past were destroyed during that storm.  

While attending a yard sale at nearby J.T. Leggett UMC, I spoke with an elderly lady named Mae who told me that pre-Katrina she lived next door to the church in a very large United Methodist Retirement Home (apartment building complex), and many of the residents were members of the UMC congregation.  After the disaster, the Biloxi Housing Authority bought the building from the UMC and converted it into an assisted living facility for low income families. Mae and most of her friends did not qualify, and thus had to find another place to live. I could tell that Mae still held a lot of personal bitterness toward the United Methodist Church for ‘abandoning’ her and her friends who had lived in the area their entire lives.  Mae said that she still lives in another area in Biloxi where only 30 of the original 280 houses that were inhabited prior to Katrina have been restored to a living condition.  

New Leggett UMC Sanctuary

By the way, the J.T. Leggett UMC congregation just occupied their new sanctuary on Easter of this year, over 8 years (and 3 pastors) after the 1950's era church building was blown apart by Katrina's winds and flooding.  As with the Wesley UMC in Waterbury after the hurricane Irene floods along the Winooski, the property insurance that this church had did not cover the rebuilding costs.

Off to St Andrews State Park in Panama City Beach, Florida tomorrow, Oct 26th, for some gulf coast camping and saltwater fishing with my brother, Terry!