Friday December 14: Hanging Around Hollywood

Florida is certainly a VERY long state - it's been 11 travel days so far (granted some of the days were short days of 15 - 20 miles). From here in Hollywood, it will be 3 days or so (depending on how the weather is) until we arrive at Treasure Harbor in Islamorada.

This is the marina from which we have rented both sail and power boats on and off for about 15 years. And spent a month here a year and a half ago. We'll stay there until we move to Banana Bay in Marathon at the first of the new year.

Pam runs this place and is just a great person - as are so many of the people we have come across on our travels. We look forward to seeing her - and Ty as well. He was there when we spent the month last time. Lots of fun and a great guy.

In the meantime, a bike ride to the pier in Dania Beach was in order - after breakfast of course. Mike from Mi-T-Mo joined us.

He has quite an interesting history and many adventures. Fun to be around also!

The boardwalk here is one of our favorite places. Easy riding along the beach and palm trees to look as you go by.

Many restaurants and mom and pop type of hotels also line this boardwalk.

The pier is a 5 1/2 mile round trip ride so it makes a nice trip. Lots of fishing but not much catching --- again......

It's still fun to walk out on the pier though. With so many people fishing I don't understand how the lines don't end up in one big tangled mess - but they don't.

Many of the restaurants are decked out for Christmas also. I liked the Santa sleigh and the Disney characters!

It's been nice just staying in one place for a couple of days. Not sure it we travel tomorrow or not but I'm sure it wont' be too early :-)

Several projects made the list today. On my list was to fix the little scanner I use to help keep any accumulation of paper down. There are records mostly related to boat work that I like to keep but really don't want the paper. This little scanner seemed to be the perfect solution.

Sadly when I tried to use it several weeks back it made a noise but wouldn't feed the paper through. What an easy fix though! Took the 4 small screws out that held the top and bottom together, plugged it into the computer to run it and with a bit of encouragement from a small screwdriver the drive gear (on the bottom far right) started turning again! It just needed a bit of a push having not run in such a long time - job done :-)

Steve put some thread lock on the screws holding the valve cover down (on the engine) so the small amount of oil leaking will hopefully now be no oil leaking. He spent an hour or so cleaning the bilge the other day. Seems I'm always busy when that job has to be done .....

Another fake Santa bill?? Actually not! Steve purchased this at Publix the other day and it is a REAL $1 bill! Very neat disguise - Santa's face on a removable sticker placed on a real dollar bill. Mmmm .... might make a good Christmas present!

 Best innovation lately? Cutting up a hat and using the hot glue gun to attach it to my bike helmet.

Joy said we needed to use our helmets and we didn't disagree. But I tried wearing a visor/ballcap under the helmet but it just didn't work. So I just didn't wear the helmet.

This is perfect!! We now wear our helmets everywhere we ride again ....

Good job, Joy :-)