Wanderung 28

A Warm Winter Break

December 2013 - January 2014


 

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Thursday December 26, 2013: Boxing Day

Although Tanya and Ondina were still in the middle of the flu, Martin was coming out of it aside from a lingering cough. So Martin, Monika, and I hiked around a bit more and finally found the official entrance to the road/trail in the nature preserve about a mile down the road from us. We hiked into the nature preserve for maybe a mile or so more before turning back home for lunch. But along the way I saw and photographed a wild pig!

After lunch we took some time to finally unwrap and install the rinky-dink Sunpass we had purchased at the Welcome Center as we entered Florida. Once we unwrapped it, it turned out to be a truly flimsy-looking affair consisting mostly of tin foil that adhered to the windshield with a tiny bump in the middle not much bigger than a grain of rice. The instructions, apparently meant to reassure customers like me, stated that the entire windshield was used as an antenna. Huh? The windshield is GLASS, which is not known to make a good antenna! And that grain of rice is a transponder? Really?

But despite my unassuaged doubts, I persevered and carefully followed the installation instructions, which involved cleaning the glass and then pressing the adhesive tinfoil to the windshield and removing any bubbles. Once that was completed we went on the Internet with the transponder's unique serial number and hooked it up to our credit card account just as you would typically do for an EZ Pass. I was glad to have it installed, but really unsure if it would really work when we tried it out on Florid's tollways.

Otherwise, we spent the day trying out the canoes. Ericka and Tanya went out together in the morning and had a nice time although Tanya's endurance was low due to the flu. In the afternoon, Martin, Monika, and I went canoeing--Monika was "Princess in the middle" and Martin and I paddled.

But by late afternoon we all returned to working on the jigsaw puzzle of the German Castle. After a couple of hours of eye-crossing fun we finally closed in on completing it just before dinner. At the end things started to go much faster as the stock of unused pieces diminished and the connected framework for places to put the final pieces became much more complete. We had almost finished the puzzle by dinnertime, but were lacking one final piece until Ericka found it over behind the couch and completed it with a grand flourish. Hurray for Ericka! We had such fun with it that Ericka took it back to Miami when she and her Mom had to return home at the end of the week.

Since we were taking turns on fixing dinner, Monika chose a rotisserie chicken from Publix, which she served up with noodles and vegetables for dinner. We took turns with dinners, but were really flexible about what exactly "fixing dinner" entailed! When I cooked pork chops, for example, Martin was guiding me every step of the way as he is, after all, a really good cook and I am really, really not!



Copyright 2014 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt


 

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Map of Homosassa, Florida Map of Western Caribbean Cruise Map of Panama Canal Cruise

December 2013
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31
January 2014
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30 31

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