TIM PATTI RILEY BIG ADVENTURE

1/3/2018

Happy New Year🙌🎉

We are still in Fort Myers Beach. Our friends, Toni & Fred came for Christmas. We had a great time. Weather was beautiful. We spent every day on the beach. We met all our "Christmas Beach Friends" daily. Same people & place for the third year. They built a beer pong table on the beach & played almost non stop. It was not played with traditional rules, one did not need to drink to play. The table attracted a lot of attention. We always knew who the current champ was, as they wore the winners necklace. It was as coveted as the Survivor immunity necklace. Toni & Fred stayed at our usual place, Silver Sands. We were able to dinghy to a dock there & leave all our paraphernalia at their place for pick up before heading to the beach. A big convenience for us.

Riley loves the beach & retrieving his new toy from the water. Another favorite of his is rolling in the sand after getting out of the water. To include us in his joy, he then shakes, to get us full of sand!

New Years Eve was spent with Tim's brother, Ed & sister in law Mary Beth, her sister & husband, Jeri Ann & Roger. They came to the boat & we went to dinner at Parrot Key & back to the boat for desert & champagne (which they brought). We watched the Fort Myers Beach fire works from the boat. It was a magnificent display, which I neglected to catch in pictures.😞. New Years day found us at Jeri Ann & Rogers house in Bonita Springs. Roger is a closet celebrity chef, I think. We had the traditional pork & sauerkraut, but what stole the show was his hors d'oeuvres, once again, no pictures😟 Melt in your mouth crackers with a light spread, topped with minced green onion & minced tomato. My description does not do them justice. Sorry Roger.

Our weather has not been ideal FL since New Years. I know, nothing compared to the frozen north, but we have had to bundle up to walk Riley, no sitting on the beach & no dinghy rides. One night it went to 39 & the days have been hi 50's & low 60's, & the wind keeps howling.

Speaking of walking Riley, every morning we walk over the bridge & down to the beach & back. The wind on the bridge is especially strong, I can feel it pushing me around!

The other day we took Lee Tran to re provision. What a deal! $0.35 a piece each way. That is the senior price. Web site said we would have to show our medicare card to get the price, but the bus driver said he believed us. That is a double edged sword....thank you for believing us, but do we really look like medicare recipients???? Ok, Ill give him Tim, what with the white hair, but ME???

Yesterday seemed a little warmer, so we decided on a dinghy ride to explore the Estero Bay back channel. We were out about 2 hours. It was much colder out there than it had been sitting on the back of the boat. Lesson learned....get off the boat to check the weather.

Good news, the radar is fixed. Yea. We had someone look at it. He felt it was possible it was the wiring harness after talking to tech support. He planned to bring out a harness to test the theory, which he did & the diagnosis was made. The next step was to order a new one for installation. Tim of course kept thinking about it & checking for ground issues. He found it by retracing his steps. He created the problem to begin with.....while he was securing the anchor light, a screw perforated the cable. Tim removed the offending screw & we now have a working radar.

Now we are looking forward to our friends Denise & Henry visiting us before we move on to Marathon in the FL Keys.

Thank you to our friends Kris & Mike for the flamingo sweater & Lake Erie t-shirt.