July 27th, 2020

One day over the weekend, instead of going for a walk, Tim and I went for a drive.  Just needed to get out for a bit and stare at something other than our own walls. Y'know?  It's the one downside to working from home,.  When you live where you work  you never really leave the job.  It's right down the hall.  Behind a closed door true, but it's  right...............................................there.

Oh there are a load of perks.  Like the easiest commute in the world for example!  But that desire to "Get Out" on a day off is strong.  Usually we can go walk it off somewhere, but that day was an especially rainy day.  On and off and on and off and on and off again.  Didn't really want to get caught out in it.  So off we went for a drive instead.

We had no particular destination so we flipped a coin (mentally) and turned north off the bridge.   In a very short period of time, we passed Patriots Park and there in the vast green lawn before it was a flock of storks!  I had never seen so many in one place at a time.  I must have said something out loud.  Something incredibly brilliant like, "Storks!" or something (I'm a genius sometimes - insert much eye rolling here - ) because Tim glanced over at them too.  The next thing I knew he turned into the park and I jumped out with my camera.

I have learned over the years to remember to always bring my camera on a weekend walk or drive.  I always regret it when I don't.  Point in case right here.

Storks look nothing like the cartoon images of them really except that they are white and have long legs.  Think back. Here is what most of the cartoon storks look liked as I remember:​

These storks had no hats for one thing (and they would have benefitted from the addition of a jaunty cap in my opinion.)  Furthermore, not one of them was carrying a baby around.  Maybe they already did their deliveries?

​As we walked on we saw a few different birds and other things of at least mild interest to us:

It was a walk. A short one but a walk nonetheless.  Back into the car and we drove on.  

We meandered on and off of various keys, over bridges of all sorts and down windy, twisty coastal roads. 

It was clearly a big boat weekend despite the threatening low grey clouds.  By the way, about the line of people standing on the railing? Mere seconds after I snapped that shot, they all jumped off into the water below.  I'm sorry I missed that picture!    And the light poles just made me laugh a  bit.  They appear to be holding up the sky.  Whimsy, I know.

We kept driving north and when that happens where we are, eventually you wind up in Sarasota.  But Tim avoided the roads we might normally drive on which is how we found, "Brooklyn Bagels and Deli"!  Holy Cats.  We love bagels and honestly a good bagel is hard to find.  So of course we stopped to check it out.

Because it was around 1 o'clock and they close at 2, there weren't many bagels left.  There were originally maybe dozen different choices, each in it's own labeled bin:  "Plain, sesame, poppyseed, cinnamon raisin, asiago salt, etc."   We stepped up to the register and Tim gave our order ending with, "asiago salt".  That's what it said on the bin.  Asaigo Salt.  The woman behind the register, who never once smiled or made eye contact, snarled out, "There ain't no more asiago, only salt"  Ahhh that's two different bagels sharing one bin.  Got it.  But how would we have known that?  We didn't take offense really, just made a mental note that these bagels looked like Brooklyn and the attitude was a little New Yorkish too.  Sooo authentic, I guess?

And also funny.  We shared a bagel in the car as we laughed about it and drove on.  We wound through the area, reading the names of businesses and interesting streets out loud to each other.  The ocean would pop in and out of view here and there along with ponds and lakes.  We drove through residential areas, business areas and long stretches of nothing but greengreengreen.

I had a song stuck in my head that I couldn't quite identify so I sang lines of it as we went along, hoping that Tim could help. We talked, we giggled, I read interesting news items off my phone,  funny things from various social media sites and eventually we remembered what the song was.

We drove in and out of rain bands and the time passed much too quickly.  Eventually we had to stop for gas.  As Tim got back into the car he said, "I have good news and I have bad news."

He is such a master of the "poker face" that I can never quite tell - at first- if he is joking or not.  "Ok", I answered, "go ahead, give me the bad news first".  He put the car into gear and we headed back onto the road, "The bad news.  We will have to drive past Dairy Queen to get home on this road".  

I laughed.  "That's the bad news?  Then what 's the good news?"

This time he smiled, "We are stopping there on the way by"

"Hurrah!"

​

The Drumstick Blizzard, which we both had, is amazing.  And my new favourite.   I know it's just a "flavour of the month" thing, but I am hopeful that it's been successful enough to be added to the roster of regular flavours. It is exceptional!

And we arrived back home full, a little sticky and far more relaxed for having had a change of scenery.

​Hope your weekend was a good one too!