Bike and Beer, Fishing on the dock and Firefighter friends.

Bike and Beer, Fishing on the dock and Firefighter friends.

Joy and Jeff, From Tidings of Joy text us to see if we wanted to meet for beer. They were biking into Dunedin from Clearwater. The town is half way between us so it was perfect.  We ended up making it an event. “Bike and Beer.” There were a couple of couples from their marina and quite a few from our marina. We all got out our bikes and some even rented bikes for this spur of the moment event. We all met at 2pm and biked from our prospective marinas to Marker 8 which has a Tiki bar on the Gulf. We all sat outside in the glorious weather and shared stories and celebrated December Birthdays, (mine was one of them).

The bar bought my a strawberry cheesecake birthday shot. Yummy
Fireball for Artie and Laura both have Birthdays in December. They hung around with “Robert” so of course it had to be Fireball.

We told a lot of lies and generally had a great time.  Loopers are the most fun group of people. Many didn’t know each other and it was like we were long lost friends.  Boat cards were exchanged and we now have added to our ever-thickening book of boat cards. We think everyone should carry cards.  It’s so easy to flip a card at each other, then a later when you remember some piece of info they had you just look them up and e-mail or text them.

Here is the gang that participated in Bike and Beer. Good times.

We have been trying to learn how to saltwater fish.  Lucky for us there is a bate store just across the street from the marina. We walked into the store and told he clerk we were from Michigan and asked what he could tell us about saltwater fishing.   That’s a little like asking a rocket scientist how to make a rocket.  He initially had a look on his face like “Oh no, not another one” but he graciously gave us the very basics without overwhelming us, sold us some live shrimp and off we went.  We had a blast.  You can catch everything with shrimp. The variety of fish in the “sea” is amazing. We were fishing off the dock and caught 8 to 10 different species of fish.  Man, their teeth are all different and some downright scary.  We also found out some have really sharp spines. We use a glove or towel and needle-nose pliers down here and aren’t ashamed of it.  We are having fun catching anything but hope to catch dinner one of these days.

Lady fish
Pig fish. It oinks when it is out of the water. Very weird.
Cravelle Jack… we think.
Sheepshead. They are very different from the ones in Michigan. They are good eating. They have teeth like us. Square but thick. They primarily eat barnacles and crustaceans. The really run with the bait and are fun to catch.
They taunt us from the water.
Found this pretty starfish on the piling by our boat.

 

We have been at the Marina for 3 weeks and thought by now we would be getting bored, but we keep busy. We got a call from Chris and Christina Burns.

Chris and Christina Burns in the dinghy with the foggy sunset behind them.

Chris retired shortly after Scott did and they just moved to the Tampa area.  They came to visit. We had hoped to take them to Honey Moon Island but just as we were about to leave, the fog rolled in.  That didn’t stop us completely.  We all hopped into the dinghy and followed the shore down to Dunedin.  We walked the cute town and had ice cream (Carrot cake flavor yum).  We invited them to stay for dinner on the boat, so we got back into the dinghy to go back and the fog was even thicker.  We were lucky to have the shore to follow or we never would have made it back.  We are getting so boat savvy!  We had a wonderful day with them and it was great to connect with a fellow firefighter and folks from back home.

Love it when friends visit.

Thanks for reading.

Karen and Scott

Unique Random picture of the day:

Found this crosswalk in Dunedin down by the fish house and marina.