To celebrate our anniversary yesterday, we use the second half of Mom’s gift card at Longhorn. Thanks, Mom!

After 3 days of rain, cool temperatures, and high winds, the weather turned perfect today — 50 degrees and sunny with light winds. I completed my first long ride (over 40 miles). The really great thing about “out and back” rides, is the motivation to complete the second half of the ride is very high. I’m tired, but good. There will be no riding tomorrow for sure.

Danita enjoyed reading the book “Pope Joan” by Donna Woolfolk Cross. The story is based on folk lore about a woman dressing as a man who becomes pope for a couple of years back in the late 800s. Apparently one can make an argument that Pope Joan was real, but this story is all fiction. Danita enjoyed it. I agree it’s a good story and well written, but there are too many implausible coincidences. I think the story would be better if it were a little more plausible. The book is supposed to represent life in the darkest of the dark ages. If the depiction is any where near accurate, it’s very good that we are living in the 21st century.

This was a mostly quiet week. Things will start picking up again soon.

We didn’t have anything planned because we thought we were going to be touring Texas. I got a cold the day we got back from our travels. It’s still hanging on. My biking skills are greatly diminished. I’m continuously walking around with sore legs, trying to work my way back.

There was a neighborhood St. Patrick’s Day party last weekend. We didn’t go because we thought $25 each was too expensive. Last Friday was Lenten grilled cheese and soup dinner at St. Louis Church, followed by Stations. I think they have really great grilled cheese and darn good soup. Speaking of darn good food, Danita made Cincinnati Chili which we haven’t had for quite a long time. She was hoping to eat the leftovers for her lunches, but I talked her into serving the leftovers for another dinner. It was pretty darn good, if you ask me.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We spent two days with the Reeds. We took B & E out to play mini-golf. We took them to the latest Avenger movie, “Captain Marvel”. And we took them to a Harry Potter Science day. We split the ride home with an overnight stay in Burlington, NC. The trip home was uneventful.

We’ve been practicing our fun-having, and doing a pretty good job of it. Yesterday we visited the Kennedy Space Center. There’s a lot of fluff, but also a lot of really great stuff, including: The Space Shuttle Atlantis inside a really big building, a Saturn 5 Rocket on it’s side inside an way bigger building, Control Rooms for Mercury (which had only 12 people!) and Apollo, the launch site for Space-X and the upcoming ILS, and the Vehicle Assembly Building (which was the largest building in the world by volume). All of this was pretty amazing, but what caught my fancy was this picture I took from the Banana River. I’ve never had a day this bad (and I hope I never do).

Yesterday we moved ourselves 4 hours up the road to Savannah, which took us most of the day. Today we visited the Prohibition Museum, which was more fun than anybody should be allowed to have. It was entertaining. It was outrageous. It was surprising. (At one point, two pictures on the wall “came alive” and the two people argued their position about prohibition.) It was a delightful mix of entertainment and education.

We decided to move on to Old Fort Jackson on the Savannah River. Fort Jackson was fun, but we also had a delightful surprise along the way. We were driving through Savannah when we noticed that it was lunch time and it would be good to find something to eat. By this time, we were in the middle of an industrial neighborhood. The probability of finding anything to eat was grim. I pulled off the road, went around the corner, and there was a great cafe-bakery. We had a wonderful lunch and a wicked desert.

Our plan for tomorrow is to drive to Jul’s. The way we stop along the way it will undoubtedly take all day. We’re thinking of visiting a nature preserve. The weather forecast is great. The boots are in the trunk.

We had a one-week cruise in the Caribbean with Mom. The main attraction was the cruise itself. Plenty of good food, terrific service, amazing entertainment, wonderful weather. (It only rained at night!) Danita and I took a special tour package in St. Thomas. We went to Coral World, where we donned big heavy metal helmets with huge glass portals in the front. Then we climbed down a ladder until we were 15 or 20 feet underwater, and walked around. The fish were plentiful and totally amazing. This was a special treat for Danita. She can’t snorkel because she needs her glasses to see anything. These helmets were so big it was easy to wear glasses under the helmet. The helmets were hooked up to an air compressor. The compressed air kept the water out of the helmet. We had a blast.

We dropped Mom at her house and drove up the road to Cape Canaveral, where we have a hotel room for tonight and tomorrow night. We plan to see the Kennedy Space Center tomorrow. After that, we don’t know what we will do. We decided to cancel the Texas Tour. We don’t have any plans at all. It should be fun.