Robin came to St. Petersburg this past weekend.  He says it was for computer training, but deep down inside it was for pancakes.

Calamity and I gave him the full St. Petersburg experience

• Alligators in the wild
• mini golf with alligators
• a trip to PUSH Ultra Lounge
• Dinner at Caddy’s
• Tour of the downtown St. Petersburg Night life
• Trip to Wal-Mart
• Late night conversation with non-sober, fake boobed, blonde cougars.
• Plenteous trips to Starbucks
• A visit to the Saint Petersburg Saturday Farmer’s Market
• A trip to Kahwa Coffee for a granita
• short bike ride about the area
• Shopping at International Mall
• Day trip to Ybor City
• slice of Key Lime Pie
• a Cuban Sandwich

A few things that we did not get the chance to pack into the weekend:

• Dolphin spotting
• finding a manatee
• Trip to Ft. DeSoto PArk and beach
• drive over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge
• Feeding the Pelicans
• Kayaking

So there are lots to do here in Saint Petersburg.. well at least enough to do for about three days.  Overall I’d say Robin’s visit was a five star encounter.

Saturday was an longish day broken up with the Folk Festival held two blocks away from the apartment. McTastic and I took a break in the middle of the day for some investigation. It was much like all the other street fairs we’ve found in the Tampa Bay area. Lots of vendors offering arts/crafty products some music (this time folk style related) and the local merchants having a mini sidewalk sale to entice people into their shops. A few movies tonight… The Hangover was a great movie, at least better than I expected. Kept my attention throughout.

A raindrop dodging bike ride to Pinellas Park put some spice in Sunday. We ended up at Freedom Lake park watching the R/C sailboat regatta and waiting for the rain to pass. A bit of luck came our way when we opted for Vietnamese fare for lunch. Randomly chosen Saigon Sandwich was a total delight. Yummy fresh Vietnamese Sandwiches and Frozen Mango Boba were just what we needed for the ride home. However, upon entering neither Miss McTastic nor I noticed the sign that read “Cash Only.” Finding an ATM felt like it took nearly as long as the meal itself.TEnder problems aside it was great to find a little pocket of another culture dropped in the middle of strip mall Florida. As an extra bonus I found some Vietnamese Red Bull. I’ve not opened the bottles yet, but if it is any good I may switch for it is 1/2 the cost of the US canned version. There was this tree… looked like it had zucchini growing on it.. know what it is?

So there in ends another weekend. The coming week for me holds substitute teaching, repairing of MooseB8, writing and photography, and finishing up a website for a client. At least those are the expected bits of the week.

While we biked about a little we spent an equal amount of time on our feet on the area of the old Sponge docks. In the late 1940’s a red tide killed off most of the sponges in addition to massive quantities of other sea life. It has only been in the last ten years or so that the sponge harvest has returned to the pre red tide levels.

There is a long history of Greek culture in Tarpon Springs and the city is said to have one of the largest US Greek population. It was an interesting experience. There is even a store that proudly advertises Fisher Price toys with Greek! It was quite immersive. You could walk down the street and hear the greek language spoken and it was common to see people having the traditional Greek complexion and characteristics.

We stopped for lunch at Mykonos. Simply the best Greek food I have had (and not yet having been to Greece)

The remainder of the weekend was spent cleaning up Chez Kitteh and working on posting content. Both of which slipped past with out photo documentation

As for the week ahead I’m hoping to get some substitute teaching positions and keep working on content creation. Wahoo!!!

The plan for the weekend was:

• drive to Atlanta Thursday Night
• Prep for the race on Friday
• work the start ramp, tear down
• see if Maria and Mike had time for dinner
• arrive back in Saint Petersburg

Overall the plan went as expected. Not only was I able to have dinner with Maria and Mike on Saturday, I managed to meet up with Shannon on Friday night. She gave me a tour of her Atlanta restaurant, which happened to be just around the corner from the Red Bull race, before we had a late dinner and drinks. I got the chance to introduce her to Red Bull Cola. Wonder if she like it…..

The race itself was great fun. Rain on Friday delayed the setup slightly and we did not finish until 8:30 PM. However there were no problems when we rechecked gear on Saturday morning so happy faces all around. After running 1000’s of feet of cable for the cameras and audio equipment I found myself working the start ramp with Pete, a great camera operator. The only drawback to working the start ramp is that you don’t have much a chance for lunch or breaks of any kind for as soon as a team launches their vehicle down the course the next one is coming up. Except in cases of wrecks we were launching a vehicle every five minutes.

My favorite team of the event was the Yellow Fur Bus. The had a big yellow fur covered school bus, whose driver wore crazy big mouse ears and played the trumpet while driving down the course. Their skit was hysterical and involved yellow fur speedos in the telling of a convoluted story of the Fur Bus history. As the bus left the ramp it began to slow down so the co-pilot jumped out and began pushing the bus down the course. Once the bus began the pick up speed it crashed into the hay bales alongside the course launching the driver, ears trumpet and all through the front window area (but there was no window) Not to be undone he grabs his trumpet and with fur speedo and mouse ears flapping sprints to the finish line. I wish I could have gotten a copy of that. It may have been the heat exhaustion and excess caffeine or tey may really have been that funny.

Dinner with Maria and Mike in Macon was a delight. I had the chance to meet some of their friends and caught up with what was going on in their lives over the past week. As I was still wired with caffeine it was an animated and exciting meal.

Over the next few weeks McTastic and I enjoyed the consumption of large quantities of Red Bull. It was always sad to see the last can come out of the fridge. But time to stock up again.

This was the only Red Bull event for me this summer. Next year I’m planning to be a part of more of them. I’m also contemplating starting a team and participating on a different level. If you have the desire to join me lets get together and do it. In 2010 there are nearly ten events put on by Red Bull – soapbox races and Flugtags. I wanna be at as many as possible.

This weekend I left Saint Petersburg, Florida and headed up to visit my friend Maria in Macon, Georgia (About an hour south of Atlanta). Her grandmother had moved from North Carolina to Wisconsin and there were several items that needed to go to Maria’s Mom’s house in Ohio. It had been a while since my last road trip so I jumped at the chance to do some driving, see some friends, and have a minimalist type of adventure. MooseB8 was prepped and off I went.

Overall the drive was kinda boring. Not much happens on the highway. Dinner with Maria on Friday was really good. We had Thai food and some amazing drinks custom made by the bartender. Saturday I left for North Carolina and arrived at my destination about 1pm. After loading up the furniture and other items I set my eyes on the next stop, Ohio. I did end up making one slight detour in Charlotte, North Carolina. Since moving to Florida I have felt Trader Joe’s withdrawal and try to take advantage of every shopping opportunity. An hour of shopping later and the last bit of space in MooseB8 now filled I pushed on to Ohio.

It ended up being late in the night by the time I arrived at Maria’s Mother’s house. She was still up and helped me unload the items and handed me a few boxes to take back to Maria on my return trip. A few hours of driving later I took a nap and then was right back on the road to Macon, Georgia. I caught Maria at her house having just finished a 40 mile bike ride. It had been a beautiful morning and I could also feel the desire to have been out biking. One banana and a full tank of diesel later and I was making my way to Saint Petersburg.

I was glad to pull into the Chez Kitteh parking spots, fall from MooseB8 in to the house and rest for the remainder of the Sunday.

I was happy as the day I was getting set to leave I had a present arrive.. A lighted hoola-hoop from my friend Eddie in San Francisco. She is an amazing hooper and sent me one of her historical hooops!!! Can’t wait to play with it all the more

It was amazing the difference the new TV made.  Bright, beautiful, crisp, and I fell in love with Princess Peach all over again. <sigh>  One of the collateral benefits was that Chez Kiteh’s media center cleaned up resulting in some excess hardware that I’m all too happy to sell – Two Windows based PC’s Pentium class and one DLP projector.  If you need a low budget laptop or video projector lets make a deal.

The only other thing this weekend was a Sunday morning bike ride out to the North Fishing Pier that was the access to the old Skyway Bridge.  When the new span was build the old approach was left in place and for $4 a vehicle you can drive out into the bay and cast your net into deeper waters.  Biggest fish I saw being was about 4- 5 inches long.

House cleaning, biking, the Wii and the LCD TV.  It was a full weekend and getting more balanced.   Looking forward to the end of summer when the temperature and humidity fall and I can get back to being outside all the time!

Dan knows some very cool people in the area and it was great fun to hang out and chat on a relaxing Sunday.  Getting back to our apartment Shelley and I rested for a bit before diving into Romancing the Stone.  Michael Douglas rocked that movie!

And so that was the weekend of DJs, Fireworks, and Dan’s Housewarming.  Nothing out of the ordinary, just plain fun!

Sanibel Island and Captiva Island are beautiful places.  My only complaint is that there is only a single road that runs along their length and it is marked at 25 miles per hour for most of its course.  I can’t imagine the level of fun during tourist season.  There was more rain on Friday that we had hoped.  Shelley decided to brave the elements for some beach time and said it was amazingly warm and fun in the water.   Early afternoon saw us exploring Ft. Myers and heading south to Naples.  Naples reminded me alot of the area around Stanford.  The collection of shops and housing felt very familiar from my time in Menlo Park, Ca.

Saturday was a big day for me.  I’d been working on expanding the Gulfport Goes Green street faire and expo to a more community event.  This month we had various recycling programs, batteries and computers, and swaps, clothing, art supplies, and books.  The Florida Blood Services also put in a presence.  As we were competing with St. Pete Pride the attendance was only about 40% of what we had hoped. However all the events went off very well and we are making plans to expand them for July.   A late night bike ride turned into a stroll to the St. Petersburg Pier when Shelley’s rear bike tire began leaking.

Sunday was RnR from the longish weekend.  Battlestar Galactica was on the TV as I worked on some writing and web development.  Shelley worked on scrunching into the couch amongst that kittens and was performing very competitively in the “I can sleep more than you” contest they were having.

So it was a weekend filled with Islands, Green and BSG.  Action, excitement, adventure, and rest.

Saturday saw Shelley and I head to Kahwa Coffee and skipped the farmer’s market. Shelley spent the remainder of her day working on her set of 80’s music for Cafe Bohemia later in the evening. I focused on designing an advertisement and a related flyer for the next week’s Gulfport Goes Green.
With the Flyer done I headed out to Gulfport Goes Green (3G) for what ended up being a much longer stay than expected. As time sped past I learned that 3G was to compete against St. Pete Pride….and that my friend Kurt Z of Kayaknature.com fame had written a book nearly 15 years ago on the subject of golf. of course I had to buy a copy and now I’m working to get him to autograph it. I ran into some customers of Ecco who had some concerns about service etc.. and were amazed (surprised?) to find I was no longer working at the restaurant. We ended up having a long bitch session about service, quality, and the general future outlook of my former place of employment. I ended up missing Shelley’s set (bad bad Matthew) and not letting her know I was out later than expected. As I was letting the bitch session drinks wear off Shelley had jumped in MooseB8 and motored on down to Gulfport to see if all was OK. I still feel bad about making her so worried and upset.

Sunday was recovery day. The temperatures were climbing as fast as the humidity and indoors was the place to be. We rode for a short trip to Publix grocery store in the morning and that would be our only outing for the day. The remainder of the day was some good conversation about past experiences intermingled with domestic activities and episodes of BSG.

So the weekend was filled with lots of cracked out excitement. It was two different things cracked out, excitement. maybe I’ll try and combine them at future date.

Saturday was a trip to the farmer’s market where I finally bought a Turkey leg to knaw on.. yum!    Later in the day Shelley and I rode up to a local liquor store for more tequila.  Margarita exploration continued. A the liquor store I saw a Ford GTX-1 of which there is only 35 in the world (or so the owner tells me and Fast thing #2)  On the way back to the apartment we saw a house with sculpted bushes.. but the bushes were fake.

Sunday was a day of Start Trek and online work for me… and Shelley went out to get her bike fixed… she had gotten a flat tire the night before… $10 and 15 minutes and she and her bike with no name was as good as new.

That was pretty much the weekend.  Fast things and fake bushes… only the fast things did not really go fast if at all… but the bushes, they were fake.