The Great Key West Adventure

Joan's View

The day started out with bike riding believe it or not! Lynne took Tony out on some of their bikes that the Springers use to get around the island. They went about 8 1/2 miles round trip to 7:30 morning mass at The Basilica of Saint Mary Star of the Sea, and then stopped to pick up fresh mango bread. Tony taught Lynne how to "own" a lane.

Later, the Springers took us out on their kayaks.  We started in Cow Key channel and went down Riviera Canal where our fearless leader Steve took us into a cutout channel through the mangroves. It was awesome getting to see closeup all of the creatures living in the mangroves like starfish, crabs, etc. At times it got very narrow, but the Springers showed us how to push off the mangroves trees by hand to get through tight spots. At the other end of the cutout the water was full of small jellyfish. We turned around and ventured back through the mangrove trees and out into the canal. Lynne saw a couple sinking in their kayak. They then tipped with their only loss being a bottle of champagne. Together, Lynne and Steve helped them figure out how to get back on their kayak and back to the dock.

It was hot tub time after hauling the kayaks and stuff back!

In the afternoon, we cleaned up, and after Stephanie finished her days work, we picked up Jordan and went to dinner at one of the Springers favorite Cuban restaurants, El Siboney. We finished in time for the Springers to get to Aqua, a bar with a singing contest, to see one of their friends compete. I ventured out for a little shopping on Duval street and we all met up later. As we were heading to the car, Steve unbelievably spotted Jim & Tonya Thieman from Sidney.  Because we all had kids that graduated together in 2008, we called it the parents reunion in Key West.

Steve & Lynne also had another adventure when they realized that Jordan left his apartment keys in their car and his phone was dead. Long story short, they found Jordan and got him his keys.

The other pictures are of Tony disassembling our tandem at different times throughout the day and starting to pack it for our ferry trip tomorrow to Fort Myers to meet up with our neighbors from Sidney, Bud & Theresa DeLand.

Great hosts!  Great day!  Thanks Springers!

Tony's Side Notes

Yes, it was my turn to do the main part of the blog, but Joan graciously did it for me. I was frustrated taking the tandem apart. I did get it back into 2 suitcases before finishing this blog, but the packing is not over yet. You see we came with 5 suitcases when we flew into Jacksonville. However, we can only bring two bags each on the Key West Express. So tomorrow morning I have to over pack the bike bags with dirty clothes, so we can try to get everything into 4 bags. Enough about the packing stuff. I know many of you at Choice One, when you read the blog above about me getting into a kayak, thought, "what is he doing in a kayak?" I was wondering the same thing, but it was really cool and I enjoyed it after I got over the initial nervousness. Looking forward to really hitting the Dramamine for the 3 1/2 hour ferry ride tomorrow.