Winter Wanderings 2012 - Day #6 - 2/1

This warm and largely sunny day (with a high of 80 degrees) was also a lot of driving, 393 miles to be exact so the odometer reads 1254 miles since leaving my driveway.  Everything went smoothly and speedily but not dramatically so, largely excellent but not Interstate roads initially and then Interstate all the way in.  Dothan to Valrico was achieved with just a single stop, an iced coffee and a large sandwich at a MacDonalds where I deliberately took in my Kindle and enjoyed a change of position for a while.

The law enforcement efforts in Florida have clearly brought back speed discipline.  Three lane Interstates have a 75.00 mph lane, a 74.95 mph and a 74.90 mph one, and on 2-lane roads just the upper two with just a few idiots not holding the pace and the occasional fool bucking for, and getting, a ticket!  When less than 20 minutes out (according to Portia's forecast) we suddenly went from 75 to zero, the car in front of me even swerving on to the safety lane to avoid rear-ending the one in front of it.  I don't think I needed the extra margin but was glad to have it!  The next 20 minutes we crawled at 2 mph.  Although massive construction might be called the root cause the actual problem was two idiots more interested in looking at the work than at the road & having a spectacular wreck, and of course once an Interstate has a bottleneck it takes forever to clear even if both lanes are free and clear.

Once on city streets I stopped to fill an almost-empty gas tank & empty an almost full bladder and then was pleased that I remembered the location of a big supermarket close to journey's end and so was able to get a nice big bunch of flowers for Jean, who seemed very surprised to get them!  Like last year the house is still a work in progress in places but all the essentials are fine.  However, for reasons none of us understand, after working fine at Marissa's and again in the hotel my laptop will not connect to their router via Wi-Fi, and the error message & self-diagnostics are little help, but would infer that it is "my" problem although I find it hard to imagine the card going bad between one shutdown and the next start up.  Luckily I always carry a hard wire & when plugged in I am fully connected to the net, but it limits me to only using the laptop in the "under renovation" room in which they have their router.

Socially, thirty seconds after greetings and hugs all around Peter started talking and was still hard at it as Jean quite literally dragged him off to bed!  To be fair Jean & I did do our own small share as well, but beyond that the two items of note were a delicious dinner that Jean prepared and a start through my 2011 Flickr pictures.  Their new large screen TV is basically a computer by itself so we were able to access Flickr and look at pictures, especially the ones from my visit last year in giant size, before calling it a night.