Day three

This day, I must say, made the whole trip worthwhile. I got up not to early, had breakfast and checked out of the motel. Since I now seem to be able to handle long walks, I wanted to find a place where I could be on the beach for a bit, but didn’t feel like doing the whole same thing again, so I headed in the other direction and quickly found myself on a bridge to a little island called Sand Key. I didn’t know anything about Sand Key, but something led me to believe there would be a beach there. Once over the bridge I saw a sign pointing to a beach/park, so in I went and found this wide and almost shockingly underpopulated expanse of sand. I walked its entire length until I was standing at the edge of the island directly across from the motel.

It was absolutely perfect out- maybe 80 degrees with a breeze. I couldn’t believe my good fortune being there. After a couple of minutes, I made my way back down the beach and to the bridge. As I approached the main part of Clearwater Beach I could see pelicans diving into the bay. By the time I got close to the end of the bridge I could hear the splash as they hit the water.

The walk took over an hour, so I got in my car and headed back to the ballpark. I found the main approach from the south side kind of unpleasant, so I tried coming from the north this time, and found a remote parking lot in the woods for half the price of the regular lot. I realized as I walked out that these woods comprised a disk golf course. I’d never watched people play disk golf before- it was pretty impressive. I almost got hit with a stray disk, leading to a conversation with a couple of other parkers about whether disk golfers said “fore” to alert others. We decided “look out dude!” was more likely.

Today’s game was again mildly diverting. I never spent a moment in my seat, but hung out either on the grassy knoll in centerfield or somewhere in the shade. By this point, although I wasn’t seriously burnt I had been in the sun for most of the peak hours for the past 2 days. So once the game was over (it ended in a tie, a charming result that happens only during spring training), I decided not to return to the beach, but found a Starbucks to get some work done. Even this was kind of calming, because it meant I wouldn’t be stressing out about for the rest of the day.

The flight back was uneventful, just the way you like them. The one oddity is that I bought a salad to eat on the plane for dinner. First the gate agent, then each of the flight attendants tried to get it away from me. I’m not sure they’re feeding those people enough.

I was sitting next to two guys who were talking business the entire flight. After about 20 minutes of office politics and how they were facing up to their challenges and their incompetent supervisors I had to put music on LOUD to drown them out.  I’m so glad I don’t do that stuff any more. It sounds so frustrating and dreary.  These people feel like their problems are unique, but every single thing they said was something I’d heard (or said) a dozen times before.

Finally got to eat my salad undisturbed and arrived in Philly right on time. Nice trip.