fun in Delray - and beyond

Our evening in Delray with Karen and Wayne was lots of fun! Delray’s downtown Atlantic Avenue is full of history and eateries. The town itself was founded by folks from Wisconsin, and named for a town near Detroit, MI. It became an important part of Flagler’s eastern-Florida rail system, after which serendipitously it became a tennis center. People moved to Delray largely because of it’s excellent tennis facilities, and the charming original downtown became a playground for the wealthy rather than an urban wasteland. Businesses along the Atlantic Ave. strip range from very upscale restaurants to quirky little places like the one I found – the “Mellow Mushroom”. Wayne and Karen were unfamiliar with this little 70’s throwback, so we started out there with the guys sampling some of the myriad types of beer they had on tap. After that, Wayne T. insisted we go to his favorite “Gator watching” bar. This, of course, is a bar dedicated to Florida Gator fans of the football variety. The Gators were playing in a bowl game, and the bar was in an appropriate frenzy (as was Wayne, a die-hard Gator fan himself). We were invited to join one of Wayne’s friends for a pitcher of Blue Moon, and then moved on toward an eventual dinner destination. On the way to dinner, we stopped at Elwood’s the only remaining truly funky bar on the strip. There we had the good fortune to catch the resident Elvis impersonator for a tune or two, after which I was challenged to get onstage and dance with Ellwood. I said, “of course” and did just so. Elwood, a fine old southern gentleman, was a good dancer. After displaying my chutzpah and dancing ability, we returned to the Mellow Mushroom for great pizza and more football. The Francis team tired early, and we were back on the boat by about 9pm. It was a great, rollicking, fun Florida evening with the most excellent of friends. The next morning we already had a date with our friend Vivian for brunch at her place, and enjoyed a lovely meal with Viv and her grandson Channing. Channing is 23, and getting himself together. He has enrolled in the local community college and is figuring it out. He is fortunate to be able to stay with his grandma during this transitional time, and he is a charming young man.

Returning to the boat, we spent another fabulous afternoon walking the beach of Delray, picking up shells and sea glass and lollygagging about in general. We were hoping to spend the weekend, but regrettably were kicked out by the local constabulary that night (told we could no longer stay tied up at their public wall) and decided to leave in the early am on Saturday. Life being stranger than fiction, we happened to run into a couple of cruisers from Canada on their way to the Bahamas on that same night in Delray. We chatted for awhile, and then got to talking about our first trip down last year. The mere mention of Claude’s name brought great chuckles and amazement, as they had been on this same trip with Claude and Kathy 10 years ago. Their names are Tony and Diane aboard the Vertigo 1. We had a fun chat, then ran into them again yesterday here at the Middle River anchorage in Fort Lauderdale. We think they went out the Lauderale inlet for a calm Bahamas crossing today, and expect to see them somewhere else along the trail.

That brings us to our adventure in provisioning yesterday. We asked for directions to the Super Market, but somehow went astray and walked on a bit farther than anticipated. In fact, this error could have been avoided perhaps by asking directions at a gas station but…A nice gal here at the anchorage told us we just had to walk North on Sunrise Blvd. about a mile to find a Publix. I mentioned to Wayne that I didn’t think that was possible, given that as we were traveling south on the ICW, we had to cross under the Sunrise Blvd. bridge (ergo, Sunrise Blvd. runs east-west). Wayne didn’t seem to think that too important, gauged the direction we were walking from the angle of the sun, and we turned north on what happened to be US-Highway 1 instead. After about a mile and a half we encountered a Winn-Dixie and called it good. After provisioning, we stopped at the East End Bar, apparently a notorious Steeler fan hangout. It was like stepping into a bar in New Brighton, PA. The characters and noise level were outrageous. I sat down next to a gal who at first I thought had a strange hat on. Not so. At closer inspection, she had an Ace bandage wrapped around her head, with bloody gauze pads exuding from it. She knocked back a couple of shots of Jaegermeister, and took off amid jeers from her peers who were calling her a drug addict. Sheesh. Next up was a blond version of Dracula complete with red-rimmed eyes, a ghostly pale countenance, thin lips which opened a crack now and then to speak, smoke, or sip on a gin and tonic, and a surprisingly intact head of pale hair. The guy, who was a nice enough guy, looked to be about 80. Later he and Wayne had a bit of a chat and it turns out the guy was only 62. That is probably the effect of many years of bar-room cigs and booze. The gent had a house in the Poconos and a condo in Lauderdale and was retired, happy, and pleasant enough. An assortment of other characters populated the bar, including various guys named Jimmy, Vito, Santino, and a lady bartender from the UK named Jackie. The patrons all knew each other and were having simultaneous loud discussions about football, hockey, assholes, and bad behavior in general. Most of them had sport-related T-shirts or polos and gold chains, and short dark hair. One of the lady patrons (who looked about 60 but then with this crowd, who knew?) was attired in a skin-tight leopard skin shirt with matching baseball cap – the cap being further adorned with sequins. She had several layers of carefully applied makeup on and a large medallion hung from the chain around her neck. The effect was part Alice Cooper, part Rocky Horror rated “G”. Everyone in the bar was smoking a cigarette at one time or another, and I felt a bit out of place. After our unanticipated long trek to the store, Wayne rightly thought this might be a good opportunity to have a little snack and we decided to stay for an extremely inexpensive basket of French Fries. Good decision, a huge basket of truly fresh fries, some with the skin still on, arrived soon afterward. They were delicious. When discussing the whole scene today with my son, he advised me that this was a good decision because, “they really know their fried foods in the Pittsburgh area”. We ate up the fries, and paid up. The walk back wasn’t so bad; we had consumed plenty of calories we consumed and the blazing sun had descended in the sky, resulting in a very pleasant late afternoon temperature. A lovely full-moon night on the boat followed. This morning we got up early and had a lovely beach-walk. We located a cute little funky old section of town we had visited many years ago, and made a plan to watch the Steelers game at a little beach bar. Again we have just been visited by the local boat police, telling us we are kicked out as there is a 24-hour anchoring rule. We assured the good officer we’d be leaving first thing in the morning, but he was not happy with that answer. Wayne said, OK and the guy left. The young man next to us – who has been here for a week – was much smarter. He hid as soon as he saw the police boat coming. We decided that we are sticking to the plan of leaving in the am and taking our chances – just as we did in Delray. Further analysis of this phenomenon revealed a stock plan for such situations: say your engine needs a part which you are picking up tomorrow morning and then you will be gone asap. With this plan firmly established in both ours minds, we are going back to the beach bar anyway to watch the Steeler game.