50,000 Pieces of Wood

Some­where just north of St Augus­tine the Emperor glided past the 50k mark. I guess I was wrong the other day when I said there would be miles left to travel on the war­ranty when we ran out of time. Just the oppo­site, the 3 year/50k war­ranty has expired with three days left.

We drove out of Geor­gia on I-95, but 36 miles was all we could take. Just after stop­ping and get­ting some free OJ at the wel­come cen­ter, we got off the ugly Inter­state and picked up A1A. We then drove the whole way down to New Smyrna Beach fol­low­ing the coastal road. Some­times beau­ti­ful, some­times tacky, some­times crowded and some­times nearly empty, tak­ing the slow road, if you have the time, is the way to go. It helped that it is off-season which kept the crowds way down. The big trou­ble for us was that the weather was way off-season. Aver­age high this time of year along the mid­dle Florida coast is is 75, but today is wasn’t even 55. Com­bined with the 10–20 MPH mean that the top was up all day and any ven­tures out to look at the beach and waves was very brief.

Even though I was run­ning right at the speed limit, Johnny Law shad­owed me for a cou­ple mile when we drove through Day­tona Beach.

Before din­ner tonight we took a walk around a mile and a half cir­cu­lar board­walk that is at the north end of New Smyrna Beach’s coast. It was a quick walk over about 50,000 pieces of treated wood. The sun had finally popped out from under the clouds, but it was too late to raise the tem­per­a­ture any as it tra­versed the last 10 degrees of it’s arc before dis­ap­pear­ing beneath the horizon.

Food for today con­sisted of the “deluxe” con­ti­nen­tal break­fast at the Vil­lage Inn, bah. Lunch at another Bar­bara Jean’s (which turns out to be a mini chain of about 6 restau­rants), very good, but fin­ished off any pos­si­ble crab cake crav­ings for a month or so. Din­ner was at Vincente’s in New Smyrna Beach, a small Ital­ian place whose baked ziti was just the right amount to split and very satisfying.