Our trip began last Friday morning at uh-oh dark thirty.  It was still dark when we made it to the Park & Fly.  The party to board the shuttle bus after us elicited an “Oh, My God!” from the driver, when they opened the back of their van.  The three of them had a mountain of luggage.  It eventually filled the shuttle’s luggage rack and even overflowed the entire aisle.  Also many of the bags were large enough to hold an adult.  In these days of exorbitant baggage fees, it is an uncommon sight to see so many bags.  At the airport, we made sure to jump off the bus before them, with our carry on bags. 

The early morning airport security line was moving slowly.  An older man, behind us, began a loud Limbaugh political rant pertaining to the course that the current administration has charted.  It culminated with a quote from Thomas Jefferson, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” and the comment that maybe this country needs another revolution now.  Standing behind me, Anne whispered the question, “Didn’t we just have one, last November?”  A moment later, the guy in front of me turned and asked the same question.  After that, the quiet line began again their separate conversations and the loud older man was ignored. 

After landing in Atlanta, we went out through security and met Sam and John, who had come to the airport to meet us.  We all encamped at the Atlanta Bread Co. and had a couple of hours to talk.  We and John had never met and we and Sam have not seen each other in over twenty years, but we have stayed connected through the blogoshere.  In addition to conversation, we played with John’s iPhone and watched platoon after platoon of soldiers march past us.  All too soon the time for our next flight arrived and we bade each other farewell, with hopes that we can meet again this summer in Michigan.

We landed in Palm Beach in mid-afternoon, rented the car and checked into the motel.  After are travels we went to the motel’s patio bar that overlooks the beach.  Yesterday’s post had a picture of Anne with my Watermelontini.  The motel’s stairs to the beach were being worked on and were closed when we got there, so we went to the near by public beach and walked along the surf.  The picture above shows what I call ocean beach glass, sea shells polished by the surf and glistening in the setting sun.  We did not go swimming and a picture below shows one of the reasons, a Man of War jellyfish.  This particular one was still alive, at least it was still undulating.

I wanted to take Anne to a restaurant that had impressed me, when I had last visited Palm Beach.  We drove around trying to find it, but to no avail.  Eventually we stumbled upon a night club district in Lake Worth and found an Italian restaurant that looked good.  After dinner we returned to the motel, tired from our early morning launch.  It was high tide and the waves were coming very close to the stairs, so ended our first day in Florida.