Saturday

We had a quick dinner and then rode our bikes on the Pinellas Trail to downtown so that we could see the golf cart pride parade. Downtown was decorated with the pride banners on the street lights.

Watrous neighbors

Neighbors on our street

Fairway Estates neighbors

The parade continued on to the ballpark down Douglas where there was a special ball game celebrating gay pride. Afterwards, John and I both confessed that we got emotional during the parade. All those years of self-hatred, condemnation, shame get shoved down deep and locked away. Then all these people smiling and waving and saying they love you and celebrate you. A flood of emotions were called forth, unbidden. I want to make sure that I show that kind of love and support for every oppressed minority, especially the ones I don't understand.

After lunch, we took Toby to Highlander Park in the go cart for a walk and then we headed to Ace Hardware so Toby could get a treat and interact with strangers. He ended up getting treats at the front door and the cash register on the way out. The employees remembered him and that he was shy, so they were really gentle with him. We picked up a flag pole and wall bracket for our gay pride flag. 

We tried it out in several different places, in between rain showers. 

It turns out that it looked best here, on the garage.

This morning, after our Toby walk, we headed to the causeway to walk. When we got to the bathrooms, half way, we looked up and saw a storm coming. 

We had checked the radar before leaving the house, and it was clear. This storm came out of nowhere. 

We headed back to our bikes and rode as fast as we could to get home.

We started getting sprinkled on while the garage door was going up. Minutes later, it was a downpour. It rained several times today, never more than 20-30 minutes. And, since it's Florida, the sun came out and the skies were blue afterwards.

Today's bike routes to the causeway bridge and downtown

John's roofer friend came by and gave us an estimate for the three lead roof vent repairs. We agreed, so he'll send his guy out Monday or Tuesday to make the repair.

Our new printer came this morning, and I had it set up in about 30 minutes. Isn’t Amazon amazing? It's wireless, so we can put it in a spare bedroom and print from our computer or phones using wifi. I found a mistake on the home insurance application, so I contacted our agent about sending us a corrected application. We'll probably get that on Monday and finish up that project.

We went to two open houses in our neighborhood after lunch. The one on our street was bought in June 2021 after it was renovated as a flip. The new owners rented it out for $3,600 a month. Who can afford rent like that? Now they have it on the market one year later without making any further improvements, not even painting, for $200,000 over what they paid.

The other open house was a higher quality renovation, very tastefully done. 

Last walk of the day

Miles walked: 10.5

Miles biked: 11.68