Monday

We saw a dolphin on our morning causeway walk.

It was jumping completely out of the water, like at Sea World.

Splash!

It was very close.

The weather was great, about 71 degrees and mostly sunny.

This picture is John’s interpretation of the scene in the previous picture.

I caught the kayak and the Caladesi ferry in the same frame, going in opposite directions.

The lady on the bike above stopped us on our walk. She was practically stuttering she was so overcome by the beauty of what she was experiencing. She described an osprey flying a few feet above her while she rode her bike. It had a fish in its mouth as she pointed to the nest. “Can you believe this?” she muttered. “Look, all around us. It’s just gorgeous.” We shared our dolphin experience from moments before, fully in sync with her mood. She said she was from St. Petersburg and drove her car to Clearwater and parked to ride her bike here to the causeway and Honeymoon Island. We all agreed we were very lucky. She said if it were an amusement park, people would pay a lot of money to be able to enjoy the causeway. We agreed again.

The Pinellas County workers are still working on the bridge. They are having to cut away concrete and pour new concrete around the exposed rebar so that they can reattach the railing. There were about 4-5 sections that fell off. Bids are in the process of going out for both bridges to be replaced, but there is currently no funding for them.

My back is almost normal today, normal enough that walking is not a problem. I really missed the last three days being outside.

Lovely clouds

John set up our second smart plug so that now we can ask Alexa to turn on the lights in the morning in the living room and sunroom and off again. It beats walking around trying to find the switches.

After lunch, I drove to the outdoor gym at Weaver Park to gently exercise. John refused to allow me to ride my bike, thinking my spine was still too fragile. Actually, the bike is more comfortable than the car seat, but there was no persuading him. I did observe that none of my gym exercises impacted my back, which was good for now, but I need to do exercises that strengthen my core. Most of those core exercises I do at home in the morning, but I need to do more of them. So I ordered a yoga mat from Amazon so that I can do some of those exercises at the gym, too. The mat comes with carrying straps that I can use to tote it on my bike. I found an orange one at a special price.

Toby’s doing his own stretching exercises. The high temperature today was 78 degrees.

Our neighbor called to offer us carrot cake and pasta made with spinach, basil, and thyme.

Miles walked: 10.3

Miles biked: 0