So despite the delay at the hotel check in, it is a speed shower and shave (first in a weekQ), and don the obligatory Hawaiian shirt (it is The Intoxicators! after all ) as we are goinng to a country club!
Lucy laments the fact she did not pack for an excursion with the upper crust, but Tally seems to be a bit more down to earth.
We take the shortest route (6 min via GPS) and it takes us on this overgrown country road with big oak branches hanging low. I comment, we won't be driving the box truck back this way in the dark as I had to change lanes a few times to avoid branches the oppisite side of the road is even more overgrown. We arrive at the CC and dammit they do NOT have valet parking. I sooooooo wanted to valet the box truck as I had a lock on the back so no worries.... I park off in the boonies and we head in.
You can see us way out by the road. even with only a 12ft box, she is bulky and takes up a full space, so I chose where there was plenty of room.
Due to the hold up at the hotel, our reseved seat was given away, but we still were seated outside, but right up against the wall all the way in the back.
As you can see there is a big buffer that we are not quite used to with this band. Usually, it is so intimate you can reach out and touch them lol.
pic from 2023 from Vatican Tattoo about a 1.5 miles from my house for their big 15th anniverasry party (Jeff knows how to do it up right!).
Never say never, I didn't think I would see a family oriented Intoxkcators! show, but here is the proof!
They played two full sets and we had a nice dinner. It was cool out in the 60s but nice. Finally it was time for the band alter-ego to show up and while the crowd had dwindled considerbly, those that stayed were ready for the Disasternauts!
IFYKYK...mostly the Intoxicators! play their originals with a few select covers, but ht e D-nauts are all ;classic surf covers.
Had I known, I could have Amazoned a bananna costumer to the hotel. That would have blown minds lol. Yes that is a fake leg bone Lucy is swinging around. Much fun had by all!
Couldn't resist the urge to pull the truck up to the front door for a photo op. It wasn't Bushwood, but a nice country club none the less.
The following morning we were up and out by 9 AM, and the drive was fairly uneventful. A slowdown NW or Orlando for construction, we were in WPB by 4, made a stop to gas up for the return and some shopping and home by 5.
You can see the jealous GMC scowling over the fence at it's temporary replacement.
Ready to unload the cargo!
Sunday my daughter and her BF came over and we made short work of unloading in about 2 hrs.
Ready to return tomorrow!
We can barely get into the cabinets, but it's short term workable....much work ahead!
She needs a little love, but I'm confident I will be playing pinball soon!
Tuesday morning we went and picked up the box truck. Other than the Penske App giving us bad direcctions, we found the rental place easy enough and were soon back and sorting wood. I spent a few minutes on the Pinball machine, getting it ready to move, but knew that was the last thing going on the truck.
The next two days were pretty busy and we finished loading around 4PM on Wed. We had made arrangements to meet my Sister-in-law (her hubby Jason was helping us) and my neice (who just moved to Austin) for dinner around 6.
4 days of whiskers were starting to annoy me, but Valerie looks great!
Thursday morning, some clean up and were on the road before 10AM.. Traffic sucked of course (it is Austin) and we got about 30 miles in the first hour. Then we were outside of town and heading down US 290 toward Houston.
Tommy had his own seat up on the dash and was ready to go. My FIL and his girlfriend wish us safe travels.
Gassing up in Lousiana. I had to fill up a total of 6 times and we were getting a surprisingly good 14-15 mpg on each fill up. The longer we drove, the faster I was going. It had a 75mph speed limiter and once we got on open I-10 It was pretty much on that the whole time and holding up traffic. Total drive time was about 26 hours with a couple stops over 3 days.
No trip through Cajun Country is complete without a stop for Boudin! We bought over 10 lbs of Boudin and smoked sausage and a styrofoam cooler to keep it cool. Tommy working the camera but fails to get published...
We scored this hotel room for $80 out the door in Walker, LA about 15 miles east of Baton Rouge. We were pretty tired from the previous 2 days and the 10 hour drive. We had Boudin around 5:30 ish so we just had some snacks and skipped a full dinner.
Up early the next morning and a great breakfast at the hotel. We were on the road by 9:30 as we were only going to Tallahassee about 380 miles away. The evening before I messaged my buddy Gary who is in a few bands (4 I can think of off the top of my head), and asked if there was a Friday night gig in Tally. He said yes so I thought about it for under a minute and booked us a hotel not far from the venue with an easy exit out of town.
The drive was drama free and we were able to see the SS United States again in Mobile! We didn't stop as the band was starting pretty early at 6:30PM and we lost an hour crossing the time zone.
On my birthday, JT texted me a link to a website that was tracking the ship's movement from Philadelphia to Mobile (pulled by a tugboat). As it turned out, it was going by South FL pretty much then! I lamented that I would miss it go by as I had a meeting at work. As luck would have it, the meeting was canceled at the last minute and I drove directly to the beach. As I was coming over the bridge I could see it was right there, almost straight out. I watched it for about 15 minutes waiting for it to get into the sun's refletion on the water to get this shot. Not the best, but my phone's camera isn't that good. She was a majesticghost!
Lucy also saw it off of Delray about an hour later as it was going about 5 knots. Because of the Gulfstream, they had to come in pretty close to shore from Jupiter South so that was good for us. I also found out later it wasn't planned to be a daylight pass, but rought weather had slowed progresss so it worked out in our favor.
If you don't know about her, Here is a good primer video of her in her heyday. Set the Transatlantic crossing record on her maiden trip in 1952 at 3 days and 10 hours for a merchant vessel. The record still stands today and will probably never be beaten.
We were able to see her from I-10 just fine on the west side of the bay. We gassed up just shy of the FL border and off we went.
We arrived at our hotel around 5:30PM and I went to check in. No one was there! I waited for 30 minutes until the girl came back. She apologized and I got checked in. Now we were late for our date at the Country Club!
So a little twist, this entry is about our sortie to Austin, TX to retrieve a few items and drive them back to FL.
We flew out and Rented a Penske 12' Box Truck, loaded it to capacity and drove it back 1320 miles to our house.
First off, I'm a big dummy. Somehow I thought I was booking a Saturday flight, but in fact booked it for Sunday afternoon. Booo, one less day in TX. On the upside I did get to go to a car show here in Delray Saturday which was fun. Pic here is from the train as we are passing our exit on I-95 on the way to the airport.
Downside to weekends on the Tri-Rail is only runs once per hour vs. 20 min on weekdays, but we got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Made the mistage of going to the airport bar, where Lucy ordered an Expresso Martini which was $26 and my rum and coke was $16. Auto 18% tip took us into the 50s for 2 drinks. ouch.
Our flight went off withour a hitch (thank goodness as the last two were many many hours late). And Lucy's Dad collected us at the airport, bing bang, zoom off we went.
Monday was kind of a leisure dy/strategy planning kind of affair. I did seet that the SpaceX starship 8 launch was scheduled for that afternoon and pondered driving 400 miles each way to try and see it. I mentioned it to Lucy's Dad and he was all in, but said they would get a hotel. We had to pick up the truck the following morning so made the adult decision and did not go. As it turned out it did not launch, so instead of spening 16 hours in a car for no good reason, we had BBQ!\
We went to LeRoy and Lewis BBQ which is Michelan rated (1 star), as it was about the ONLY BBQ open on a Monday. The food was on point. We had the Pit Master Special and added Briskey (the barometer meat for TX BBQ) and their special Sweet Potato/Chorizo hash (damne good). It was all really good, even the Kale Slaw! There we leftovers and we gorged.
After lunch we walked it off on the boardwalk at Lady Bird Lake across from downtown. Tristen my nephew was FULL of little kid energy.. Tommy was slacking on his photoshoots for his social media campaign.
Lots of turtles! I think there are 11 in just this one pic. Every stick and log had turtle on top of turtles. A terrapan wonderland!
Tommy ready for a ride in the Vette. I drove it for 3 days and never put the top down. Not sure what was wrong with me,....
We finished out the day with a stop at an Asian plaza to get some things unavailable in FL and some cheaper cooking supplies as they have giant Asian grocery supermarkets out there vs. the boutiques we have here.
Day 2 is pretty boring We went and got the trunck and drove it back and started getting ready to load.
The backstory: 6ish years ago when my SIL was getting marriend, her soon to be hubby, offered me a Pinball Machine 1985 WIlliams table, The Comet.
It is an iconic tablie as it was the first one to offer a single shot 1,000,000 point shot. Anyway, the caveat was I had to bring it back. It was in full working order. Last year when we visited for the eclipse, it wan't working. Found out a battery leaked so I have some repair, but back to the story.
I looked at putting it on a pallet and haviing it shipped and that was going to ccost $1000+. Cue up the kids were getting a house renovated and they bought 2500+ Sq/ft of Mohawk flooring. THey got it on clearence then decided to go with a different clor and did we want it?
We need new floors and our house is a lot smaller, so sure! Cue the box truck!
What we didn't know was that the flooring was seconds and various diffterenet sizes and shades.....Ugh. I figured I would just be grabbing a bunch of boxes but nope, had to open almost all of them and pick the best pieces.
So on the back end took us 2 hours to unload byt 2 days on the front end.......
