You are only as old as you… look?

Thursday January 19th, 2017

Today I… nay we were offended by a woman who did not even know us. She was a marina yard acquaintance of Mangos. She stopped by for a chat and said to ML and I, “you must be the parents”? You might immediately jump to the fact that Mangos look incredibly young, but that’s not it. It must be that we look incredibly old. The woman wasn’t wearing glasses, seemed to be of questionable soundness of mind and body and obviously was a poor judge of age. In truth Mangos are about 10 years younger than us. When I was 20 I was twice as old as John but since then he has been catching up. I guess we will chalk it up to a poor misguided lady on a day pass from ‘the home’.

Pope Prius XII

I guess I should backtrack to the beginning of the story. Mangos arrived on time at the marina and off we went in their hybrid Toyota ‘Prius’ named after the Pope I guess. This vehicle is a combination of electric, gasoline and will power. We did manage to get up to highway speed and the odometer is a variant that rolls up the penny’s spent as we travel. At the end of the trip it gives you an accounting; 9 oz. of fuel costing $0.86 U.S.  It must be the way John drove it to achieve such wondrous results. On the return journey we stopped twice for fuel on our 93 mile trip. I must have a heavy foot although the pedal had little effect on the motion of the vehicle. There is what must be called a joy stick (the irony is not lost on me) that changes it from a beeping vehicle backing up to forward motion. At very slow speeds it is basically soundless, when we got the woman out from under our borrowed Pope mobile at the fruit stand she exclaimed how silently she had been run over.  In truth the vehicle is a pleasant surprise that drives nicely and is very economical. ****

We arrived at the marina around lunch time and once John got the new batteries up and stowed we went off to lunch at …. wait for it… “The Gator Bait” bar and grill.  We were treated by the Mangos and at the outset let me say we all ate everything provided. The Mangos had never ventured into this place before.

There is a pool table and a stuffed ‘gator’ over the bar as shown below. We were in central Florida and this bar and grill was what you might expect to find as the only eatery along this piece of farmland highway. We purchased gas for the Prius and a jug of diesel for Last Mango and headed back to the marina and our appointed time for the splash. All in all everything went very well with the lift and splash.

In the yard sailboats look like fish out of water, but soon Mango was in the well and the engine started right up. The new batteries were doing whatever they do and all was well with the launch.

I found myself honing my driving to maximize the economy. There is a bar graph that identifies when you are hogging gas. It is a bit of a distraction along with ML calling out the fruit stands I passed. I did finally relent and a bag of oranges, bag of grapefruit and a box of strawberries later ‘on the road again’.

I know we have a self imposed rule about sunset pictures. It seems however that there haven’t been quite as many lately so I couldn’t resist. When we got back to the boat the sky was ablaze with color. The boats were beautifully back lit and by the time I got the camera out of the bag it was almost over…:

 

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