Nov 15th & 16th - Marathon FL

Nov 15th - Marathon FL
Went to the office to post the blog and check email before heading to Key West, the furthest city on the keys. On the way we had to stop at a flea market where Terry found a part to repair the satellite dish and I got a pair of shorts. The bicycle riders must have stayed the night somewhere as we had to pass a lot of them again. We detoured through Bahia Honda State Park looking for our friends Gary & Carie but we didn’t find them so we must have gotten mixed up on the dates or location.
Once we figured out where we wanted to be, it was a little tough to find a parking spot in Key West. By the time we found some spots they were all metered but most occupied meters were expired so we decided to live dangerously and not feed the meter - besides, we didn’t have change!
It was very hot - high 80’s, low 90’s - and extremely humid so we ducked into stores that we weren’t all that interested in just to cool off in the air conditioning for a while. Stopped for a beer and discovered that we could walk around town with a drink so continued on. While we were walking, a police car led the entire group of bicyclists through town. They filled a whole lane for a couple of blocks at least.
By the time we decided to look for somewhere to have lunch, we didn’t go past anywhere that looked interesting so decided to head for home and cook an early dinner. It takes over an hour to drive so dinner turned out to be not all that early.
Paul (met in Clewiston) called to say that he had purchased a Coolsat satellite receiver and was having a problem with a scrambled signal. We started setting up our satellite so we could figure out if we could help him but, with dinner in the meantime, it got too dark so we decided to continue in the morning.

Nov 16th - Marathon FL
It got very windy last night. At 12:30, Terry heard the lawn chairs blow over so he was out putting everything away as it was also raining a bit then. After going to the office for internet to get a new Coolsat program, we set up the satellite. It was a huge challenge with the wind still blowing and the ground too soft to secure the tripod. We did eventually get it set up, got the new program loaded and had more channels than we could surf through in half an hour! I decided to email the uncompressed program to Paul, so another trip to the office where we briefly met a neighbor also checking email.
I needed a few groceries so we drove the 8 miles to Marathon. Again, no lunch so I put dinner on when we got back. Paul called to say that he did not receive my email - oops, wrong address. So another walk to the office - one way to get a little much needed exercise. Even when Paul received the file, we could not figure out how to get it on the flash drive to load the receiver. Their computer has the Vista operating system which I have not used very much and they also use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer so I couldn’t figure out the problem. We are going to the park they are in when we leave here on Wed so they are going to keep messing with it while they wait for us.
It remained windy and much cooler all day. The wind has blown mounds of sea grass onto the shore. The Gulf of Mexico is very shallow in some spots near the keys so I guess that is the source.