Lake Wales, FL – Dec 2021

The hustle and bustle of Christmas 2021 is now behind us.  Even though it was virtual, I had a wonderful time experiencing it with my daughters and grands.  The completion of one of my to do’s, and a visit from one of my cousins and her fiance rounded out the month.  Lastly, I’m not liking what I’m seeing in terms of yet another Covid wave – with what appears to be aggressive spreading, but thankfully, mostly mild symptoms.  I’m really looking forward to a relaunch of my nomadic travels in the spring, and I’m not looking forward to having that impacted by this damn virus.  Let’s all hope for a quick and mostly uneventful short winter wave, with clearing and blue skies come spring.  (One can hope!)

Christmas Festivities

This community sure goes all out for the holidays.  Besides the wonderful decorations that have adorned both the personal residences as well as the common areas, there were a number of other events held throughout the month.  Once again this year, they had a golf cart Christmas Parade.  Over two dozen carts were decorated in various festive gear, as they rode through the streets of the community.  Once again this year, I messed up the video.  You may recall that last year I thought I had hit the record button, but apparently I had not, and missed recording the entire thing.  This year, I actually did hit record, but despite my having held the phone in landscape mode, the video was recorded in portrait mode, and looks like crap.  I guess it is really a good thing that I have created a BLOG and not a VLOG.  My photo skills are pretty good, and I’ve managed to capture and represent my travels well.  My video skills on the other hand seem to suck, so if this site was dependent on video content, I’d be sorely lacking.  In addition to the cart parade, they also had a Christmas Boat Parade on Saddlebag lake.  Many of the community owners have boats, mostly of the pontoon party variety, and a dozen or so of them lavished their boats with lights and had a parade across the water.  Really cool!  Lastly, on Christmas eve, there is a community tradition to put lit sand-filled bags along the front of your driveway – I’m assuming it forms some sort of landing lights for Santa to safely land his present-filled sleigh.  Anyway, it looks really festive during the night of Christmas eve.

Given that I had spent this past summer up north with the kids and grands, and given that air travel is really not that fun these days, and lastly with temps here at the home base in the 70s, while it was significantly colder up north, I decided to stay here in FL for the holidays, and instead use the Portal video conference equipment to enjoy a virtual Christmas morning and day with them.  So I got up early, dressed in my official Bryan and Alana and family Christmas outfit, made coffee, turned on the fireplace for some ambiance, and enjoyed several hours of virtual Christmas morning events with both Ashley and Samantha, and their families.  It was great watching them all open their presents, and we even took a break for the traditional cinnamon rolls.  Later in the day I connected with Ashley, AJ, and Jason and we played a few games together.  It was just like being there – almost.  It was a blast, and I really appreciated being part of their Christmas day.

Projects & Visits

Well, I was able to wrap up the Scoot enhancements during the month of Dec.  So as reported last month, I had purchased and installed a new taller windshield to knock out the arm fatigue.  So far, that has really been great.  The shield now takes all the wind, and the tired arms are now a thing of the past.  About a week or two in the month of Dec, the custom made seat arrived from the company in Thailand.  I am so pleased with the construction quality and the simple beauty of the seat – let alone the much improved sitting posture and added lower back support.  A simple 4-bolt uninstall and reinstall of the old and new seat was all that it took.  A simple 15 minute job.  And it fits like the original, and operates just as the OEM version did.  It was a gamble sending ฿8,500 THB (about US $271) to a company in a foreign country, but the results were fantastic, and definitely a bargain for what they delivered!  So now the next time I head out to the east or west coast to visit someone or something, I’ll have the option to ride the scoot in lieu of driving the big boy truck – again, weather permitting.  Really looking forward to taking that first long trip.

The other pleasure I had this month was to host my cousin Lucy and her fiance Ed for a day and night of fun in Lake Wales.  They came to Florida for a multi-week vacation, criss crossing between east and west coast to visit with family and friends.  They arrived at my place mid-day, and after a short visit at the home base and a driving tour of our wonderful community, we headed into historic downtown Lake Wales.  There was a new restaurant that had just opened up a couple weeks prior, so I suggested we chance it and try them out.  Wales Pointe is the name of the place, and we all chose the reuben on rye sandwich – each with various mods (like no sauerkraut for me – yuk!).  They also offered a holiday ale on tap which nicely topped off the meal.  Turned out to be a really cool place, and they have lots of interesting plans for the future – including having a live band perform on their small front window side stage.  I think this will be a place that I’ll certainly be back to visit.  Later in the day I fired up a nice campfire, and sat around enjoying the fire-warm atmosphere.  Later, we dined on my world famous lasagna, followed by some cards (I loved calling DOS on Lucy and Ed when they forgot, forcing them to draw two additional cards).  Anyway, it was a fun day, they spent the night on the pullout couch, then left mid morning the next day to head to Universal where they would spend the next several days.  Thanks for the visit, and the goodies from you and Aunt Marge – they were delicious and throughly enjoyed over the Christmas holiday.  Looking forward to you spending your future winters down here in FL somewhere.

Final Thoughts

It is a bit of a short blog this month with the holidays and all.  Looking forward to a fruitful month in Jan.  I’m planning on meeting up with my brothers for a few days and a night out to see a comedy show.  I’ll also be attending the Florida RV Supershow in Tampa (no, I’m not buying a new RV, but I still like to look!).  And of course celebrating an additional notch on the old age belt.  I may even have an old buddy coming down here to FL to come for a visit and to go to the RV show with me.  Hopefully, that works out.  I’m also very hopeful that I can finalize my relaunch travel plans, and start to make the reservations.  Hopefully I’ve not waited too long.  So, looking forward to another great and busy month in Jan, and enjoying the continued wonderful Florida winter weather.  It sure has been really nice these past couple of weeks.  Till next month, stay healthy and safe travels. And Happy New Year!

I only show a sampling of my adventure pictures here in the blog, and do so mostly in collage format for brevity and ease of reading. If you want to view an album containing individual full fidelity and hi-res images of all my travel pictures related to this specific blog, click the image below. Enjoy!