Daytona Beach

Two nights on the beach and then indoor skydiving, ATVs, kayaking, cave tubing, zip lining and everything else we can pack into three weeks that entertain grandchild #5...Grand Cayman, Roatan, Belize and Cozumel...

We will finish up on July 8 and then yet another Cancer surgery....if at first, you don't succeed...Also, an operation for a  hernia repair the following week and then off with Mrs. Phred on another long road trip...getting old is not for sissies...

We stopped at the National Seashore above Cape Kennedy....the worlds most beautiful deserted beach that few people know about...

We get out to study s turtle and the car fills with salt water mosquitos....blood thirsty...we slap them everywhere and ruin the headliner...

This was our first time there since we saw it in our flower-covered VW Van 45 years ago... It's the same as it was then and will be the same as long as the US endures....30 miles of the pristine beach....turtle nests every ten feet...the last 25 miles are on foot only....no road...just beach...seldom visited...what Pone De Leon must have seen....

The Highway Men

Sarasota... Tampa... Miami... Madrid... Lisbon

Hey..there was a picture or three of the grandchildren visiting on that camera sim card.

We've been up for 40 straight hours now. The Miami flight left late so we missed our Madrid connection and sat around the airport for seven additional hours.

According to NPR:

If you traveled by way of Florida's Route 1 in the 1960s, you might have encountered a young, African-American artist, selling a lushly painted oil landscape from his car. They weren't allowed in galleries during Jim Crow segregation -- but motels, office buildings and tourists would buy their vivid works.

Together, they formed a loosely associated band around Fort Pierce, Fla., that came to be known as The Highwaymen. At $20 a painting, they made their way out of agricultural jobs like citrus-picking and defined the cultural look of an era.

The Miami airport has a brilliant display of dozens of these paintings in the International Terminal.

Lisbon is very nice. We have big plans to eat at a Fado and ride the double decker tour buses and see the old neighborhoods and castles.

We're right by the train station, so we'll do a daytrip to Sintra.

The Silence of the Phred

Phred has been inactive on the blog for some months. I'll explain later. Things have been happening, just not quickly.....For example, my oldest grandson graduated from law school. The other one below (oldest granddaughter) is making straight "A"s in college now. This is a 2012 photo from someplace we took them that had a pile of old stones. Once we saw the stones when it was raining and empty. This was the Summer Solstice and the place was mobbed with weird English people in white robes.

Also, one of my other granddaughters (#3) got married and moved to Honolulu-. Here she appears to be contemplating a Tara Misu on a trip to  Barcelona with us in 2016. I'm happy for her. It's a paradise. I landed there 30 or 40 times in the sixties delivering war materials. They had a topless ice cream parlor, but I didn't get to go. The sixties were a time of change and innovation.  I remember climbing out of Pearl Harbor into beautiful cumulonimbus clouds...In fact, Honolulu was voted the #1 place to staycation, but the cost of living is higher than California's.

We moved back into our Sarasota condo and out of the aging RV.....the hoodie belongs to grandchild # 4...He's 16 now. I think he enjoyed the soccer game we attended together in Barcelona. After the game, we walked about 3 miles back to our hotel...

The washer/dryer in the RV died. The replacement cost was an amazing $1,600 if I did all the work myself. My friend and I disconnected the 150-pound broken washer and hauled it off to the dump. The RV also has a parasitic current drain that is killing all three batteries. I'm running it down fuse-by-fuse with my multi-meter. If I can get the bugs out and fix a cracked windshield by August we might take another Fall road trip to Canada and the Southwest...

I had another operation with my pesky cancer. The Doc took a six-inch diameter divot from the side of my head this time in early November. Then he replaced it with a mesh made of bovine collagen and shark cartilage.  My job was to vascularize the mesh with blood vessels and grow new skin. I had to cut a lot of my hair that wasn't already surgically removed because it kept getting stuck in the wound.  Anyway, I kept a low profile and mostly just dieted, read, healed, watched TV  and listened to music....nothing to blog about here....the wound site is about 90% healed. I think of growing skin is like baking a cake...it takes time....skin more than cake...it should be 100% by October...

...and...just dropped to less than 169 pounds...that's down from 240...I weigh my food, avoid alcohol completely, estimate my calories and put it all in a spreadsheet....I'm gravitating toward a preference for foods with more fiber: Chili, cole-slaw, pears, beans....and fish...Mrs. Phred says I can buy a Harley now...When you walk a mile it's about 100 calories burned. For my age (75) weight (169) and height (6 feet even), they think I need 1610 calories a day to maintain my weight if I sleep all day. You can add 100 calories for every mile you walk  (I try for five), but to lose a pound a week you need to eat 500 calories a day less than the maintenance number. 3500 calories = one pound of fat. Right now I love playing with ice cream consumption ....tickling the dragon...oops gained five pounds...recalculate!

We're also planning a June/July trip with grandchild #5, who is an interesting and determined young man,  now aged 13...only two more to go with what has become something of a travel tradition...The picture above is very old but he is still an intense, active and interesting young man...Can't wait...

So about 2021, if the creek don't rise, I look forward to a possible exotic travel date with enchanting grandchildren  #6 and #7.above...

The Return of Mrs. Phred

Mrs. Phred has returned from her expedition to the remote islands off the coast of Ecuador and mountaintops of Peru. She mailed some pictures back to me.

Mrs. Phred and her friend Felicia are in the foreground above a scene of Machu Picchu

15th-century Inca citadel, located in the Eastern Cordillera of southern Peru, on a mountain ridge 7,970 ft above sea level. It is located in the Cusco Region, Urubamba Province, Machupicchu District in Peru, above the Sacred Valley, which is 80 kilometres (50 mi) northwest of Cuzco and through which the Urubamba River flows, which cuts through the Cordillera and originates a canyon with tropical mountain climate.-WIKI

Some sort of lizard or dragon? ...ooh...it's a Galapagos land iguana....it eats cactus pads...

The mountaintop at Macchu Picchu gets about 65 inches of rain. It was a good place to grow things. I read that mists float up from the river past near-vertical cliffs on three sides.

Machu Picchu is situated above a bow of the Urubamba River, which surrounds the site on three sides, where cliffs drop vertically for 1,480 ft to the river at their base. The area is subject to morning mists rising from the river. The location of the city was a military secret, and its deep precipices and steep mountains provided natural defenses.-Wiki

A group of seals is called: "bob, colony, crash, harem, herd, pod, rookery, spring, and team".

That is some impressive agricultural terracing.

Heavy rainfall required terraces and stone chips to drain rainwater and prevent mudslides, landslides, erosion, and flooding. Terraces were layered with stone chips, sand, dirt and topsoil, to absorb water and prevent it from running down the mountain. Similar layering protected the large city center from flooding. Multiple canals and reserves provide water throughout the city that could be supplied to the terraces for irrigation and to prevent erosion and flooding.-Wiki

An island in the Galapagos. Lot's of cactus pads for the land (non-marine) branch of the iguana family. There is a 3rd species of pink iguana on Isabella but you can't visit them.

She was on a boat about this size for a week. There were three similar boats anchored. This might be hers. Or not.

The blue-footed booby below has a relationship with the strange vampire finch. The vampire finch pecks the booby's neck to drink its blood. Boobys spend a lot of time in courtship with foot display. Those with the bluest feet are considered younger, healthier and more desirable as mates. Not sure if masked boobys or red-footed boobys can inter-breed with these...for sure they don't want to...

Booby

 Mrs. Phred taking a break

The islands were named after these giant tortoises. You put one upside down in the ship's hold and you have no-maintenance fresh meat for months. Galapagos is an archaic Spanish word meaning tortoise.

n his April 26, 1535 letter to Charles VI of Spain, Berlanga reported his detour to islands which he did not name, and informed His Majesty of what he saw there:
“… muchos lobos marinos, tortugas, higuanas, galápagos, … .” “… many sea lions, turtles, iguanas, tortoises, … .”

Macchu Picchu

Mrs. Phred is in Peru today, hiking up to the ruins of Macchu Picchu. She probably left her wetsuit and underwater camera behind with her glitter sandals and she's got her regular camera, canteen. hiking boots, sunscreen and other paraphernalia appropriate for the day.....

I'm mopping the floors in the RV and doing laundry, recovering from another surgery on my temple and scalp. They took a 4x5 inch chunk from my temple and scalp back in November. I'd show you my pix, but I don't want to scare the kiddies. Going back for another round in January....

So all that got me thinking about the Mayan base 20 numbering system....why not use your fingers AND toes for counting?

So let A represent zero
The letters B through T represent 1 -19.....

Therefore R=17
and BA=20 (1x20^1 +0)
and BT=39  (1x20^1 + 19)
and CAA=400 (2x20^2 + 0x20^1 + 0)
and FAS=2018 (5x20^2 + 0X20^1 +18)

If you followed that, your IQ is higher than mine....it took me an hour to work out again...corrections welcome...

So Mrs. Phred will be back from Peru just in time for our 52nd anniversary on Christmas Eve....an unusual date perhaps, but the only thing the Rabbi had open. 52 is CL in my base 20 system and CAROL is a huge number...just the C is 6,400,000...2x20^5.

Has she changed much? She might have gotten easier to live with? Looks about the same....she says the climb to Machu Picchu is very steep and the air is thin....she's feeling dizzy from the altitude...the natives have given her leaves to chew to help her complete the climb...

So I think maybe the Mayans used the numbers above. The zero looks like an empty basket or bowl...cool....there are three types of people in the world....those that can count...and those that can't.