Great lunch

Nancy and I go out to lunch normally two or three times a week. More often than not we end up over at the beach. That can be anywhere from New Symrna to near St. Augustine – whatever strikes us. We have a few “must return to’s” and many more, “we need to try that some time’s”. We’re a fairly balanced team since Nancy tends to want to return to favorites and I tend to want more explorations. This week was a mix.

On Tuesday we headed to an old favorite – DJ’s under the bridge at Port Orange. We tend to go there when there is a sale at Hancock Fabric. It usually starts out as a trip to the beach and about halfway there, Nancy remembers the sale. Anyway, DJ’s is a hole in the wall right on the Halifax. Outside eating only, so it’s weather dependent. We like DJ’s a bit better than the “Deck Down Under” a few hundred feet away on the south side of the bridge. Deck Down Under is more commercial, quite a bit larger, a bit more crowded and louder. At DJ’s we always have a cup of the fish gumbo, which is the best we’ve found around. Nice and spicy. Along with that we had Buffalo Shrimp sandwiches. Nancy has had the bucket of clams but that’s a special occasion lunch – like the time Simon visited us.

Thursday we headed north towards Flagler Beach. About a month ago we had taken the same route. On that excursion, we did an appetizer of Calamari with a pitcher of brew at a place called AJ’s under the bridge – seems like we do these under the bridge things. This was the SR100 bridge over the Halifax. From there we headed north on A1A about 30 miles to Crescent Beach. I had heard about a place called the South Beach Grill from a guy at Lowes – the conversation had started about electrical fixtures but ended up with a beach restaurant swap. Anyway, we found the Grill just fine but also saw first hand that it was very popular and there was zero chance of finding a table. Along the way there we had spotted a place that looked interesting called JT’s Fishshack. It had quite a few cars but we decided it would be an easier lunch there than South Beach. What a great find. It doesn’t look like much but as soon as you go inside you notice that there’s a nice wine bar, a blackboard with a “wine special of the day”, and good looking food on every table. I ordered a crab cake sandwich; Nancy got a soft shell crab sandwich. Mine was good; hers was totally awesome. TJ’s became an instant “must return to”. So on this Thursday we decided to hit TJ’s. We passed it around 12:30 and it was jammed up tight so we decided to head further north and try South Beach Grill again. Being a Thursday in Sept and after 1PM, probably doable.

It was and we sat outside facing the ocean. Whatever the food, the ambience was perfect. Super menu so it all sounded good. We had a starter bowl of Minorcan conch chowder. There were two kinds of soup, the conch and blue crab. Nancy didn’t have her glasses so she didn’t see the blue crab and I preferred the conch. The soup was great but in hindsight, we should have ordered differently. I ordered a blackened fish wrap – it was blackened in a wine sauce with cajun spices, grilled pepper and garlic. Had a choice of wrap material – spinach, chipolte, tomato, and plain. Pasta salad came with it. Nancy got a steak wrap. This too was made in some kind of a wine sauce with peppers and onions. Both were incredible – maybe the steak was even more incredible than the fish. The wraps were really large as was the portions of pasta salad so we each ended up leaving about half the salad. Next time we’ll order a cup of each type soup and then split a wrap. On the way out we noticed that board had the early bird special – 8 jumbo fried shrimp platter with a bowl of Jambalaya gumbo. This place also had a fine wine bar with the wine served in giant glasses. I’m pretty sure both places – South Beach Grill and JT’s fishshack – are owned by the same people. Totally different menu’s but lots of similarities and in both places there are signs telling you how far it is to the other.

South Beach Grill is right on the beach entrance, about 100yds south of the highway 206 causeway. It’s a drive-on beach so a great day would be to get there in time for lunch, do the beach all afternoon, and then head back north on A1A and do dinner at JT’s.

Gored

I have a mental image of Al Gore banging his head against the wall, trying to end it all. The 2006 hurricane season is shaping up as a total disaster for the global warmsters. For the scientist kind of warmsters, this is no big deal, just another datapoint. But for Gore, this is career crushing. He knows he’s a loser but he needs another shot. To get it he has to hook onto something that trumps all other problems and be way, way out in front of it. He and most everybody else on the planet understands that the average surface temp of the earth has been rising for a bit, I guess it would qualify as a trend. But nominally Earth is dynamic and always changing one way or the other so in it’s 4.5B year history, chances are there have been zillions of micro-micro pico- micro trends of a few decades. So it’s kind of hard for me to get too emotional about any new “trend”; Probably made more difficult having lived through the mini ice age and the predicted return of the glaciers as far south as Florida in the 50’s. But big Al decides to forget issues like taxes, immigration, and other such trivia to latch onto global warming. He writes a book; makes a documentary – all designed to portray him as the lone political voice able to recognize the looming disaster and put the US on the path to lead the world away from the crisis. The hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, record seasons, were enough of a trend line for Al because he probably truly does believe the warming is man made and inexorably heading towards a world of floods and natural disaster. He’s smart enough to know that even if it’s true, there’s nothing he can do about it, but what the hell, maybe he can use it as a shield to put all the loser stuff behind him and look like a visionary. What he needs is a couple of Katrina’s in 2006 and 2007 to catapult him back into the White House. And all the weather guys are forecasting 2006 to break all records for numbers of storms and intensity. Lots of Class 5’s and perhaps, just maybe he could luck out and hit a class 7.

But reality is setting in. Midway through hurricane season, nary a storm worth mentioning. Even with the super hype and giving names to good rain storms, it’s starting to look more like an average storm year – a few close calls and some good blows between mid Sept and mid Oct. It’s still possible that he can recover but the window is starting to close. Hence the mental image of Al banging his head against the wall. A loser again.

But what about the lack of storms. I predicted that – but just because statistically we’d had two bad seasons and I didn’t think it likely that we’d have 3 in a row. Also we’d had very wet springs the seasons prior to the stormy hurricane seasons and this year was much drier than normal so I supposed that overall the weather patterns had changed. That plus I bought a generator and put lots of effort and money into hurricane prep this year.

The thing I really like is that it proves, at least to me, that there is no hard link between global warming and bad hurricane seasons. Either that or the climatologists are holding back information that the earth cooled this past year. They are a little boxed in. If the earth did warm and we didn’t have the forecast storms, then maybe there is no link. On the other hand if the earth cooled a tad, that would reinforce the link between the temp and storms but would ease people’s concerns about warming as long term trend and also destroy the theory that burning fossil fuels is the source of the warming since we certainly burned more fuel this year than the year before.

My fading image is big Al meeting with Indian Medicine Men contracting for some rain and storm dances. Promising new casinos if they will only produce another Katrina, maybe making landfall on Long Island – wiping out Clinton headquarters.

reel finale

Final word on the reels

I put in a solid week fishing with the 2650 and can see for sure why I loved it so. It would be easy to write this model off as wimpy and lacking features but for light fishing – what a beauty. For sure it lacks the centrifugal and magnetic spool braking systems making it a more difficult reel to cast. Even for me, the first few casts had me sharpening up my backlash removal skills but I was soon laying them out consistently 100′. I matched it up with a 5′ Shakespeare light action rod. The combination was incredibly light, even compared to my next lightest Shimano outfit. The retrieve is slow – low, low gear ratio and tiny spool which makes it unsuitable for buzzing over grass and as light as the whole outfit is – not really well suited for fishing over top of grass in any way. But for fishing small top water lures or slow sinking worms, perfect. It doesn’t have an anti-reverse feature which means that for worm fishing, you don’t have to overtly disengage the spool to let a fish run. That’s a nice feature (actually a lack of a feature) when a fish hits the worm early and hard because you can instantly create some slack. With the normal spool disengagement system, you can lose a fish when the line tightens prematurely before you can hit the button. I’ll probably put it away for a while since the fish are still way back in the grass and this rig is definitely not suited for hauling them through the bushes.

Now to the 4500C. I think I mentioned that I was having some trouble with the spool engaging/disengaging reliably. I could get it to work at times and then it would fail to engage. After about a dozen assemble/dissamble cycles with no clean solution, I gave up and took it to my reel guy in Daytona. I was convinced that a main gear was worn – even though I couldn’t see it. I did have a little nag on my mind that it was still gribby in one particular area that I was nervous about taking apart. I remembered from many total reel breakdowns, that one area in particular was loaded with little, tiny, teeny weenie, spring loaded parts. In my prime I could take down even that area and put it back together easily. I also know that I don’t see as well as I did and thatmy fingers don’t work nearly as well on little parts. I cleaned around that area, dunked it liberally in WD 40, and made it look clean to the casual observer. Still, I would have felt better to have really got in there and scrubbed it down. So I wasn’t too surprised when the repair guy called and said the reel was fixed and that all it needed was a good cleaning in the disengagement mechanism. That was kind of embarrassing since I told the guy that I’d cleaned it and pinpointed the gear I thought was a problem. I went over to Daytona to pick up the reel. The guy cranked over the reel a few times and it worked just fine. He was telling me how it just needed cleaning while I cranked a few times. After half a dozen successful engagements it slipped and missed a half a crank. It then did that a few times and the guy told me that was normal since this reel was not a double engagement do dah. Meaning it could take a full turn of the handle rather than half a turn. Hmmmmmmm. That’s BS – same gears as in my 5000’s. Then it hung up for a couple of full turns and in a few more cranks it was back to the same problem I had experienced – just wouldn’t engage the spool. He said, “well I guess it’s those springs or the gear” and vowed to fix it properly. We left the reel there and I told Nancy that I felt vindicated and relieved that my cleaning skills were not at fault. She thought I was a bit wacko since I was happy that the reel was still not working. Not really – I would have felt really great if he had fixed it properly and found a hard fault. But finding it to be my inability to clean it was a hard pill to swallow. I guess I need my reputation/self confidence more than I need the reel. They called again while I was in the hospital and we didn’t get around to it until right after Labor Day. It checked out fine at the tackle shop so on to the lake.

How does it fish? I had never fished with this model before and my initial expectation was that the light weight , centrifugal braking and narrow spool would make it a great reel. And the star drag would make it better suited for some of the heavy water I fish. I also figured I wouldn’t like the slow retrieve from the factory installed gear ratio and the small, two knob handle. I always modified my reels for both these deficiencies but doubt seriously any of those secondary market parts would be available today. There’s a possibility I could break down one of my 5000C’s to rob the parts but that’s a long shot. Anyway, I got the reel and entered the flight test phase. Smoooooooth! Casts like a dream. I hooked up a 4” senko on a 2/0 hook – so it was a nominally light terminal rig. The bearings clearly make it superior to the 2650. It is heavier than I’d ideally have and I do hate the dual knob handle but without a doubt it’s the smoothest of the Ambassadeur series for me. I’m confident I can drop down lure size into the 3/16 oz range and still cast well. I like the narrow spool better than the 5000D so between the two, it’s a toss-up which I like best. If I were designing, I’d take the 4500, drop the star drag so it would approach the light weight and feature set of the 2650 but with the bearings of the 5000’s. And comparing them with the modern Shimano’s – I like the thumb bar spool release of the Shimano’s and know the modern reels are more forgiving in terms of casts but I enjoy the round reels and will mix up useage in the future.

golf story

Just heard a local news item that I thought I’d share since I kind of doubt it will go much further than here.

It seems that the Deland Mainstreet Association sponspered a golf event at the Victoria Park course. On a particular day, anyone getting a hole in one on the 12th hole would win $10,000 in cash. 150 people lined up and made the shot. One guy nailed it. Now it gets interesting. Turns out there’s an insurance company called Hole in One that insures these events. The sponser buys insurance so that in the event someone actually makes the shot, they insurance company pays the prize. The insurance company cuts the guy a check for $5000. Naturally he’s upset and feels ripped off. Just like anybody would. What we then learn is that the insurance policy called for the hole to be 212 yards from the tee but the actual layout was 174 yards. They’re willing to pay only what the odds and the premium charged would say are appropriate. Of course the Deland Mainstreet Association is “outraged” and will never use this insurance company again.

In my opinion the insurance company is right and the Mainstreet Association should make good and award the golfer another $5000 since they set up the tourney and advertised the prize. So far no sign that the guy is going to get anything more than $5000. Of course the TV article is making the insurance company the bad guy.

the two Ernestos

Ernesto could be the perfect storm. I’m posting this input after listening to the latest report which puts the storm as a minimal Tropical storm about midway between Cuba and South Florida. The forecaster had a tear in his eye as he used the term “minor” severe storm. That sounded like an oxymoron to me but he just couldn’t bring himself to say that we were going to just have a good rain storm later in the week and let it go at that. Also, the total hurricane system is in full motion now with evacuations, shelters, emergency services etc etc etc and there’s just too much momentum for anyone to admit this is just a ho hum summer storm. When I say Ernesto could be the perfect storm, what I mean is that we get plenty of rain to start filling the lake; not much wind so we don’t have things flying around and trees crashing down around us; schools close so the kids get an unexpected break; and we lose power for a while. In a perfect storm we’d lose power for exactly one tank of gas in the new generator so that the expense and hard work in setting it up and cabling is justified.. My biggest worry is Joey riding it out on the boat. I noticed a couple of pilings near his boat that still had not been reset since the last storm and I have some concerns about those breaking loose and acting like torpedos in the marina. I’m also concerned that when it breaks loose of Florida it will strengthen and head up the east coast, potentially screwing up our planned trip next week. We were going to take the real coastal route including the ferries and all the outerbanks – which may not exist after a good storm. The other thing I’m really interested in seeing is how the beaches fare. The counties and state have just spent about $40M in sand restoration which really seemed dumb to me. Storms pull out sand and deposit sand – it’s just a fact of nature and I always cringe when politicians get in the loop and try to fight mother nature.

But the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Ernesto is my grandfather. I barely remember him since he died when I was about 5 years old but there’s still a mind picture way down deep. He was white haired with a big bushy mustache and most often smoking a big, black cigar. I remember sitting around the big table eating an Italian feast where the food just kept coming, and coming and coming. A huge bowl of pasta was just a small part of the whole event but I remember being stuffed before they cleared the table and broke out the turkey. My grandfather kept saying, “eat, eat, mange mange or something like that.No wonder I turned into a fat kid. He was born in Italy but I don’t know where or when. He was fairly old when my father was born to his second wife and my dad was born in 1916. So my best guess is that he was probably born in the 1870’s. I get to that by estimating he was in his late 50’s or early 60’s when he died in 1945. He was a pharmacist in Italy and opened a drug store when he immigrated to Philadelphia. That was probably in the time frame between 1900 and 1910 but I can’t be certain about that either. I do have one picture of him that I check from time to time, especially since they named the storm after him. I wonder how they knew???

Voting Democrat

Well, I might have found a Democrat that I could vote for. To the best of my knowledge I’ve never voted for a Dem, not even JFK. But the other night I listened to the Democrat candidates for governor debate each other. It wasn’t intentional but the debates came on right after the Lehrer News report and I was down to the last few numbers in a tough Sudoku puzzle and wasn’t paying much attention to the TV. I got up to turn it off, planning to listen to XM, when I heard one Dem land a body blow on the other. That got my attention and I thought, if what this guy just said is correct, the guy who was slammed could be my dream candidate. Although I always vote Republican, I’m much more of a libertarian and only vote Republican because they come closer to what I really want – which is almost no government at all. A big army would cover me just fine; get rid of the rest of them. So when Dem #1 accused Dem#2 of having the worst attendance record in congress and having missed more votes than almost any other congressman, I’m thinking I may have found my guy. If enough politicians behaved such that there was never a voting quoram, just think how little damage they could do. The absentee guy’s name is Jim Davis. I’m interested enough that I plan to email him and ask him to make a pledge to the effect that he’ll be the most absentee Governor in Fla history. If he does, he’s got my vote for sure. If he backs off, I’ll know it’s politics as usual and he really does plan to do things – and in my mind, since he’s a Democrat, doing all the wrong things. Fingers crossed……

But first he has to win the Democrat primary. I can’t vote in that but I’m hoping the majority of the Democrats agree with me and name Davis as their guy.

Pierson News

Big Pierson News. I think I mentioned that we had a real, albiet mini, deli right here in downtown Pierson. It’s real because it makes decent sandwiches and uses nothing but Boars Head cold cuts. The family that operates it sounds like they are from Jersey or NY – definitely Dago’s. We got stuck there in the rain this week and started chatting with the owners and they sprung the news. They will be opening a Pizzeria and Bakery adjacent to the deli. They have a set of plans that will make the place look like an old world restaurant with a courtyard. The guys brother in law, an Italian baker, is moving over from Milan and will bake bread and pastries. They said that they just couldn’t find any decent bread within shipping range, especially hard rolls. Man do I agree with that assessment. They will be installing a brick oven, the right kind to do pizza and crusty bread. I just hope the locals are able to support a good bread and pastry operation. I think the pizza will go just fine since there’s nothing within about 15 miles of Pierson and I think Pizza will be an ok crossover for the Mexicans.
And I’m reasonably sure there won’t be any ham and pineapple pizza options.

snookered

Nancy always tells me I’m full of crap – or a crap equivalent. I have an opportunity to see if she’s factually correct Friday. As part of a physical, I’m having a colonoscopy on Friday. Since we have a family history of colon cancer, it seems like a good idea to have an internal check every five years or so. As anyone who has had one will tell you, the procedure itself is a nothing but the test prep is a bit unpleasant. Basically you want your innards cleaned out which means no input and lots of output. Seems like a perfect opportunity to make an actual measurement to see just how full of crap I am. So my plan is to weigh in Wednesday PM which is the point of last solid input and again on Friday at 8AM which is when I leave for the hospital. We should then have a definitive answer as a percentage of total body weight.

I do feel a bit snookered. The standard way of triggering the cleansing is to take two bottles of this really nasty tasting liquid over a day’s time. You can mix this stuff with anything you want but previous experimentation proves that it can make any liquid nasty tasting. And it gets nastier with each new drink you consume. You don’t want to mix it with something you like because forever after you’ll taste it when you pop an old favorite. That’s why I never mixed it with Bud Lite. For some people it’s throw up nasty but I manage to get it all down. I was recently told that you really don’t need to take the liquid but can just take a pill. Certainly that seems preferable so I mentioned that to the doc and he said, “sure, no problem” and wrote the prescription for the pills instead of the liquid. On leaving the office, the nurse gives me the written instructions, at which point I learn that it’s not a pill but rather 28 pills. The pills are to be taken 3 at a time about 15 mintues apart with 8 oz of fluid each time. This starts 24 hours before the procedure and has programmed gaps in time between pill batches. This is more than a gallon of fluid intake. In addition to that they want you to take in plenty of other fluids. So after reading all the instructions, I’m not sure this pill thing is really going to be any more pleasant than the nasty liquid. I then found out the next downside to the pills – cost. These pills cost about $80 compared to maybe $2 for the liquid. Had I known that, for sure I would have gone liquid. And you really have to be a pill taker to deal with these. When I hear the word pill, I think aspiran. These guys are giant by my pill standard. I don’t have trouble with pills but anyone who does would choke on these for sure. I was also snookered into an upper test. The Doc said that as long as I was sedated, it made sense to do an endoscopy as well and it would be stupid not to. He presented it in such a fashion that it would have been really bad form to say no.

The day. I weighed in at 190 on our scale and started the pill sequence at 9AM. As it turns out there was one more complication which I knew would make the next 48 hours memorable. On Tuesday I started getting those back pains you get with a kidney stone. I can’t describe the pain but it’s quite sharp and occurs on a regular basis rather than continuously. All day Wednesday they were on a two hour cycle where the pain is killer for about 10 minutes and gone within 20. I made the calculated risk to go thru with the colonoscopy knowing that it was potentially not going to be pretty. My focus would surely be spread between the two and maybe that would be a good thing. I decided to start flooding my system on Tuesday in an effort to maybe flush out the stone before Friday. And, oh yeah, I got an armful of spider mite bites on Wednesday which was driving me crazy as well. I have to believe I’m maxed out on what’s going on with me – kind of a negative perfect storm

And the answer – 5 pounds. Of course I haven’t eaten anything in 36 hours so I think I would have lost most of that anyway. So how does 1% crap sound. Certainly a long way from “full of crap”. And oh yeah, definitely the pills are better – worth whatever Nancy paid for them.

I’m off for the party. Wish me luck.

no no Vero

Well we’re definitely not moving to Vero Beach. Scratch that one off the list of potentials. We went down last Saturday for Nancy to attend a mini-high school reunion. So many of her classmates live in Fl that they get together on occasion – I guess just to hear New York accents. I dropped her off at the meeting place, the Lobster Shanty, and headed for the beach. I figured to get in a few hours fishing while she re-uned.

My first jolt was crossing the intracoastal at Wabasso – that’s a few miles south of Sebastian. The last time I crossed that bridge it was a small, wooden swivel style bridge. Now it’s a gigantic concrete monster kind of bridge. There was all kinds of great fishing in the river there and plenty of places to just pull over and wade the shoreline. No more. Now a very, very public park with loads of skiers and personal watercraft have the river churned to a froth. Certainly no place to wade even if any self respecting trout or snook would swim there.

So much for river fishing; on to the beach to surf fish. I was prepared for both. The first few miles were wall to wall multi jillion dollar homes but I did find a beach access about a mile or so south of the inlet. There were only two cars parked there so I knew it would be quiet. I walked a block or so on a sand path over the berm and sure enough the ocean was right where I left it. There were a few people swimming but no other fisherman on the beach. Several boats trolling a hundred yards or so offshore but no surf fishing. It looked perfect so I set up and scanned the shoreline for sandfleas. Yep, plenty of signs. I dug down and immediately learned that the sand construct was quite different than I’m used to. It’s soft for the first inch and then turns to super hard, gravelly kind of material. I figured I could work with that but my first scoop yielded only micro fleas; not one I’d think about keeping. I worked the shore for the next 20 minutes until my fingertips were seriously sore and came up with one flea that would be a marginal keeper in Flagler. So I ended up with “3 to a hook” kind of sandfleas. The only thing that could save the trip was a fish. Didn’t happen.

So the bottom line for me is with only micro sandfleas, the area between Sebastian and Vero is a no-go. I wondered if the people in those mansions checked that out before they built. At least I learned the bad news before I made any investment there.

More Reel talk

Since my reel refurb input, I’ve been fishing with the old reels and want to make some observations visa vis comparison with modern gear.

The most significant difference between the old and new is that the older reels require a bit more thumb control since they have a less precise spool braking system. The old reels have a centrifugal system but it uses only 2 slider weights whereas the new reels have 6. The new reels also have a magnetic adjustment which is nonexistent on the originals. The other difference that impacts casting is that on the new reels, the level wind disengages when the spool disengages so as the line unspools, there is a dynamic angle between the line and the guide. Personally I think that drags it a bit and results in line position discontinuities when you start the retrieve. By that I mean that wherever the guide happened to be when you made the cast, that’s where it starts to rewind the line when you engage the spool- regardless of the position of the line or direction of the wind. With the older reels the level wind guide remains engaged when the spool is disengaged to cast. That means that the guide follows the line exactly. To me that’s a definite plus so long as the reel is well oiled and the parts are in good shape. But if you don’t maintain the level wind mechanism, that component will slow down the whole cast. I grew up understanding that which is why I frequently oil that functional area of my reels, even the new ones. Just a habit.

So the net of it is that given both sets of gear, I can probably get a few more feet out of the older reels but for a beginner, no question, the new reels are superior. Also, one pain on the older reels is that the spool is disengaged with a separate button which requires using both hands to prepare a cast. With the new reels the spool is disengaged with a thumb bar making it much faster and more natural. I grew up with the pushbuttons and my thumb on the spool which may be one reason I never experience the problem Si has with this thumb resting on the spool release bar. I prefer the new thumb bar for sure.

I’m mostly using the 5000D but will switch over to the 2650 this week. I want to try using micro lures since that’s the reason I bought that reel in the first place. Very light reel, very light spool so it used to spin very freely with small weights. The one I really want to put to the test is the 4500C but the gears on that guy were just worn out to the point where the spool engagement was problematic. After assembling and disassembling and changing washers and springs, I have given up and taken it to a reel place. The guy said it was 40 years old and he wasn’t sure he could get the part but would try. If he crashes on me, I think I can cannibalize one of my old 5000C’s and steal the right gear to make it work. They are not identical but I think close enough to let me interchange with just a little nibbling.