I hate it when that happens!

My family and some of my close friends know that I have a deep and profound dislike for snakes.  I don't care what type or size, they're all huge and deadly serpents in my book.  The story below is further evidence of why snakes should be feared.


Anytime the words "10 foot python" and "penis" are used in the same story you know it's not going to be good but that you've got to read it!


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/thailand-man-penis-python-toilet-attack


And they let the snake go, oh my!

AMI

Anna Maria Island (AMI)-Three words that instantly transform me to a happy state of mind.
For those of you who are not familiar with AMI it's a "salty piece of land" as the great Jimmy Buffett would so eloquently describe it located on the west coast of Florida near Bradenton/Sarasota.  The island is about seven miles long and probably no more than a mile and a half wide.  It was largely undiscovered until about 10 years ago when it started gaining attention in the media as a hidden jewel.  Unfortunately it's not so hidden anymore but it still and always will be a magical place. 


AMI and more specifically Coquina Beach on the south end of the island was the beach of choice for most of us Mulberrian's as we navigated our youth back in the late 60's and 70"s.  Not only was it the closest beach but in my humble opinion it's one of if not the best in a state loaded with awesome beaches.  If you're not familiar with Florida beaches and thinking of making a trip this way I personally favor the west coast (gulf beaches) to those on the east coast (Atlantic beaches).




Beth's family has a history on the island that dates back more than 100 years and I'll share more on that history and tradition in later blogs.  Her Mom and Dad moved to the island in the late 80's after he retired.  He loved fishing and this was the perfect place for them.  Beth's family and extended family are full of fishermen and many of them learned the "how's and when's" of fishing from him, especially when it came to wading up to your neck around the mangroves and throwing a castnet over a school of unsuspecting mullet.  Beth's dad was able to enjoy living on the island for about 10 years until he passed away but left behind an amazing legacy.




We have the privilege of sharing in the care of Beth's mom and will be staying with her for most of the next two months. She's a pleasure to be around, has a great sense of humor and enjoys adventures and outings.  There will be daily beach walks, sitting under the trees on both the bay and gulf side of the island and of course the daily visual extravaganza of sunset but there is also plenty to keep me busy.  There is yard work and work that needs to be done both outside and inside the house.  

Yesterday I started on some of the yard work and in about two hours of trimming and cleaning out bushes I must have done well over 200 squats.  This activity is serving as a painful reminder today that these are muscles that I had ignored for a while.  I'm moving at the pace of about a 90 year old who is taking her 15 year old poodle out for a walk and getting out of a chair is a long drawn out process.  The manual labor is good for the body, mind and soul and I'm looking forward to it but I may just take it a little easy today. 

AMI North to South View



Yep, those are my feet!  I like sending pictures like this to what is now my former colleagues back at Texas Health Huguley 

On the "bay side" of the island-That's the City Pier and Restaurant in the distance 



Every sunset is different and every sunset is spectacular

Just after the sun has gone down

Calendar for Today

Well I'm almost three full weeks into this retirement thing and while I'm not sure what a "typical" day will look like here's the way today shaped up:


6:00-Wake Up!  Always an early riser plus it gets daylight here around 5:00
6:00-8:00           Drink Coffee, watch and listen to the waves, catch up on the news
8:00-8:30           Breakfast while watching and listening to the waves
8:30-9:45           Walk along Cox Beach
9:45-10:00         Get pounded by Beth in rummy while watching and listening to the waves
10:00-11:00       Nap on the couch while listening to the waves
11:00-11:30       Lunch
12:00-3:30         Walk on Long Beach
3:30-4:00           Gelato at the Chocolate Tofino!
4:00-5:30           Rest in the room and the hammock while watching and listening to the waves
5:30-6:00           Dinner


Heading out now for a walk on Chesterman Beach. Looking forward to watching and listening to the waves.  Still two and a half hours of sunlight!


My brother Gerald told me shortly before I retired that if he would have known how much fun retirement was he would have retired 40 years ago................I think he was on to something!

A very Happy Birthday wish to a very special young lady!
We Love You!
Mom & Dad

Wild Pacific Trail

Yesterday was spent hiking the Wild Pacific Trail in Ucluelet which is about 20 miles from Tofino.    Although it winds through a couple of neighborhoods, for the most part the trail hugs the rocky/rugged coast line. 


The trails founder/developer is a local guy name "Oyster Jim".  Anybody named "Oyster Jim" has to have a pretty interesting story.  I've attached a link to a website that has a little bit of his story.  I like his quote: "I start with impossible and work backwards from there".  I bet he's a pretty entertaining character.


http://www.wildpacifictrail.com/oysterjim.html


The pictures that I took really don't do it justice so if you are interested in seeing and learning more about it I would suggest you also look at the link to the trail's website.  One of the things that we really enjoyed about this walk was that while it was along the coast line there were benches with incredible lookouts about every 50 yards.  Even with these outlooks being so close together because of the winding trail every view was different.


http://www.wildpacifictrail.com


All said and done we probably did about 12-14 miles yesterday, good stuff!

Amphitrite Lighthouse

Pacific Wild Trail

Rocky Bluffs Portion of Trail

Tree wasn't sure which direction to go

Canadian Surfing Report

Yesterday morning (5.16) the cruise ended in Vancouver.  It was an awesome trip with great weather and two ports that we had not visited before (Sitka and Icy Strait Point) that were both excellent.  The next part of the trip started immediately. 


We rented a car which we picked up a couple of blocks from the cruise terminal and headed towards our next destination which was Tofino, British Columbia which is located on Vancouver Island.  We tend to view the journey as part of the adventure and to get to Tofino a little journey/adventure is involved.


Tofino is a small city located directly on the pacific ocean as you will see from many of the pictures below.  To get here it's a two hour ferry ride from Vancouver to Nanaimo and then about a 3 hour drive on what is mostly a curvy mountain road.  If you've ever driven the road to Hana on Maui, it's somewhat similar.  The scenery along the way was awesome.  Huge inland lakes and streams, massive fir trees, snow capped mountains and a few more curves!


Was the journey worth it?  Let's put it this way.  Beth and I have enjoyed traveling to many places around the world and we're asked all the time if we have a favorite(s).  It's really hard to say, because every place is exciting and different although some are certainly more memorable than others.  Let's just say we spent  a lot of time today debating if we've ever been any place as unique and beautiful as Tofino. 


Think ocean, mountains, fir trees all converging at the same time and that's Tofino.  The pictures really won't do it justice.  The beach outside our hotel http://www.pacificsands.com  is about a mile long, 500 yards wide at low tide and 200 yards wide at high tide.  Go a couple of miles either way and there are more beaches similar to this one.  Some longer than others but all amazing.


Yesterday and today were mostly spent on foot exploring our beach (Cox Bay) and Chesterman Beach, however we also did about a 4 mile bike ride into the town of Tofino.  Had dinner at a really cool little waterfront pub in town called Jack's Diner.  While eating we enjoyed a sea lion swimming right below the dock, an eagle flying around being harassed by a much smaller bird and a raccoon wandering around on the ledge looking for a handout (a raccoon that wasn't roadkill, something we don't see too often in Texas).


Now about that Canadian Surfing Report.  I hadn't really ever pondered the question before but if you had asked me if there was surfing in Canada I would have probably said something along the line of  ice hockey-yes, downhill skiing-yes, bobsledding-yes, but probably not surfing.  Boy would I have been wrong. This is a "surfing town"!  Right outside our window we've been watching surfers since about 5:30 this morning.  Right now it's 9:15 PM and the last surfers are just leaving the beach.  Water temperature is around 55 degrees so a wet suit is required but the waves looked about 8-10 feet with very good form.  While it may not be the North Shore of Hawaii, it's very good surfing conditions and there are a bunch of good surfers to watch.


Tomorrow we're exploring more beaches and the Wild Pacific Trail in Ucluelet.  A whole lot of walking going on,that's the Tucker way!

View from our hotel room-Pacific Sands Beach Resort

Cox Bay Beach at Low Tide

Frank Island at the South end of Chesterman Beach-There are a couple of houses on the island.  At low tide you can walk to them

Church in Downtown Tofino

Ran into George Clooney out on the beach this afternoon!

From our Table at Jacks Diner 

 

I had to stop and take a picture of this road sign.  I've never seen a parachuting rat but at least I've been warned!  Upon close inspection someone had painted the rat and parachute on the sign although it looked real

Ketchikan

Today we are in Ketchikan which is the last stop on the cruise.  Tomorrow is a sea day and then we end in Vancouver.  It may sound like a broken record but I'm good with this broken record; another day in the upper 70's and not a cloud in the sky.


The typical weather up here at this time of the year is low/mid 50's with a bunch of rain.  Ketchikan typically gets around 12 feet of rain and had record rainfall of over 202 inches back in 1949.  We've really lucked out weather wise this whole trip.  One of the pictures below was from the pool deck yesterday afternoon.  Looks more like the scene from a Caribbean cruise than Alaska.  I tried to get Beth to take a picture of me in my speedo but she declined.


We've been to Ketchikan before and experienced the typical weather so we are extra grateful. 


We did a nice hike using a trail we found on an app called "All Trails" that Sarah shared with us.  We did the Rainbird Trail which has a trailhead close to downtown.  Unfortunately "close" in this case was pretty much straight up hill to get to it but it was a great trail.


So thankful for this trip and so thankful for all the wonderful memories of times with my good friend Mike.


Could be a few days before you hear from me again on the blog.  Once we're off the ship we rent a car and go to Tofino which is a coastal city near the Pacific Rim National Park on Vancouver Island.
Check it out if you get a chance:


http://www.tofino-bc.com


Creek Street

Must have been a crazy place in the 20's

Ketchikan from the Rainbird Trail

Downtown

Alaska or Caribbean Cruise? 

Mr. Tucker this is Mr. Gardner............

Yesterday (5.13) morning I lost a dear friend.  Mike Gardner, someone I had known and been friends with practically all my life passed away unexpectedly at his home in the Sarasota/Bradenton area.  My prayers are with his wife Linda and his mother Nell at this unimaginable time. 

Many of you reading this knew Mike and have your own stories, some of you reading this never had the honor of knowing this amazing guy, either way I’d like to share a few of my special memories.

As I stated earlier Mike and I were friends pretty much from birth.  His Dad worked with the railroad, my Dad worked with the railroad.  His Mother and my Mother were friends, it’s a small town, I think you get the picture.

I lived in the City of Mulberry, Mike was raised in the bustling suburbs, Willow Oak.  What this meant as kids was that unlike so many of my other friends I couldn’t just hop on my trusty Schwinn Sting Ray bicycle and go over to his house.  We were separated by about 10 miles, but with school, baseball, family get togethers, train trips to Richmond, Va to see snow (where it would usually be about 70 degrees), we saw each other plenty and had some great times.

One of my favorite early memories of Mike came at my expense. 

In Mulberry in the late 60’s for most of us boys nothing was more important than little league baseball.  If a guy my age played I can pretty much guarantee you that I can to this day tell you which team in our league he played on.  This is not some mystical power I have, ask any of the guys playing at that time and most of them can still do the same thing.

I was a skinny kid pitching for the Cubs, Mike was a beast of a young man even at the tender age of 12 playing for the Cardinals.  I don’t know if he got ahold of one of my incredibly slow “fast balls” or a curveball that didn’t break but what I do remember is it leaving the ballpark at an incredible rate of speed and a trajectory which took it over the light poles in center field.  I’m reasonably sure this was the longest and highest homerun ever hit on Field #2 at the old Mulberry Little League fields. I’m equally sure that the ball hasn’t landed yet.

Mulberry High School was great.  We had many of the same classes including our failed attempts as actors in Ms. Wanamaker’s drama class.  There was Key Club where we both served as officers, Mike playing football for the mighty Mulberry Panthers while I focused on golf which was more appropriate for the slow, skinny teenager I had become.  We had a blast through it all.

Upon graduation from high school we both took the “baby steps” route and attended community college at Polk Community College in Winter Haven.  Often Mike and I along with a couple of other shady characters (Drew Eason and Keith McMahan) would ride together.  This was about a 45 minute to 2 hour commute depending on where we wanted to eat lunch. 

Now one thing you need to know about Mike is that even in high school and college he was a very neat and orderly person.  I’d come running out of the house half dressed, with a ball cap on, my books and papers flying everywhere.  Mike would be looking sharp all day, every day.  He loved music and kept his large selection of cassette tapes in alphabetical order in a carrying case.  Practically every day that he drove I along with whoever else was riding together that particular day would “rearrange” the order of his tapes just for the heck of it.  The next morning and with him never saying a word they would be back in perfect order ready for us to scramble them up again.

After completing the exhaustive academic requirements of community college Mike went to the University of South Florida and I went to the University of Florida.  Remember there were no cell phones, facebook or twitter at that time but through the years we stayed in touch.  Mike marrying Linda, Me marrying Beth, them settling in Sarasota/Bradenton, us moving from Florida to Texas, there was always a connection.  We were connected by family, we were connected by friends and we were connected by this little dusty town of Mulberry.

As we moved into the cell phone era we would talk more frequently, especially from the middle of August through early January when we would dissect every Gator victory or defeat.  We had also made it a habit of trying to get together for breakfast every year at Christmas when I would be in Florida. We were successful in this tradition more often than not and I am so thankful we enjoyed breakfast together this past Christmas.  We’d check up on each other, check on our respective families, catch up on any “Mulberry news”, the latest in Gator football and try to remember whose turn it was to buy.

I’m not a facebook person and don’t know if Mike was or not, we stayed connected because that’s what friends do and we did it mainly by phone.  If I called him my standard opening line was “what’s up bud”?  If Mike called me it would always be “Mr. Tucker this is Mr. Gardner”, God I’m going to miss hearing those words!