Day 10 - Sunday 22nd May 2022
We're awake at
8.00 am and we go to the restaurant at Captain Hiram's for
breakfast, a 3 meat omlette with potatoes and toast for me.
We make a quick trip to the Walmart just down the road for more
bug spray and notice how much cheaper everything is than on
Captiva, the bug spray is half the price.
Back at Captain Hiram's we go to The Sandbar to watch the
football. It's the last day of the season in the Premier League
and Charlie wants Liverpool to beat Wolves and Manchester City to
lose to Aston Villa as this would mean that Liverpool (his team)
would be champions. Both games are very close and at one point
Man City are 2 - 0 down, but come back to win 3 - 2 and so win
the league. Ah well, that's the life of a football supporter
Charlie, more pain than happiness. It could be worse my friend,
you could support Swindon Town.
Back to the room for a quick freshen up and we are out to Earl's Hideaway at 2.00 pm. This is something that I'd planned to do as they have gig and bike meet every Sunday afternoon. This surpasses my expectations as it's amazingly good fun. There are many motorbikes lined up outside, 90% of them are Harley Davidsons.
There are a number of bars outside and it's already pretty full. It's entirely an elderly clientelle (the girls and Charlie are certainly the youngest here) with lots of cool bikers. We get drinks from one of the small bars and set up a tab. The band are called The Jimmys and are composed of a keyboard player (Jimmy) a guitarist, bassist, saxophonist, trombonist and trumpet player and they play most blues and Americana. We start at a table inside as there's nowhere else to sit, but that's fine as we're next to a large open window looking out at the parked bikes and across the road to the water beyond.
After a while Tam finds a spare table outside in the shade, so we decamp there to be closer to the music.
Me and my bro, just hangin'
Political tolerance not high on the agenda.
I can't tell you what a great time we have here. The band play 3 sets and finish around 6.15 pm. Many drinks are consumed and we buy insulated sleeves to keep our drinks cold as it's a very hot day. I don't know how many drinks we have, but a mixture of beers and rum and cokes are consumed. A conservative estimate would be 25 drinks between the 5 of us, but even so the total bill is $148 including a generous $30 tip. The difference in price between here and Captiva is enormous.
The last hour is spent dancing in front of the stage and there is a tip bucket for the band that people are contributing to. We all put in, but Charlie goes up with a number of $1 bills. Jimmy spots this and gives Charlie a hard time in a friendly and funny way. Charlie decides he's not going to be outdone and makes a big deal in front of the audience of putting a $20 bill into the tip jar. The band are laughing and so are we. The last songs finish to great applause.
Just as we are leaving the band are hanging around and Charlie wants to talk to Jimmy (the keyboard player), so we go over. What a cool guy this man is. He keeps apologising for teasing Charlie (who actually really enjoyed it). We talk for a while laughing and joking and find out that the band are from Wisconsin and have travelled down for a brief Florida tour. The money they get from the gigs and tips will barely cover their costs. Without getting too political I have to say that talking to Jimmy reminds us that there are many Americans that have similar views to our family, this is easy to forget with all the extremism around. No Freedom Seeds for us thank you.
Check out The Jimmys here if you're interested: https://www.thejimmys.net/ Great guys, great music.
We say farewell to Jimmy and walk to Squid Lips to eat. It would be fair to say that we are all tired and squiffy and so I don't really enjoy this meal, but that's somewhat my own fault as I have a blackened salmon sandwich with teriyaki sauce, which is too sweet, but also highly seasoned.
One of the girls had this baked sweet potato
Back to Captain
Hiram's and we go straight back to the room at 8.45 pm. I don't
mind at all as today was always about having an afternoon of fun
at Earl's Hideaway. When I researched where we should go on the
Space Coast I came across Earl's and thought it looked cool. It
was that and more as it ended up even better than I couild have
imagined.
An early evening is a good thing anyway as we are getting up
early tomorrow to go to Kennedy Space Centre. At one point during
the day Tam said 'Wouldn't it be great if we saw a missile
launch'. We have to gently point out to her that a missile launch
would probably not be a good thing. A rocket launch would be ok.