Life in Ft. Myers

February. 2016

With this blog entry we'll try to catch you up with a busy month and the many activities that go on in Ft. Myers every February, as well as Colleen's newest sewing projects and Wayne's ever-present boating repair adventures.

Ft. Myers Entertainment 

During February the city celebrates Thomas Edison, its most famous winter resident.  We showed you the Artfest last blog.  There's also a Mutt Strutt dog show, a Children's Parade, a car show, a craft show and the culminating nighttime Edison Light Parade, held the last weekend of the month.  Over the years the city has worked hard and successfully to bring life into its downtown.

This fountain statue features Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone,
commemorating one of the many camping trips the friends made into
the wilds of Florida in the early 1900s.

Leif Lustig, dockmaster at the Ft. Myers City Docks.
Friendly, hardworking and willing to wear a pink chef.'s hat
for the Valentine cookout and potluck.
Leif, as always, thank you for a wonderful stay. 

Mutt Strutt Dog Show

The biggest

And the smallest.  They say it's a dog??????
  Notice the Great Dane's tail in the upper left.

For just a dollar, a "kiss" from a French Bulldog

We had fun watching the Hot Dog Races.
The owners, many of whom had outfits coordinating
with those of their weiner dogs, were as much fun
 to watch as the dogs.

The Children's Parade

The second Saturday in February is the Children's Parade.  It features kids and their parents and we wish we could show you more photos.  I think I like it better than the big nighttime parade at the end of the month.

The Junior Royalty for the Edison Festival of Light

What a wild idea!

We saw many bands and this particular one was a standout as
 its members danced and played their way down the street.

These children in their wagons are all being pulled by "dadpower,"
hitched up at the front

There were Budweiser horses and this.

The most elaborate float.  I hope it won a prize.

Car Show

One of the great events for Wayne during the Edison Festival month is the collector car show,  It draws all manner of car from the 1930s to today's models.

 We're in Florida, right?  So we shouldn't have been surprised to discover a band populated entirely by oldsters.  Not just a band but the whole nine yards - cheerleaders, majorettes and a flag corps too.  We understand that The Awesome Original Second Time Arounders Marching Band from St. Petersburg, FL is a famous group (see  www.secondtimearounders.com) that travels all around mostly Florida to play.  The group is the largest permanent adult marching band in the world.  Their website says that their members have marched in a high school, college or military marching band and have dreamed of doing it one more time.

The majorettes and cheerleaders were full of energy.

The band is so large we couldn't get a photo of the entire group.

The Edison Festival of Lights Parade

The month ends with an after-dark parade filled with lighted floats, bands, cars and fireworks over the river, all celebrating Thomas Edison, Ft. Myer's famous winter resident and the inventor of the electric light bulb.  

All the parade entries are decorated with electric lights.
What would Thomas E. think if he could see this display?

The parade crowd is entertained with a fireworks show
 before the parade starts.

World War II Vintage Airplane Display

These airplanes were on display one weekend at Page Field in Ft. Myers. For $12 each we were allowed to climb into a B24 and a B17 airplane and to view a P51 Mustang up close.  When I say "climb into" I mean just that.  It was very tight moving from the front of the planes through the bomb bays and toward the tail gunners position.  We were thoroughly impressed when we thought about a cousin's husband who was shot down over France in a B24 and later crash landed at the cliffs of Dover in a B17 and made it home from the war.

Looking into the cockpit

It's hard to imagine what the aircrews endured in the gunnery
 section of these planes.  We could see why there was
little chance for the tail gunner to bail out if a plane was shot down.

the B-17

And, Of Course We Have Repairs

How did this happen?   We found the top half of our port bow light laying on the deck one day .

Old light disassembled versus the new replacement.  Another $54

Oh yes.  This is the second time to reseal the drain in the master shower.
 This time all the caulking was dug out and replaced right down to the original installation seal.

Sometimes fingers get in the way!
 Note the hole that "Dr." Wayne drilled into the nail to relieve the pressure!

Trying to get the trumpet horns to sound off correctly.
  The volume of sound is about 20 % of what it should be.

Putting the horns back together after cleaning and testing.
 But...no go.  They still do not work very well.

Winding Down the Sewing Projects

I try hard every winter to run out of projects just as I run out of winter.  This has been a productive year.  I made many of our Christmas gifts and small gifts to give to boat friends we meet along the way.  I've completed three quilts and several purses and bags, some pillows, a bed runner, a Christmas wall hanging, a table runner and a quilt top.  A friend in Vero gave me an idea for a bag to hold the hands free wireless headsets we use on the boat.  I delivered four quilts I made last year to my sisters-in-law and also made Christmas ornaments for family members.

It ain't pretty but it does the job.  This bag holds the control box for
our wireless headset.  We tuck it inside our shirt
 and the neck strap keeps it from falling into the water.

This quilt top is for a friend.  It's too big for me to quilt
 on the boat so a professional long arm quilter will do that part of the job.

A big, full-of-inside-pockets purse

This is meant to carry quilting supplies.  Notice the
"newsrint" story below, goofy quilting stories.

Four of these together will make a tablerunner.  It should be finished soon.

The project I enjoyed doing most, though, was not a sewing project at all.  I wrote down a collection of family stories and paid Office Depot to bind them into hardback book form.  These were given to our granddaughters as Christmas gifts.  The stories were some I've told them over the years when they said, "Noodle, tell me a story" and some were family stories they hadn't heard yet - "Grandpa and the Gator" was a particular favorite.  It was so satisfying to get these tales down in black-and-white in a permanent form.  I hope it proves to be a treasured gift for my family for many years to come.

Quilt Shows and Shops

These two pieces were part of Cityscapes - A Slice of Ft. Myers, a show presented by Art Quilters Unlimited and featuring artists' renderings in fabric art of favorite sites in and around Ft. Myers.

These are not paintings.  Their colors are stitched
by hand or machine.

Probably my favorite piece from this year's Stitches in Time
Quilt show presented by the Naples Quilters Guild.
 Even among lots of tropical inspired quilts, this is a standout.

One of several good quilt shops close to our marina.  I love a store where I can walk in,
show a clerk a piece of fabric with which I want to coordinate and she instantly shows me what I'm looking for.

Life on Cool Change

After three months aboard, life has settled into a comfortable routine.

All the comforts of home - a princopy machine in the bedroom

Our lettuce garden has supplied us with salad greens all winter long.
We also have a basil plant and a Christmas poinsetta that persists
in blooming, more than two months after Christmas.

 Sometimes marinas supply nice laundry facilities and sometimes not.  There are never enough washers in the marina so we frequently look for a local laundromat so we can get our week's worth done faster.

Among the best laudromats we found, clean and well stocked
with rollaround baskets, folding tables, change and snack machines,
not-too-out-of-date magazines and good washers and dryers.

Jann and Gary Merrill are friends we made in 2010 in the Florida Keys.
Our paths seldom cross but we always have a good time when they do.

Jann and Gary's boat was named "Tie a Knot," as in "When you get to the end of your
rope, tie a knot and hang on".  Jann figured our boarding rope was probably designed
 with her and Gary in mind.

And another installment in the Weird Signs department

So...When do they open?  Read carefully.