Last week I had a birthday, and as a gift to you all I arranged for a national holiday so that everyone could have the day off. You're welcome.
Andrew usually plans a day trip for my birthday. This year he had mixed success: both of the restaurants he had researched turned out to be closed and we had some car trouble. So the food was nothing extraordinary, but the serious clanking noise we heard turned out to be a piece of nonessential metal that had rusted off and gotten stuck in the wheel well. I was really glad that Andrew was around to take off the wheel and examine the situation. If it had happened on one of the weeks that he lives in Maryland, I would have had to use the ignore-it-and-hope-it-isn't-serious or the enrich-a-mechanic-being-paid-on-time-and-a-half approach. However, this year's birthday trip was quite a success when compared to last year, when we got stuck in traffic before getting on the Bay Bridge. We sat in traffic for a few hours, ate our picnic lunch in the car, and then turned around and went home. On top of that, I returned my gift from Andrew.
This year we drove to Naples, which is a town on the west coast of Florida and not (sadly) the Italian city known for pizza. I had heard that beaches on the west side of Florida were beautiful, and the sand did not disappoint. It was white, very soft, and the beaches were shallow and very long. Not that many people were around, and there were loads of shells for the beachcombers.
We saw a rainbow on our way home. It feels like Florida has an unusually large number of rainbows. I've seen at least a dozen since I moved here, but I can't figure out why there would be more here. Are the rainbows easier to spot because it's so flat here? Is it because the rainshowers are so isolated? Scientists, please help me figure this out.
8 comments:
Happy Birthday again. It sounds like the day was good in spite of the restaurants being closed. I think the rainbows are because of scattered showers with the sun in between instead of an all day cloud covered rain. Great pictures.
happy birthday!! Do you ever see any double rainbows down there??
Astrobassist, yes we do! I've seen several double rainbows this summer.
I am sorry I missed your birthday completely - luckily I think this year I have a good excuse! Glad you were able to take the blows with good humor and still enjoy your special day!
Perhaps it just rains more than in DC!
Glad you had a better weekend - by next year it should be perfect.
RM, Happy Birthday! (a bit late...). I think that indeed the humidity conditions in Florida are such that there is more rain in the form of downpours, so there is more time for the sky to clear and see rainbows. Another condition that helps is the latitude of Miami, it is pretty much inside the tropic, and so the hours of sun don't change much during the year, so probably there are more rainbows on average in a year.
I have fond memories of Naples FL from a couple of visits we made there when the kids were little.
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