Hodge-Podge

The girl at the resort office called me late yesterday and said, if we were interested, "bring a zip-lock bag with two eggs over to the clubhouse in the morning and have breakfast with us".  I thought about it briefly and relayed the call to Sharon.  She said "two eggs in a baggie?"  I said "yup".  "Raw eggs cracked in a baggie".  "No way .. you must be mixed up again ... you're not supposed to crack them!" she said.  Oh my is this what the aging process is doing to us? ... Arguing about to crack or not crack!  A short but vigorous discussion ensued; but each still sticking to our position ... we headed off to bed resolving to resolve the question in the morning.

Getting around at 9:00am is a little early for one of the inhabitants of this coach but that person managed and off we went with two baggies with two un-cracked eggs inside.  Arriving at the clubhouse we immidiately noticed about 20 people walking around with baggies in their hands ... and within those bags was the runny, gooey mass of semi-scrambled uncooked eggs.  Well that settled that question ... cracked it was...but what in the world were we to do with them?

As it turned out, we had to squash our little bags until they were sort of uniformly mixed.  We then opened up the bag and dumped in cheese, mushrooms,peppers,salsa, or onions ... or any combination presented on a serving tray, closed the bag again and squashed it up again.  We then took our little bag over to the 'Cook' who was in charge of a large pot of bubbling. boiling water.  He said "look at your watch and be back in 10 minutes" then dumped my little bag of goo into the pot with about 10 other little bags of goo.

So ten minutes elapsed and my little bag of goo was apparently completely cooked.  And so it was.  It slid easily onto my plate ready for a little salt and pepper.  No frying pan, no grease, no butter and still one of the best omellets I've had.  Absolutely no mess ... no fuss.  I later learned the Girl Scouts have been doing this for decades ... but since I was never a Girl Scout I think I should be forgiven for my ignorance.

And as you see ... it doesn't take much to please me anymore.

We did have the opportunity to meet some more new people including  Tom Eller, National Vice President Southeast Area of the Family MotorCoach Association. (Whew ... needs almost two business cards to get his title spelled out). Tom handed me a a couple of pieces of paper with about a dozen photos printed on them.  It was pictures his coach, or what was left of it.    Tom and his wife Lorna had just arrived in the area and while passing over one of the beautiful bridges when someone was trying to get his attention.  Getting over the bridge he pulled over and the gent from the car joined him.  They said something to the effect that he had been following Tom for sometime and noticed the rear of his coach was smoking.  Apparently by the time Tom got the coach stopped and he and Lorna got out, the rear of the diesel pusher was engulfed in flames and before it was over, completly destroyed.  A burnt out hulk with all their stuff lost.  Now Tom is one cool guy.  He and his wife are full-timers and not 24 hours earlier their home on wheels was destroyed.  Now here he is...  Sitting down with me eating food out of a baggie and not showing much emotion.  He had gotten a hold of his insurance company and they apparently quickly totaled it out and within a few hours Tom bought a Monaco sight-unseen over the phone with the proceeds and it's being delivered here Saturday.  Now this family is organized!  I guess putting on all those FMCA rallies teaches a guy about organizing things. 

The day wasn't over as there was a Christmas boat parade planned along part of the Intercoastal Waterway between Zekes Marina and LuLu's resturant.  A trip of 5 or 6 miles, the idea was for a bunch of big cruisers and large off-shore boats to decorate their boats with multi-colored lights and other festive things and parade along the waterway entertaining the onlookers.  Probably in good weather there would have been more boats.  Maybe a dozen or so made the parade (my guess about a tenth of the size of earlier years) but the crummy weather didn't stop the well-wishers parked and standing in the rain along the parade route.  There was even a blimp brought in to hover around and entertain everyone.

Damn cold and windy is not my idea of what a snow-bird whould have to endure but ... it's a whole lot better than shoveling snow and bundling up like an Alaskan Eskimow.

Scrambled, chilled but still livin' the dream.

Phil