Monday, February 4, 2013 – Vero Beach:

            WOW! How ‘bout those Ravens!  If you watched the game, you know it was a nailbiter down to the last four seconds!  Even if you weren’t a fan of either team, it was a great football game to watch, but being a Ravens fan, of course, I held my breath and covered my eyes an awful lot in that last quarter.  And what’s up with the “lights out” incident?  For ½ hour??  I sure wouldn’t want to be the guy in charge of the electric company right now in New Orleans.  That had to mess with both teams’ momentum.  You would think they would have been prepared for electric overload due to the half time show.  And I am going to grouse about one more thing.  The Star Spangled Banner should be sung the way it was written (by someone who can really sing!) and not tampered with!  So there.

            Anyway, it was a great game, and we had a blast at the Riverside Grill.  We had reserved a great table at 6:00 p.m. with a view of about at least seven or eight large screen TVs.  I asked the waitress if the place was really going to get rowdy, and she said definitely, but, guess what, at around the middle of the third quarter, the place emptied out!  I will admit it was an “older” crowd, but, c’mon – it was a good game to watch, so I don’t know where all those people went, but at least now we could hear what the commentators were saying.  The few people who stayed seemed to be mostly Ravens’ fans, so that was kinda fun.  Bob and I munched on “loaded” nachos, and wings, and drank beer, but I can only stand about one beer, so I left the second one about half full. 

            At the end of the game, we discovered that the people sitting at the table next to us were from a sailboat that we had encountered (on the radio) several times on our trip down here.  We got to chatting, and discovered that we were both at the Vero Beach City Marina, so we gave them a ride back to marina as they had walked.  It never ceases to amaze me how often this kind of encounter happens!

            We wound up staying up till after midnight (which is not a good thing for me!), and morning seemed to come awfully soon!  I had no plans except to pretend to be a couch potato for the day, and after an easy breakfast of yogurt and muffins,   we, sadly, did have to return our rental car.  I think Vero Beach seems to be a very nice place, but our driver who returned us to the marina called Vero Beach “Zero” Beach.  She said Vero Beach was not very progressive (humpf…looked pretty progressive to me, but what do I know), and she had lived here all her life.  She obviously knew the area pretty well, and this was her second retirement job (she said she loved working), and I decided she was just cheerfully disgruntled.  How’s that for an oxymoron?

            The afternoon consisted of a nap on the flybridge, card playing, and pretty much being worthless.  I guess I paid for last night, but who knew you could have so much fun in a bar for 4 ½ hours!

            GO RAVENS!

Riverside Grill where we watched the game