I wake up and work. While this is a vacation, it’s also a work week. I have to do my best to do both of these. So I get up at 6:00 pretty much every day and try to get a few hours in before the day really starts. If I can get 2 hours in by breakfast, it’s a good way to allow me to do things other than work all week. This is easier said than done and this week would provide difficult to strike a perfect balance but I tried nonetheless.
After my work call is done I walk to the bike shop. It is a splendid day out.
I rent a bike from Bob’s Beach Bicycle Works. This is the second time I have gone there and I highly recommend them if you are in the area. Cost is really reasonable by today’s standards. I got a road bike for a week at $192, which is crazy inexpensive. The guys in the shop are friendly & professional. Solid place, and I’ll be back.
I ride the bike back to the condo and work some more. That rolls up to lunch which is always a family affair. Breakfast is the 1 exception to the Meal Rule where we all sit down and eat at the same time. You can have breakfast in whatever order you wake up. But lunch and dinner are group meals. No exceptions.
After lunch I hit the road and go for a bike ride. If you’ve never ridden a road bike in Florida let me explain the extraordinarily complex process that is the action of road riding here. You can pretty much sum it up in 3 words:
1. Flat
2. Straight
3. Windy
That’s about it. You pretty much pedal consistently and hope the wind isn’t too strong. As awesome as it might seem to have a great tailwind, let me tell you it sucks. Because it means the reverse direction will be 4 times worse than going out was good. Road riding in Florida is purely an act of willpower.
After the ride I jump in the pool quickly then head over to the beach. The days down here consist of 2 sessions, morning & afternoon, and they are separated by lunch, and book-ended by breakfast & dinner. I hopped in on the 2nd beach session because I don’t want all of every day to get consumed by work. No matter how much I do, work will always be waiting.
We take a walk on the beach, which is an obvious thing. You should always do this if you’re on the beach, since sitting there watching the ocean is really cool but gets sort of mundane quickly. Plus, we’ve started walking every day as of September, and we’ve kept it going. It gives us a little extra activity and it also gets us out of the house where we can just talk about the day without phones and whatever other distractions.
I recommend it.
After the beach we head back to the condo and the pool briefly before going inside and showering up, the next step in the daily routine.
I round out the day by working more, which is fine as the time between Beach Session 2 and dinner is usually just used to hang out, wind down, read, play video games, and so on. Often this equates to me working and the kids being on their iPads, or sometimes it equates to some subset of people playing cards. Today is all of the above.
Dinner is beef stroganoff and veggies, then raspberry pie. Oma always makes good food and tonight is no exception.
I work to round out the day, filling in some of the gaps left from doing other things this afternoon. With that, the first full day in Melbourne comes to an end.
Traveling Normandy 