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Take your seats....no reservations needed. This is it. Our last golf cart ride at Tropical Palms for the season. We have to relish every moment and bump of it. Hold on.....Driver Cory is going to take us to places this little cart has not gone before. Ooooo.....the excitement builds.
Navigator Sam prepares himself for the unknown as do Sandy and myself (the backseat drivers).
We head up back through Old Town. Slowly, very slowly life is beginning to come back to this place. The Burger King that had closed has reopened....a good sign.
As we sail down the wide sidewalk along the main drag of 192, the cars pass by us like planes on a runway. Vroom..Swoosh!! No way are we going to play chicken with these speedsters. Our bouncing buggy moves along dodging the many manholes along the way. Everything looks so familiar but yet so different because of our new vantage point. Normally, we are peering from a distance out the car windows. Now as we have the wind in our faces, we see the roadsides close up. We visualize dirt and details. We keep moving. Past Cracker Barrel, past the Anti-Gravity place (looks like it’s
being renovated hopefully to something new), past Chili’s and the Macaroni Grill. Cory stops at the CVS because where we are going, we need our own bags. We forgot them in our excitement of leaving on this adventure. Not needing anything in the drugstore, he bought a yummy chocolate candy Easter Rabbit on a 80% off sale for 25 cents....great buy! He asks for it to be double bagged....one bag for me and one for Sandy. The cashier probably thought he was the typical wacko that wanders the streets and needed bags for his ratty possessions. A true Bag Boy! Krispy Kreme and Perkins had a few cars around them. Cory drives us across the intersection to the new Aldi’s. Yippee! A shoppers’ discount Mecca. Sam sits guard of our rolling wagon while Cory, Sandy and I race inside the store to shop our brains out....best we could at a grocery store. We found a few delights to put in our CVS bags. Even though Sam had his mask on, we knew it was him....patiently waiting on the golf cart. He had not been cart-jacked. Whew! We jumped onboard.
Time to head back to the ranch. Past all the
various stores and restaurants that had become our regular stopping spots for us over these past months....mostly the Cracker Barrel. Fun memories.
Are we almost there? We’re hungry! So glad Burger King reopened because now we could get takeout orders from it. Perfect! Cory zips around the shops to get onto the red brick roadway down through Old Town. We see more tourist folks strolling along the sidewalks which is a good sight to see. Cory parades us down along the shops and sidewalks. Hi tourist people. It’s good to have you back! WAIT! HALT! WHOA! What’s this? From my perfect back seat vantage point, I easily saw a small, black & white buggy cart bolting quickly up behind us. A bright flashing yellow light was spinning on its roof. CORY! COreeeee! It’s the police! The police are after you! Is he deaf? Doesn’t he hear my shrieking bellow? What’s wrong with him? He keeps speeding on the red brick road!! Sam & Sandy are holding on for dear life. CORY! STOP!! STOP!! He keeps going!! The small, sprinting, security cart swerves across the median to the parallel roadway and catches up to us in our galloping get-away cart.
The policeman is wildly waving us down. Finally, Cory stops before we are tased or shot. The security guard is of foreign decent and difficult to understand. Even with limited communication and sign language, it’s obvious to the three of us he doesn’t want Cory driving down the main roadway of Old Town. Cory plays dumb and acts like he can’t figure out what he is being told....oh, brother! God help us. I have to act as the interpreter. Get out of here, Cory....just get out of here! This strict official wants us gone. The guard is frantically pointing his hand towards the exit. Go!! Oops....both exits have metal pipe barriers. Too bad for us! The disgusted guard now is trying to tell us to just follow him. Just do it, Cory. Stop making this “keeper of the peace” irate. Jeepers.....what does this mean? Where is this officer taking us? Is he taking the four of us off to Old Town jail? Nooooooo. No! We are old and have families.....we can’t be put in the clink for an undetermined length of time. Sam doesn’t have his scooter....and our golf cart won’t fit in the pokey’s cell. No way, Josè. We
felt like we were in the finale of Seinfeld. As the few, horrified onlookers watched, we had a police escort down through Old Town ....the spinning yellow light flashing while beaconing the way. The four of us were perched on the golf cart like the royals in their horse drawn gilded carriage ...looking solemn but guilty. Were we headed to the slammer? What would our mug shots look like? We haven’t had hair cuts for months. Would we look like Grizzly Adams and his hunting party? Could Lulu bail us out? How could she get to a bondsman? Could we still get passports? Would our friends see our faces in post offices? Would we still have any friends after becoming felons? What about our Burger King meals...could we still eat them? And my 25 cent chocolate candy bunny....what about that? It would melt! So many questions .....if Cory had just stopped when I alerted him. But, oh no, he had to give chase and leave the security guard in his dust! You’re in big trouble, Boy! And we are his accomplices just because we rode with him... no fair. As we headed towards the unknown penal institution, I harassed and
nagged Cory, Sam fretted about going to prison without his scooter while Sandy texted her family. It was a frightful scene. Where was this lockup anyway? Finally, we reached an open area and the exasperated cop signaled us to go onward and out towards the road. His stern and beady eyes said: Go and never come back! And we were off! We were released! Free at last....free and alive to see another day without bars hindering our view! Who would has thought? Our last golf cart ride and we were picked up by the police? Jeepers! But in the end, we have to admit, it was fun while it lasted! It’s fun to be depraved at times. Unless Cory is driving a classic, muscle car....he better not be driving down the Main Street of Old Town....Unless we want to see what the inside of the Old Town Big House looks like. I figure it must be located in the vicinity of “Electrocution Man” (a tragic demonstration of an electrocuted dummy ....make him holler for $1.00) ...makes total sense to me.
All good things must come to an end and it did. It was a mighty sad day when the
Cart Zone people came and took our trusty golf cart away. Fortunately, it was our choice...it was not being impounded as the OT cop would have liked. We use this company to store our golf cart while we are away. They pick it up, keep it all charged, clean it up all sparkly and deliver it when we return. It’s a good place. They took Walt & Diane’s golf cart at the same time they took ours. Their golf cart must have had a million miles on it as they are known to peruse the campground daily....all day. We all had many good times trolling around on our little buggies.
Steadily, we are packing up our stuff inside and outside our RV. Home is calling. Of course, our home is where we park this RV. Our next destination will be Wellsville, NY. We are planning our departure for next Tuesday (26th) or Wednesday. Sam & Sandy are planning the same. Because we don’t rent our site again until we return next October, we need to leave it empty. Our good friend, Art, is allowing us to place our outdoor storage box on his site during our absence. We have
items that we don’t need to haul around with us....as Cory says “There is NO space in the RV!” He says that a lot. So...we just leave it in our storage box until we come back. It works....thanks, Art. Cory has been like a busy beaver taking items down to the storage box. Amazing what two people can accumulate...dam!
We were happy to see our good friend, Ray, the other day. He was out on his porch after his exercise walking around the Sandcastles. He has been very ill and had a long hospitalization but now he’s home in his Sandcastle. We all are thrilled for him to be back here. He always has the best smile for everyone. He’s a strong trooper and he has proved “you can’t keep a good man down!” Good for you, Ray...Smile and the world smiles with you.
It won’t affect us, because we won’t be here, but there are hints that MAYBE they might open the pool here....but with restrictions. They are removing all the lounge furniture so it looks like you either get in the water or stand on the edge....no sunning yourself. Or maybe, they are just clearing the
pool deck so no one is tempted to go to the pool. Time will tell. So far, it has just been an oasis in the far distance, fenced off to the public.
This dissertation is more than just the tale of our last ride ....it will probably be my last blog until we head North. ??Weep No More My Lady...and Gentlemen?... we will be back. Never fear! But for the time being...take a breather. Just know this intermission will be brief so don’t put your blog tab in sleep mode. Lulu will be monitoring everything during this hiatus. She’ll let you know when it’s time to check back in with us. What a great helper she is. What would we do without her? We know she is not without limitations and does have some undesirable habits but....honestly, she is a godsend and we would be lost without her. I know you share these exact feelings! Lulu is loved! See you once the rolling ride North commences. Lucky #13 photos.
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Joanna Dougherty
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Last Ride
Just loved this post! I could just see you guys running from the cops!! Hahaha Always tough to pack up...chin up you'll be back! Safe trip north - I will be thinking about you !