Existing In BFE

It was time to take to the road again with the Goldwing Geezers, aka Bay Area Riders Club.  Only 4 others showed up for a trip to Punta Gordo (Yes, "fat bitch" for you linguists out there) to the Muscle Car Museum.  I don't know why more didn't show up.  It was a nice day and although it was St. Patricks Day, so what? Mine is on the far right.  Not sure I get the jacket draped over the windshield, but I played polite lemming and went along with it. The day was bittersweet because after the museum I went up to North Port about 30 minutes to bid adieu to the grandkidlings, Michael and Alhanna, who are going up North again to live in Canada.  It has been a kind of fringe benefit being down here and now if I want to see them I'll have to go to Oshawa Ontario,  which isn't too far from Toronto.  I don't do big cities, so they'll have to find me, wherever I am. Before we start saying goodbye to the kids, however, we should enjoy the museum. ...

Shangri-La is a supposedly fictional place described in a book and later a movie, by James Hilton.  I can't recall if either gave it an actual locale but it was a valley with mountains all around and was the place of a lamasery.  It was a Himalayan utopia - a permanently happy place, isolated from the rest of a cruel and sinister world.   My Shangri-La is in Burgess, nestled somewhere within corn fields and Routes 94 & 67. It may be on Google maps now, and mores the pity.  It needs to be undiscovered.  It is inhabited by High Lama Marvin and his Porter, Wing man and Black Belt Master, Richard.    I can't claim that I discovered it on my own.  The current Mrs. Blythe is friends with Marvin's wife, and I was simply a passenger.  But like the protagonist in the book and movie, I have often felt the allure of Burgess and if circumstances were different in life, I would have chosen the bucolic setting of my little Mercer County...

Here are some more pictures of an outing at the beach.  Again, I am silent, no words can help explain. Some more beach pics are always just around the corner.  The beach is a place where you forget your worries if only for a short while, and immerse yourself in something immense.  I'm not smart enough to know what that is, but there are times I'm glad I'm only 15 minutes away.