Sustainability

Not content with seeing the ocean in person, this evening we watch Blue Planet on TV:

The morning was spent watching the move Extract on my recommendation. It wasn't as good as I'd remembered, but also not terrible. After lunch, we went to the beach and snorkeled a bit more. The water was rougher and consequently cloudier so the visibility was diminished. We spent most of our time around the pier pilings at the nearest beach:

Afterwards, we spent some time on the beach:

The tall buildings here are ubiquitous and in many ways depress me. Even as I use them, I'm left wondering what was here before and am struck by how wildly unsustainable all of this is and how precarious:

These massive towers are visible as far as the eye can see. Each one contains multitudes, consuming resources and generating waste. And, using massive amounts of electricity:

I enjoy the beach and the time with my family, but whenever I'm in environments like this, I'm left a bit sad.

There's a bridge visible from the balcony of our 23rd story condo with a drawbridge. This afternoon I noticed that it was preparing to open so I did a timelapse:

This is our last full day in the US for a while. Tomorrow evening we fly to Madrid to begin our year in Spain.

Making Ice Cream with Liquid Nitrogen

Beautiful day today. I got up around 7am and went for a run before it got too hot. After shower and breakfast, we went to the beach. I was mostly interested in snorkeling around the pier. The water was clear and warm--great for snorkeling. We also managed to set up towels and chairs near the pier building, so I was in the shade and the rest had sun (I'm not a fan of sitting in the sun).

Snorkeling around the pilings of the pier was really fun. There were large schools of small fish that would gather around you if you stayed still, but would part before you like magic if you reached out and swept your hand around.

There was one small barracuda hanging around out there. You could see its teeth, but it was not threatening at all.

There were numerous sting rays lying on the sandy bottom beneath the pier. Some were as much as 3 feet across where others were just a handspan in size. They kind of nestle into the sand for camouflage, but once you know what you're looking for, they're pretty easy to spot. This is just a stock photo from Google, but it pretty well captures what we were seeing, though perhaps even more buried in the sand:

The pier pilings themselves were encrusted with barnacles and other coral-like things. If you looked closely, there were a lot of different animals and plants living on the sides of the pilings.

After the beach, we had lunch and played Phase 10 down at the pool in the condo complex:

Rachel took this while I was still working on getting out my phone. She's a pro. She also won the game.

We ran a few errands and had dinner at an Olive Garden. Our waiter was interesting since he'd just returned from a vacation in Barcelona. He used to live in Spain and was excited to hear that we were heading there for a year starting Sunday.

We dropped a few things off at Rachel's house and went to ChilliN7 Nitrogen Ice Cream. We need one of these in Walla Walla. The idea is that they pour the ingredients for your ice cream into a mixer along with some liquid nitrogen. They "churn" the ingredients into ice cream in about 30 seconds. It is soooooo goooooooddddd!

Also, video:

Good day and great to just spend time together.

Emily Joins Us

After Emily's usual flight delays (she has the worst luck with planes), we picked her up at Miami Intl at about 1am this morning. It was great to see her, but we were all pretty tired by the time we got back to the condo at 2am.

We all slept in this morning. I didn't get up until 9:30am. Emily slept until noon-ish.

I went to the beach twice today. Once in the morning with Laura and Rachel. The water was warm and clear, but the sun was blazing. We only stayed down there about an hour and went back to the condo for lunch.

After lunch we play a game of dominos on the balcony. We're all looking into the sun here, can you tell?

We're on the 23rd floor. The big challenge was shuffling the dominos carefully so that none fell off of the balcony. I think a domino dropped from the 23rd floor could seriously harm someone.

I was excited to snorkel a bit off of the beach here, so Emily joined me this afternoon for another trip to the beach. The late sun and a bit of cloud cover made for a darker view underwater, but the lack of a blazing sun was a net plus in my opinion. The ocean floor here is pretty uniform. Just rippled white sand for several hundred yards off shore. You have to keep a sharp eye to spot anything interesting while snorkeling. That said, I did see a few interesting sights that have me anxious to go back tomorrow. I found this little live conch:

I also saw a few schools for small and medium sized fish. I saw one very large tarpon, maybe 4 feet long, 60lbs. I also saw a sting ray resting on the sandy bottom.

Emily and I returned and went to the pool here with Rachel and Laura. Afterwards, Laura made dinner, tortellini and caesar salad.

The condo has a TV that has a builtin roku. We've connected our Netflix and MLB tv accounts. Rachel and I binged a fair bit of a stupid sitcom called "Schitt's Creek". We also watched the Mariners complete a 4-game sweep of the Orioles. The M's are headed back to the West Coast tomorrow, so their games will be on too late to watch. It's been nice having them on the East Coast this week while we're on vacation. We've been able to watch a few games.

I manged to fix a computer problem back at Whitman this evening while Rachel and Laura are out walking around the neighborhood. Emily is working on her stuff, reading papers and reddit (which is probably not work, haha).

Hoping to snorkel a bit more tomorrow. Going to bed now at a normal hour.

Donut Run

Rachel has been raving about a donut shop in North Miami called The Salty Donut. This morning we went and were not disappointed. I really like jelly donuts and the one they had here was amazing. In addition to filling, there were fresh blueberries inside.

In addition to my "berry buckle" (lower left), after some serious deliberation, there was Rachel's "dragon-passion fruit" (top) and Laura's "maple bacon" (bottom right).

All were excellent.

After donuts, we walked around the Wynwood Art District (the neighborhood of The Salty Donut). The exteriors of most of the buildings are painted in modern/street art. Walls change all the time. In addition, there's a great "gallery" called The Wynwood Walls. Lots of painted walls, but a couple of indoor galleries too. Some great work. I was particularly attracted by the Peter Tunney show. In this particular show, Tunney acquired some artifacts from the now defunct Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, NJ, a failed venture of Donald Trump's. I liked these two pieces. The first is written on blue prints from the original construction of the Taj Mahal:

 The second is on related newspaper and magazine clippings:

Rachel enjoyed some of the pieces in this section:

 After the gallery and a bit of lunch, we checked into our AirBnb. It's on the 23rd floor of one of the numerous condo buildings along the beach here in North Miami. Here's a view towards the ocean from the balcony (of a different building):

Once we checked in, we stocked up with visits to Costco and Publix (grocery store). Emily is en route to Miami from Santa Barbara to join us here for a few days. We meet her at Miami Intl Airport at 12:30am tonight.

Back to Miami

Our night on Key West and the Havana Cubana was restful. We hit the Florida Keys Eco-Discovery Center and learned about the local ecology. After that, we drove back towards the mainland. We stopped at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park on Key Largo and booked a snorkel boat tour--the last one of the day. The boat took us out to the reef about 10 miles off-shore. Once there we jumped in and swam around for a while. We saw a spotted eagle ray (probably the highlight of the trip) and a lot of other beautiful reef fish. We also saw the Christ of the Abyss statue.

We finished our drive back to Rachel's house and then met Shubham and Emily at Taco Craft. Good the catch up with them. Also, the margaritas and tacos there were very good. I particularly liked the "Exotic Shroom" taco. Our late snorkel boat pushed everything back and it's really late now. Here are a few pictures from the day. A cruise ship docked overnight at Key West:

 We had lunch at a small restaurant called "The Wooden Spoon" on Marathon Key:

 Here we are on the snorkel boat:

 Some of the miles and miles of mangroves along the coast of Key Largo:

 More mangroves:

 From left to right, Albert, Laura, Emily, Shubham, Rachel at Taco Craft.