At 9:00 when we left for our walk, it was in the upper 60s, the sky was a nice blue, and the wind was calm. We enjoyed walking down a few new streets. Once again, art seemed to jump out from all angles. This sculpture was atop the facade of a city parking garage. We passed the historic Studebaker building. It was built in 1925 and at the time was the fourth-largest Studebaker dealership in the world. It is now the home of the US Geological Survey which explains the note taped to the iconic logo on the parking lot gate. A strange juxtaposition of troubled times. As we continued on toward Bayboro Harbor and Harborage Marina, we walked through the campus of the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. A satellite of the main university campus in Tampa, the enrollment here is in excess of 4,300. The namesake Bull statue looks out over a lush green commons area and modern classroom buildings.
We walked through the grounds of the Dali Museum and enjoyed the Melting Time bench and gardens.
The big attraction of the day was the St. Petersburg Saturday Morning Market, held from 9-2 in the Al Lang Stadium parking lot. The weekly event regularly draws over 10,000 people and today was definitely packed. There are over 130 tents filled with vendors selling every kind of food imaginable: ethnic, exotic, and traditional.
There were crafts, jewelry, cutlery and several large booths that featured beautiful produce. Quarts of good-looking strawberries caught my eye, but the line was long and was not moving. While in line I spotted "The Pineapple Guy." For $7 he peeled, cored, sliced and bagged two fresh pineapples. That booth also had fresh squeezed orange juice. It was fun to watch the oranges go through the press -- sort of like stamping a penny. The resultant juice was refreshing and not too sweet.
We had some of the pineapple for lunch and it was so good. The afternoon was a relaxing mix of reading on Fiberglass Beach, laundry, and a few small boat projects. The wind began to pick up around 3:00 and we checked all the dock lines and fenders several more times before dark. UVA and Duke tipped off at 6:00 and it seemed I would be able to watch it onboard. As is often said, best laid plans. We could only stream the TV broadcast in Spanish, so I muted the TV and streamed the UVA radio broadcast on my phone. The two broadcasts were out of sync (as were the Cavaliers) by about 15 seconds and it proved to be a most interesting evening. In typical UVA fashion, we held out hope until the end and then victory slipped away as I paced in front of the TV.
As I finish up this post we're preparing for a super-high tide at 11:00. The combination of full moon and wind blowing the Bay into the marina has water lapping on the underside of the finger piers. It is supposed to rain overnight, but be cloudy and dry tomorrow with steady winds around 25mph. Wind chills tomorrow night will drop into the 30s. Time to pull the freshly-washed Cold Gear back out.
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