The bayou is pretty active this week. I sat and watched 4 manatees rolling around for about an hour this morning while I talked on my cell phone (I might actually be a voyeur if that was some hard core manatee lovin'). Later in the afternoon, 3 dolphins swam with us for a few kilometres out to the Gulf. They were right in the middle of all the boats, disappearing for a few seconds and then leaping up from under someone's ama. They startled a few people this way but it made the paddle a lot less like work.
The weather has gotten really hot but I hear it's fantastic at home too. I've actually been here long enough that I'm looking forward to heading home next week. I'm tired of eating restaurant food and living in my training clothes and bathing suit.

I'm not sick of Danny K.'s breakfast though! Danny K.'s Alley Cafe is a staple of the Tarpon Springs Training Camp. The tables are spread around an indoor alleyway the runs between Tarpon Avenue and the next street. I could live on their "almost famous" omelettes and endless coffee. And the servers are the same year after year which makes it feel like home. It's kind of like Helen's South.
The mayor of tarpon Springs came to our afternoon practice for a photo op. She jumped in the motor boat with Peter and they shot her with the outriggers all piled in around them. She said if she'd known we would be paddling, she'd have worn her spandex and come with us. Nice sentiment but I'm sceptical that a 50-something female politician would allow herself to be photographed in spandex! Anyway, I'm not sure when it'll be in the paper but Carl Vogel (our host when we're down there) will let us know.
Friday, the three dolphins were waiting in the channel for us. They didn't stick with us for very long this time - we were doing long pieces so maybe they got bored.
It's friday night and you know what that means - Mucho Grandes at the Mexican! The mariachi singer has loosened up a bit (probably because of his encounter with a particular db paddler from the week before) and he paid a lot of attention to the ladies at our table (did I mention the group this week was 90% women? I don't think Matt's too upset about that.) Joanne was up dancing - she's really good which is not surprising since she's a dance instructor- and we were all up on the floor by the end of the bowl, I mean night.
Afterward, we headed over to Shades where we consumed ridiculous quantities of jello shooters (new rule - I'm not ingesting anything purple after 11:00pm) and people took turns testing their strength at the punching bag. You know I'm not into those macho displays so I ended up chatting with the drummer from the band. One of the paddlers insisted we had to go to some lounge called the Zone. It sounded kind of cougar-ish so as the group walked ahead, a couple of us ducked down a side street to see what was going on at the Lime 'N Coconut. It was dead so we followed the music down the street and across Alt 19 to Bally Hoo's. It was awesome! They had a huge deck with a live band so we grabbed a couple of beers and started ripping it up on the dance floor...After just a couple of songs, the band said, "Thanks everybody, that's it for tonight. Take care getting home". Crap. We finally got to the Zone where we found just the one lone paddler sitting at the bar by herself. We looked around for the others but they were no-shows so we left. Everyone was back at the hotel, lounging on the balcony. Perfect wind-up to the night. It sounded like my roommate was lining up a little rendevous and a discussion of possible room conifgurations was going on. In the end, everyone ended up sleeping in their own beds. I woke up around 5:30am - ugh - fully dressed, under the covers with the tv remote in my hand and contact lenses glued to my eyes. The smell of the popcorn I'd burnt a few hours earlier lingered in our room. I downed some water, aspirin, crawled back into bed and was ready for our 20Km paddle at 8:00am.
more later, I'm exhausted...