Tropical Storm Alberto

We dropped Paige off to Danny & Teri this morning and headed south to Miami. The last time I was here I was 12 years old, so needlesstosay, I don't remember much about it. Thank God it's a Sunday! The freeway here is six lanes, with route this and state route that branching off in any direction every mile or so. I can not imagine what this place is like during rush hour! Today the traffic wasn't bad. It was the weather that almost took us out.

We drove right into a big black cloud and horrendous rain storm, I assume because of Tropical Storm Alberto, while on I95. The visibility was about 10 feet it was raining so hard. I was afraid I was going to go deeper and deeper into the storm, but as it turns out we got out of it after about 10 minutes.

About ten minutes after that I95 dumped us onto Dixie Highway, and on to the Residence Inn in Coconut Grove (which is SE of Miami). Our efficiency wasn't ready when we got here, so they upgraded us to a 2 bdrm suite for $30 more. We've got a lot of room here. Good thing, too, since we'll probably be spending the majority of our two days here. Forecast: Tonight, Rain. Tomorrow, Rain. Tuesday, Rain.

So we got settled in and ordered carry-out from a local Cuban resaurant, Las Culebrinas. Casey and I split Bistec Empanizado Con Moros y Maduros (breaded steak with mixed rice/beans and fried plantains). My first Cuban food! I felt like I was back in ABQ when we went to pick it up, though - no one at the restaraunt spoke English. It was a little scary, actually, but we got our food and it was fabulous (at least I thought so, Casey might tell you differently). We topped dinner off with a slice of Rum Cake that Danny brought us from Grand Cayman. Yum!

We told Bob from Stork Avenue that we'd get together with him tomorrow (boating today was out of the question), and goofed around all night. I caught up on this blog, Casey watched tv, we walked down to the Marina, went swimming ... a whole lotta nothing. Tomorrow we'll finally meet Bob, and I don't know what else. It's supposed to rain all of this week, so I think we may cancel Jacksonville & Orlando and just go to Cocoa Beach for a couple of days (spending a day at the Kennedy Space Center) before we head "home" to Sarasota. I figure we'll have ten days after that to go to Orlando or back to Tampa if we want to. I won't die if I don't see Jacksonville this time around.

Oh and we heard from Casey's new soccer coach ... we are now The Wildcats, playing for Rush (assuming we go back to ABQ in time for soccer season). So Go Wildcats!