Today’s my birthday: Sixty-two spins around the sun! What better place to be than on a grand adventure?
It started with fog and sweat and a head net to ward off no see ums. And ends with me sitting in a wooden Adirondack chair along the seawall overlooking Santa Rosa Sound with country music and tiki torches in the background.
Our clothes are washed. The tent fly, which is saturated every morning in dew and was packed wet this morning, is dry. My hair’s washed and we’re both well fed, with leftover tacos for lunch tomorrow while on the trail.
But it took paddling 11 nm (nautical miles) this morning and crossing a calm Santa Rosa Sound.
The morning was foggy and overcast. The colors all grey and white. The grey of water, dappled with sun glimmers of white. The white of beach sand and dunes, streaked with black shrubs. The grey of sky and black of birds. Then John’s red life jacket to my left and a dab of Baby Blue. And extended out in front and back of me, my luscious Miss Pink.
My pink kayak just screams that gals can be bad ass. Screams that cancer-surviving gals can be too.
Birthdays.
I spent my 30th in Port Said, Egypt, while sailing around the world on the Research Vessel (RV) Heraclitus. It was a training mission of sorts for Biosphere II candidates, of which I was one.
I spent my 60th on a hammock in the jungle of Nicaragua, having just put in an offer on our house.
My 61st was spent at work in Loreto, Baja California Sur, Mexico, where John and I managed a sea kayaking expedition company.
And now my 62nd, paddling Florida’s Circumnavigational Saltwater Paddling Trail from Alabama to Key West with John.
Today we complete Segment 1. Fourteen more segments between here and the end of the Keys.
Tonight’s hotel/laundry/restaurant/groceries stop, after 40 total miles of our paddling so far, is a nice comfort break from our real work. But I’m dubbing it the 3 Cs: Comfort, Cash, Complexity.
Life is cheaper and simpler on the water. Here in civilization comfort is King.
We are alive.
We are healthy.
We are adventurers.
Goodnight.
-Susana
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