We slept in a bit and Mike and Kacey basked in mutual adorability followed by lunch at Perkins and then the beach.  Cocoa Beach is immediately east of Orlando and one of the nicest plain beaches along the Florida east coast.  It’s where families go to the beach and I presumed that I’d be able to find a stunt kite here.  Along the Jersey coast every beach has one to two kite shops or at least shops that sell two line stunt kites but Florida does not yield kites so easily.  The closest store I could find was 30 miles south on A1A which translated to a 45 minute drive each way.  Suzie and I found the kite store, I got a stunt kite, she got a Batman kite, and we returned to Cocoa Beach.

 
I like beaches mostly as places that are bright and windy. I haven’t swam in the ocean without scuba gear for well over a decade and today I did not break that streak. The wind was wonderful and I remembered more about stunt kiting than I thought I would. For the next two hours I was lost in wind and sky.

I wasn’t able to get the kite to do multiple loops which involves pulling fast enough that the kite’s momentum helps maintain a spin while the lines are crossed but I only crashed twice. Everyone else had a hand at it with more or less success. Suzie’s Bat Kite broke from its line and became a bit of a rat’s nest when ultimately recovered. As is her way, she gave it a swift death rather than letting it linger.

Mike buried himself.

The few hours at the beach were nice. Back at the hotel, there was a crocodile in a pond below the pool area and some English major said “I just like to sit and consider the mind of the crocodile”. My normal response would be “don’t anthropomorphize animals, they hate that” but rage welled up faster than wit. Animals are not humans and at no point should we forget that. They do not have conscious processes in the same way that we do and much of what they do could be described as simple equilibrium seeking. So say that they hate, love, think, etc is a disservice to both their and our uniqueness. Sure, you can argue that this is a short-hand, but I say it’s not a useful one.

I stomped around a bit and then we got changed for dinner.

Dinner that evening was at Mitchell’s Fish Market and it proved delicious.

This was my first go at salmon that didn’t come out of a bag. It didn’t taste like it came from a bag unless the bag were possibly gold or maybe like satin or something. The wilted spinach was also quite good and this is a trick I plan on stealing. Kacey’s friends were nice and as the evening wound down we started hatching plans to run into each other again. I’d say that is a sign of a good first meeting.