Malibu

July 5, 2013











Malibu

Once Kathy & I had both returned from our world travels, we had about a week at home in Key West before we were back at yet another airport, this time for a cross-country jaunt to the West coast to Malibu, California where our friends Erik & Annestasia  were getting married. A lot of my ODC friends would be gathering and it looked to be an amazing good time.





Wes, Kathy & Eli



We flew in to LAX and then headed to our hotel, which happily had a Trader Joe’s right next door. After checking in, we drove over to Malibu where our friends live in an incredible house right on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. Many celebrity and CEO types have homes right around where they live and the homes are literally right on the beautiful Malibu Beach.



Ted, Shannon & Kevin

Eli & Packy

They were hosting a welcome barbeque at their home on the first evening of our arrival and the place was packed with a wonderful collection of friends from my youth who had come together from across the country to celebrate the big occasion. Many friends who still reside in Indianapolis were there as were many others like myself who have moved away but remained closely connected.



Wes & Melanie

It was especially nice to be able to connect with so many West Coast friends who because of the distance involved I get to see on a much less regular basis than some. It was also cool to get to see Erik’s family who I had not seen in years and also to get to meet Annestasia’s family and their friends. It was a great and fun group and we had a great evening reconnecting.







The next day, we joined our friends Wes and Melanie and headed to spend a day at the beach enjoying the beautiful California sun and sand. It was awesome except for the fact that I was feeling like crap due to a sinus infection that had been plaguing me since returning from Albania. The good news is that Malibu Urgent Care was located just up the beach and was open on July 4^th. The bad news is that while Kathy and my friends were kicking back at the beach, I was sitting in urgent care.







Kathy

For the evening of July 4^th, It was back to Erik’s house where we had yet another feast for dinner and then all gathered to watch the July 4^th fireworks that were being set off from a barge just in front of his house. In fact there were fireworks displays along the beach as in addition to the local display, many celebrities host parties at their homes and hire their own private fireworks displays which match and even top the municipal display. It was pretty cool.

Lisa, Erik & Amanda

Wes & Eli





The best part was spending July 4^th for the second straight year amongst so many of my best and dearest friends. My ODC connections are among the strongest and most influential of my life and I feel so fortunate to have a group of such amazing people who have all managed to maintain such a strong bond over time and distance.







Melanie & Wes

Floatopia Miami

September 15, 2013











Floatopia Miami

So if you are reading this, you may have noticed that I have fallen somewhat behind in my blogging efforts, eventually life just catches up and somehow I just kept falling farther and farther in arrears as far as posting timely and up to date blogs. I found myself with three options, stay behind and just post updates as I found the time- meaning my posts would continue to be months out of date, skip ahead to current  events and just forget about the past few months or skip ahead and try and go back when I get the chance to fill in the blanks.









I choose the third option, meaning that I will be posting both current and sometimes past events so that I can hopefully keep current and fill in the past few months that seems to have slipped by so quickly. This means that the blog postings will not always be in chronological order and that current events will take precedent over past ones until I hopefully eventually get caught up.









In keeping with that, this post will be about the past weekend when Kathy & I headed up to Miami for a great weekend getaway, mostly to attend a Depeche Mode concert on Sunday, but we went up on Friday afternoon and made it an entire weekend filled with various activities.





We headed up on Friday afternoon, staying near the University of Miami campus where we spent some time hanging out at the Titanic Brewery on the UM campus tasting some yummy craft beers before heading to South Miami to find a little hole in the wall restaurant called the Caribbean Delite Restaurant where Kathy could get an authentic Roti that she has been craving since returning from Trinidad and Tobago.













Saturday morning dawned another beautiful sunny Miami day, a perfect day to fulfill our goal of heading to Miami Beach to enjoy a glorious beach day. We decided to head to South Pointe Park, which is the southernmost point of South Beach where we were happily surprised to discover there was a cool event happening called Floatopia.







Floatopia is a semi-organized gathering of people at the beach with all manner of floatation devices that they raft up and basically party away on. It began in 2003 in Santa Barbara, California where it has been held annually ever since, it has also spread to other beach communities including Miami Beach where this was the second Floatopia event to be held at South Pointe Park.







Literally hundreds of revelers and all sorts of inflatable floating devices were on hand and thousands more packed the beach for the massive beach party. It may have gotten even larger if not for the prevalence of moon jellyfish that were plentiful in the shallow nearshore waters that scared many from entering the water, even though they are mostly harmless – delivering a very slight stinging sensation if you happened to brush into one.











The vast majority of the partiers seemed to be college students from UM, but there were others there as well, including families and a few older floatopians like Kathy and myself. It was a ton of fun, I especially liked the diversity and variety of the various floatation devices. Kathy & I had the float from last month’s Tubeathon in Key West.