Doing Sarasota Time

Friday, February 1st, was a catch-your-breath day for us on the trip. We hung out at Buffalo's Cousin Ronnie's place for the day, running errands to pick up stuff that we needed. First thing on the list was a replacement Rand McNally road atlas. As we were on our way back to Ronnie's from Lake Okeechobee, we stopped in Arcadia for gas. While we were filling the bikes I suggested we look at the map as I knew pretty soon we were to transition from route 70 to route 72 to get back to Sarasota. I opened up Buffalo's tour pack and stopped...no atlas. I knew he had it in his hand when we were packing up to leave. He said, yes he did, he remembered also. But apparently he set it down while we were ferrying our stuff out to the bikes and it got left at the motel.

Well, the book we had was a 2009 and we were due for a newer one anyways. We found 72 a couple miles down the road and were able to navigate back to Ronnie's place on memory and familiarity we had from early in our visit. So on Friday, Ronnie gave us directions and we ran over to Wal-Mart for a map book and ran into the typical Wl-Mart associate intellectual. The conversation went something like this:
Associate: Can I help you folks find something?
Us: Yes, we're looking for a road atlas.
Associate: We don't carry anything like that.
Pan to us walking into the book section, and at the end of the first aisle was an assortment of atlases, including a Rand McNally specifically printed for Wal-Mart with a list of all the Wal-Marts and Sams Clubs in the back of the book! So we pass the same genius in the automotive parts section after picking up the atlas, and Buffalo, true to his nature, says, "Hey, there's the guy who said they didn't have atlases here!", loud enough for the guy to clearly hear him. He turns and, with a stupid look on his face says, "Oh, where'dja' find that?" All day long I kept saying, "we don't carry anything like that" in the stupidest accent possible!

Next stop was Home Depot, then the liquor store and lunch. While waiting to order lunch, Ronnie calls us. His wife, Barb, had just come home from the hospital while we were on our bike trip and wasn't feeling well. While we were out running around, they got a call from the doctor who said to run her to the emergency room to get checked out. So we ate lunch and decided to check into a motel instead of waiting for them to come home. We had left our clothes bags in Ronnie's garage before we ran out to do our errands, but, fortunately, Buffalo still had our toiletries in his bike and a key to the van, so we stopped by Ronnie's to grab his meds out of the van, then found ourselves a place to stay for the night.... The temperatures were supposed to get into the high thirties over night! WTF! We coulda' stayed home for that weather!  We would decide what to do tomorrow.