When we started reading about the Loop several years ago, nobody said anything about spring break along the Florida coast.
We once were young and did spring break so probably should’ve expected it, but that was long ago and we recall it as a peaceful and quiet thing. None of this loud music and swarms of drunk kids lining the streets. Not us.
Apparently there’s a movie from 1960 involving spring break in Fort Lauderdale and it suggests that in fact loud and drunk kids have been around for awhile, although in 1960 neither of us was born yet so we can’t confirm the movie’s accuracy. We also haven’t seen the movie—“Where the Boys Are”—but supposedly some iconic scenes involved the Elbo Room.
The Elbo Room still sits on the same corner. Packed with kids, stinking of weed, and playing God-awful rap music.
Although some of the signs along the main drag advertise the art museum, it’s pretty doubtful more than perhaps a handful of the revelers care a whit about Renoir.
The signs on the other side of the posts probably are more relevant. Practice safe sex people.
Perhaps an even more telling sign of the times was on the ground under the HIV warning.
One only can imagine what some poor kid had to tell his or her parents: “I don’t know what happened Mom I swear. One minute I’m happily smoking pot and listening to rap music at the Elbo Room, and the next thing I know I wake up naked and handcuffed to a bike rack with a Miss Piggy tattoo on my face.”
Fortunately that poor kid isn’t Mallory or Shannon. Mallory is working at an animal sanctuary in Washington state and Shannon is diving to remove garbage from Bimini for spring break, rather than hanging out with degenerates at the beach. We couldn’t be more proud. (And yes, maybe on some level we’ve turned into crotchety old people, but we play pickleball and could go out to the hot clubs if only we’d brought the right clothes on the boat.)
As previously noted, we’re docked at Bahia Mar. Lots of cool stuff to see right here in the marina. This, for example, is a $25 million jet boat.
One-hundred-sixty-five feet and cruises at 37 knots. And it wasn’t even close in size to the big ones lined up around the corner.
While we can’t compete on size of boat, we felt a tad superior anyway. The fools on one of those mega-yachts were using a frayed dock line that looks like it could snap any minute.
Shameful. Maybe even more shameful than waking up handcuffed to a bike rack.
Not all the interesting boats were big of course. A sailboating couple with two girls under the age of four docked a few slips down. By itself that’s not too interesting. What’s interesting is the family sailboat’s figurehead.
One of us wanted to get one just like it, but Doug felt that although our two daughters are adults, carvings that objectify mermaids have no place on Misty Pearl so he said no.
A couple of times a day FoxSea cruised past our slip. We figure the dude piloting her either is a loser or a winner. We’re not sure which. Either he lost a bet, or he won a Mary Kay sales competition. We wonder if the shirtless tub in the back appreciates the irony of the name just below where he’s sitting.
The good news is that the city kicks the kids off the beach at 5:30. That left a nice window for us to walk on the sand, although we still had to dodge or pick up garbage that the kids left behind.
First with Tom and Deb before they headed back to the desert, then the next night by ourselves at sunset.
Yesterday we bumbled into Maerin, a 43-foot sister boat that has completed the Downeast Circle Loop. We’re hoping for tips from their blog since that’s what we might do next.
We rode Lime scooters home.
We strolled up and down the avenue that’s known as A1A.*
Before he left, Tom goaded us into getting a GoPro. Hopefully some fitting subjects are in our future. We had dinner with Bert (Tyro), one of our earliest Looper buddies. We played some pickleball and tonight had one more Bahia Mar sunset from the flybridge.
Tomorrow on to Delray. We hope to hit the 9:15 opening at the first of eleven bridges.
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* We know, we know. We’ve already used other lines from the same Buffett song. Too bad. It happens to fit.