The first thing I do in a morning (unless the rain is fierce) is to go street-walking, an activity that wakes me up and shakes off the cobwebs.  Sarasota has many fine streets to offer to the walker, some are more challenging than others. Since street.walking is an exercise, I walk briskly, not to break records or become an entry in the Guinness book of records , but just to induce some heavy breathing and get the heart pumping at a higher rate.  Typically I walk at a 16 minutes per mile (10 minutes per km) rate for 3 or 4 miles (if you want km, you do the math).  The only deviation from this rate is when my route takes me over the bridge, when, on the uphill sections, I go as fast as I can; that brings on lots of heavy breathing!  At this point I interpose a sunset photo of the bridge taken from a vacant lot across the street from my domicile.

The bridge connects the Sarasota mainland to Bird Key and beyond that to other keys. The official name of the bridge is the John Ringling Causeway and the Ringling name is to be found all over the city.  The family were big circus owners and John, the major player, made Sarasota the winter home of the circus.  He funded many institutional projects in the early days of the city (for more see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ringling).  The Ringling estate and the museum are worth an extended visit.

So, since my walking is not for record-breaking purposes, I do not have to focus on my performance and I can use the opportunity to observe things around me.  Of course, I am not the only exerciser on the street and, especially on weekends, the routes become busy with walkers, runners, bikers, strollers and their dogs, so I have the chance to have a little human interaction.  And not only human, one of my favorite sites are the pelicans who glide seemingly lazily over the water until they spot fish below.  Then with a few flaps of their enormous wings they get more height and at the right moment plummet vertically into the water, beak first with wings outstretched and a couple of seconds later come to the surface with their catch in their capacious beaks.  They gulp down the fish then start up the procedure again, continuing, I suppose until they are gorged.

The weather here has been all that I could have hoped; typical days have been bright, cloudless and sunny with daytime high  temperatures in the high 60s/low 70s.  It is pleasant to see the semi-tropical plants blooming in January, the bougainvillea and the hibiscus, for example.

The bougainvillea in the picture are a deep red color (not well reproduced in the photo), but the purple variety are also much in evidence.  Perhaps I said this in an earlier posting but there are lime, grapefruit and avocado trees on, or near to, my house and every morning as I return from my exercise, I go looking around for windfalls, and sometimes I am lucky.

Of course, there have been days that have been distinctly unfriendly with high winds, lashing rain and cool temperatures, but on these occasions it is easy to cheer oneself up by looking at the TV news programs showing mountains of snow, ice storms, freezing rain and the like in the frozen northern US.  It might be not so nice here, but there it is surely hellish.

The iciness continued across Europe over the Christmas period, causing football games to be postponed, even in England.  In addition I received emailed photos from friends in CDP showing it snowing there-a very rare event.  All in all, I am very pleased to be where I am, able to walk around lightly dressed, admiring the blooms of January.

The Bloody Statue!

An alternative to walking across the bridge to Bird Key is to walk the other direction to the downtown area and around the marina.  This route takes you past the Bloody Statue of which I have written earlier.  I felt compelled to take a photo of the eyesore and I insert it here for your pleasure.  You can see the immensity of it by comparing it with Jane’s Mini Cooper parked nearby and the normal-sized persons next to it.  The one redeeming feature is that the planners have placed it in a place with trees around, so that one day it may be completely obscured.

The central part of Sarasota, the downtown, is a composite of tightly-spaced buildings having a variety of uses.  There are high-rise offices and swanky palatial apartment houses/condominiums, interspersed among which are low-rise stores, restaurants, bars, art galleries, theaters and the like.  The downtown is heterogeneous, but quite pleasant; it is easy to walk around and just about 10 minutes walk from Golden Gate Point where I am living.  What I am showing here is a photograph of a glass-walled high-rise bank tower reflecting the sunset.  Maybe you have figured it out by now,but you can get a bigger version of the photos by clicking on them.

Like any American city, once you leave the central zone of Sarasota, going north or south you soon find yourself in less-than-elegant areas devoted to low-level commerce, auto repair shops, pawn shops, money lenders and the like.  These are not so beautiful but they provide essential services at prices that we can afford.  For example, if you take your BMW to the BMW dealership for an oil change and lube job and wait for it to be done, you will be ushered  into a waiting room by a clean person, who will point out comfortable couches and chairs with a self-service area for snacks, coffee, sodas, spring water and the like.  Your car is spirited away from your sight and is eventually returned to you all washed and polished.  You are never confronted with a person in oily overalls; the bill for the job will be $73.  On the other hand if you take the same car to Tires Plus in the blue collar zone you will find yourself waiting in the ante-room to the service area, which serves as tire showroom and reception.  Oily overall-ed guys are all around, you can see your vehicle up on the lift in the service area ; there are a couple of cheap chairs, a pot of hot coffee, and some  magazines to help you while away the time until your car comes back without washing or waxing, this bill is $30.

Well, it is cocktail hour, so more on this must wait…