Bike Riding Beauties

Sparky had been riding her bike in between subbing days, averaging anywhere from 12-20 miles a couple of times a week until she was sidelined with severe tendonitis on an ankle. No idea how that happened except thru ignoring a slight twist that must have happened months ago, then dancing her booty off a couple of months ago, then wearing not enough shoe support while subbing....all of the above, probably. It got to the point where she could hardly walk at the end of the day after subbing. Can't have that, so off to the doctor. The ankle was taped for a few days, and Sparky was told no bike riding (that is one of the worst things you can do for a bad ankle, the doctor said) and no swimming for three weeks. That was tough, following the doctor's orders. Then Sparky got a Trilock ankle brace which was great, and that helped a great deal. It's a little bit of an ordeal to put on, but you get faster at it after a few uses. TONS of velcro everywhere on it, always catches in the wrong place, so you have to keep unpeeling it until you get all the straps on layer by layer. After a month, the ankle still hurts now and then, but physical therapy is about to begin, so that should strengthen it, MAYBE.

Back to bike riding...YIPPEE! And here are some of Sparky's favorite photos from recent bike rides....All the photos are with a Canon SX530, a little point and shoot camera, currently just under 200.00, and it has a nice 50X zoom. If the pictures are with an iPhone, Sparky has captioned them as such.  Red lilies....

An osprey on the nest.....She's feeding two little ones and has a bit of fish caught on her beak.

Here's the dad preening....

March was the month for many sandhill crane hatchings in the area...Sparky took LOADS of photos of the mama and the babies, and here is ONE of her favorites...That's the mama's leg on the right.

Sparky was thrilled to catch a yellow rump warbler sitting still long enough to get a photo.

Blackbirds are a dime a dozen around here, but isn't this one beautiful with the iridescent shades of blue in its feathers?

Sparky's favorite Florida bird, the roseate spoonbill. This one was chosen to be featured in a weekly newspaper in our area...

Sparky likes the bottle brush tree...There are always little busy bees on them....This photo is with the iPhone 6S.

And finally....a limpkin or glossy ibis...It has the head plumage of a limpkin, and the body of the glossy ibis...But Sparky thought it was gorgeous....

Hope you enjoyed today's nature show!  Sparky will be back soon with tales from Sarasota Jungle Gardens, a very cool place to visit if you are in the area....Bye for now....

Sparky's in the Water!

No-o-o-o-o…she didn't tip over in her kayak! Au contraire!   She paddled her Sea Eagle 385 with a group of fun friends from Sun 'n' Fun this week. After getting an invite to paddle in the Turtle Beach area, Sparky was excited to be back in the water again.  Turtle Beach is at the southern end of Siesta Key. The only way Sparky knows that is because 1) she is looking at this map after the fact, and 2) because Eldo told her. Turtle Beach has a nice little campground which is tough to get into in any way shape or form, and a nice kayak launch site where some of the commercial rental kayak companies send people off for a few hours' paddling. And of course, there's a nice little beach there which fills up fast on a beautiful day…..

Sparky was even more excited to go kayaking in a new place where there were friends to keep her from getting lost in the mangroves….

Sparky did ok with her Sea Eagle 385…although everybody else seemed to be moving along more easily than she was…when she's by herself,  Sparky doesn't notice that her inflatable is  perhaps just a tad bit bogged down, but get her with a bunch of sleek kayaks, THAT'S when she noticed a slight disadvantage….Sparky had to just work a little harder to stay up with a 16 footer touring Epic kayak, for example, haha….The convenience of folding up the boat when done and stuffing it in the back of the car makes up for a little sluggishness out on the water. It still tracks very well….


The Turtle Beach kayak run/paddle doesn't take a lot of time, maybe a couple of hours depending on how much you dilly dally around in the mangroves and out on the open water…depending on where you go of course! We took to the left coming out of the marina area, went to the right around some mangroves, and then, there's a little beach site where you can take a lunch break, and that's what the group did.

Climb the sand dunes, back down a hill, and just over the hill, is the GULF of Mexico!

We sat down for awhile, ate lunch and watched schools of rays pass by in small groups, one right after another. Too hard to get a photo, but it was fun to see! We enjoyed our lunch on the beach. Suzette had a cushion that she had gotten from Sam's Club, and it folded out into a blanket, which came in very handy as the rest of us had brought nothing to sit on.

From the picnic spot to get back to our starting point was about a 15 minute paddle, so we just dilly dallied around and saw some cool stuff! A solo ray covered itself with sand right by Sparky's kayak hoping not to be spotted. "Hey, guys--come see this ray, I think it's dead!" Then off he went just as soon as Sparky got the others' attention and they came up to check it out…

We saw this bird, which reminded Sparky of one of those cartoon birds of an eagle with a mean look…have no idea what kind of bird this was! He was quite big! Although his beak looks curved in the photo, it was straight. And he let us get very close...

Then he got tired of all the attention, and turned his back to us….

Sparky saw an osprey eating a fish on top of a dead tree…

A conch(?) shell with the animal still inside…Back in the water he went…..

And on the way home, a paddling company's truck with all kinds of cool stuff on it which Sparky is going to have to check out….Hard to see the references in this photo, but it was a beautiful truck and it looked interesting. Unfortunately, Sparky didn't see the name of the paddling company….She just thought this was a cool company to be citing all these biblical references…here are a few of the ones that were on it--John 11:35, Timothy 4:1-5, Jude 1:20, Phillipians 4:18 and a few more in case anybody is interested….

A beautiful day spent with friends out on the water….fantastic! Looking forward to doing more of the same….See you later!