Signs of Florida

A trip to Punta Gorda produced a photo of this Indian brave carved into a monkey pod tree near the waterfront. A face of a female Indian is carved on the opposite side. It was a coolish day for Florida with a clear blue sky, about 65 degrees. We spent a while walking to Fishermen's Village and back. There were tennis courts and players, mostly about level 3.0 lobbing shots back and forth. There was a sign announcing that the club had won a level 6.5 tournament - a level previously unknown to me.



An interesting feature of this area of Florida is the tendency to overdo the signs in areas of attraction. The number of warnings and detail thereof is astonishing. At the playground along the waterfront this sign is a good example of creeping signism. For instance, the instructions for the slide remind the users, "Do not slide improperly." For the seesaw, "Do not jump off seesaw without warning your partner." Probably good advice, but who's going to stand around and read the warnings?


The Olympic hockey and curling tournaments have been taking up some of my attention. The USA-Canada game for the gold in women's hockey was exciting, but not a good result for the Minnesota players on the USA team. I'm watching the women's curling gold medal game as I type.

It was another very nice day in southwest Florida.

Twin Cities Traffic Signs

I live in St Paul, but this is the Twin Cities, really just one metropolitan area. I have photos of traffic signs from each city for the first of the month theme day. The Minneapolis signs below are nestled among the debris of the 35W bridge, upside down and currently, not of much use. The whole scene is other worldly and the bridge is not of much use.


These signs are on Summit Avenue to announce the bike lanes which are used mainly in the summer, and, below that sign, the reminder for parkers on the street when the snow plows are to be expected after those four inch snows. These are fairly representative of typical activities in St Paul, my fair city.


I played some tennis today with the older gentlemen. We started at 9 a.m. and lasted about 90 minutes. That compares, not well at all, to the four hours that James Blake and Fabrice Santoro played Thursday night in the US Open. Today's big news was the ouster of Maria Sharapova.

It was, and continues to be, top-notch weather here in River City.