A Tropical Wave

A tropical wave is nothing like a hurricane - a hurricane can cause massive damage and loss of life. A tropical wave, for the most part, is just annoying. Lots of rain and puddles of water in the street. The weather forecasters predicted tropical waves for several days this past week.  Last Friday was one such day, and as I was driving south on I-95 from Stuart toward Palm Beach, I saw dark clouds on the horizon. But I paid them no mind. Big deal, right? Then it started raining, and soon it was a tropical downpour. I could barely see out of the windshield. I pulled over to the far-right lane and followed the car in front at a snail's pace. When the exit to Donald Ross Road came into view, I exited and slowly made my way to nearby Roger Dean Stadium, which I parked in front of and waited out the storm. Nothing bad can happen at Roger Dean Stadium, right? Eventually the rain lightened up to a mere trickle, which is when I took the photo on the left. and I got back on the freeway heading south. By the time I got to Palm Beach, it was as if the rain never happened. Weather is definitely weird here. In any case, I drove over to Mar-a-Lago to give Donald Trump a piece of my mind, but he wasn't home. Damn! After all that, too.

Yesterday they predicted another tropical wave, and I was damned if I was going to get caught in another downpour. I stuck to surface streets and drove down to the pier at Juno Beach, where I took the photograph on the right. And although there were clouds and some rain, there was no massive downpour, thank goodness. Virtually the entire oceanfront in both Jupiter and Juno Beach, Florida is public beach, with lots of mangroves and other vegetation separating it from A1A, which is the highway that parallels the Atlantic from Key West all the way to the Georgia border. The Juno Beach pier, by the way, charges an admission fee, which to me was a bit of a surprise. I have been on other piers, including the Santa Monica Pier in California, and they were all free. The fee was only two dollars for a spectator (as opposed to a fisherman), but I didn't have two dollars and didn't want to use a credit card. Plus, it was drizzling out, and paying money to walk out on a pier in the rain is not my idea of fun. I wonder what Donald Trump would have done?