Day Eight in Fort Pierce, aka Fort Beggar
Expensive white powder, more latex gloves, Vero Beach
At West Marine, a haggard man placed his items on the counter. The woman at the register rang it up and announced the total cost. From here, it is unclear precisely what was said, but we believe it went something like this:
Cashier announces total.
Haggard Man: No f___ing way.
Cashier: Excuse me?
Exeunt Haggard Man without further comment.
While we criticized the man’s lack of tact, we conceded that he said what we think each time we shop at West Marine. We are robbed, screwed, swindled, rooked, hosed, and taken on a semi-daily basis, though we hope those days are numbered, as we continue to stride toward completion of our hull repairs. For the time being, however, we must pay through the nose for thickeners, epoxies, hardeners, additives, and fillers, all of which disappear rapidly into the bottom of our boat, generally in the consistency of peanut butter.
In other news, today saw the purchase of our 30th latex glove at Walmart.
After a dinner of beef stew, we seized two coils of fishing line, some sinkers, a few hooks, and an empty beer can we found on the way to the water, and spent fifteen fruitless minutes trying to get a fish to bite. Possible reasons for our failure include:
1. Lack of rod, reel, bait, or lure other than beer can shards
2. Lack of fishing know-how
3. Lack of light
4. Lack of patience
5. Other general lacking
We capped the night with a drive to Vero Beach, which looks like Singapore (clean, lively, bum-less) compared to Fort Pierce. In addition to an inordinate amount of Chinese buffet restaurants, this Shangri-La is home to Bono’s Pit Bar-B-Q, which may or may not be affiliated with the peace-loving balladeer of Irish super-group U2. After taking in these sights, we returned to Fort Pierce and went to sleep.