Baby needs new shoes!

Well, if the baby is Wild Blue, and the shoes are the tires on her trailer.  We were up early and hauled the boat and trailer to Brownsville... the closest place for us to buy trailer tires.  We arrive there early (we're always early); they weren't open, yet, and there was a tractor/trailer with tires being unloaded.  I was fascinated by that process...

In the bottom photo above, you can see how they unload that truck: one tire at a time, by hand... the guy in the truck rolls 'em out and there are two guys inside the shop, catching and stacking.  I thought this would be a fork lift kinda thing, but I can see that this is probably faster  and more efficient... well, with a bit of manual labor involved.

I had an appointment for as soon as they opened... they went to work on the truck and trailer like an Indy pit crew: Wild Blue got new tires (10 ply) all around, Big Red has recent tires, but she got hers balanced and rotated.  They were working on both at the same time.

90 minutes later, we were pulling away.  The wind really kicked up on the way home; a warm south wind.  Tomorrow, a cold front is supposed to move through the area, dropping our temps (down to the 60s), bringing a strong north wind and a chance of some potentially severe thunderstorms.  No spring storms here since we've been back.

In spite of the wind, we decided to take the scooters for lunch out.  We got caught behind a park home with an add-on room being moved - it took up the entire road.  Interesting to watch, though.  When we were able to get by that, we saw that the swing bridge was out... and, there was a tug with two barges run aground on our island side of the Intracoastal Waterway...

While we were waiting in line at the bridge, the guy in the Saab behind us came up and asked the "Big 3 quetions": how fast, how much, what kind of fuel mileage?  We visited for a while; he was considering a golf cart (how many folks on the island get around, even if they don't play golf - but you can't take it off the island), but really liked the idea of a scooter.  Yeah, we like the idea, too.

We speculated on why the tug had pushed the barges aground (wind, not lined up for the bridge, bridge not full open as the tug approached)... we won't know.  The tug captain backed the barges off, put the coals to it, and cruised through the open bridge... close on both sides.

Check out the brown water being churned out on his aft port - that tug is using some horsepower.

Lunch was good, the scoots did OK, even when the gusts topped 35 mph... of course, the speed limits in town are 30 mph.