Wendimere and Bill invited us back to Haines City (about 50 miles east of Tampa) to one of their impromptu dinners, an “Organic Community Dinner” — in other words, a potluck with a bunch of friends. That turned out to be enormous fun with some great people.

One fun aspect of it was that hardly anyone knew who we were, and we didn’t know who they were. In the course of the evening, Wendimere invited us all to tell stories: “Steve, tell a motorcycle story!” and suddenly we’d find out that the guy sitting across the table had just traveled 6,000 miles on his bike, giving us a common interest to talk about (travel).

“Tell us a China story!” and then it would be revealed that his wife had lunch on the Great Wall of China only a few weeks ago. “Rich, tell us an Airstream story!” and so I would launch into one of my little tales from the road that you’ve read about here on the blog.

Above, the women celebrate their crushing defeat of the male team in a movie-trivia game.

Today we move to Bay Bayou, but we’re in no hurry so we’ll probably spend half the day here at Barry’s. It’s another gorgeous sunny day in Tampa and we have nothing in particular to do except enjoy it, so why rush? Our good ship sits ready for our departure whenever we feel like it, which is one of the big benefits to traveling this way.