If you don’t live in/near Florida, I recommend that you get a last-minute flight to Orlando or Tampa and then drive about one hour to Sun ‘n Fun in Lakeland.
I went on Tuesday, the first day. Here are a few photos.
P-51 Mustang and NASA’s Super Guppy:
Feel better about flying… the flight controls get disconnected and reconnected every time the plane is loaded or unloaded.
Placid Lassie is looking great despite her many trips to Europe for D-Day commemorations:
Today, it’s tough to imagine the sacrifices that Americans were willing to make to defeat Germany, which never had the same “Death to America” passion that Iran has maintained for 47 years. 2,501 U.S. soldiers died on D-Day and more than 3,000 French civilians were killed plus as many as 19,000 civilians killed in pre-invasion bombing.
Speaking of the Islamic Republic of Iran, here’s an unwelcome A-10 Warthog:
A lot of the most interesting planes are in the parking and camping areas. Here’s a 1947 Antonov biplane, for example:
And who doesn’t love a Grumman boat-hull seaplane?
Cirrus puts on a good display and has a couple of lounges and viewing areas for owners:
How they get people to move from the 200/210-hp SR20 to the 310-hp SR22:
I enjoyed talking to Dave Pascoe, the founder and operator of LiveATC.net. I learned that the service has a $5 app that makes using it much more convenient on mobile devices. Dave generously volunteers at Sun ‘n Fun Radio:
(Why doesn’t the FCC require that mobile phones have built-in FM radio reception at least, to keep communities together? Streaming radio over mobile data isn’t reliable. AM would be tough due to the antenna requirements, but maybe some RF genius could find a way?)
The secret Quiet Birdmen have a not-to-secret secret private club next to the radio station:
What if you’re irrational and choose to fly in? The NOTAM explains what to do. All of the waypoints seem to be in the Garmin 430 database (or maybe I entered them in during a previous trip?). I arrived mid-morning on the first day (Tuesday) and, therefore, the ATIS said to start at Fantasy of Flight rather than at Lake Parker. It’s somewhat unnerving to be 1 mile behind the plane in front and 1 mile in front of the plane in back, but it sort of works if everyone is precise about 100 knots and 1200′. It might have been smarter to file IFR and land on the big runway.
Not the best plane for flying the above procedure, but the under-wing graffiti is interesting. “N1972” makes sense for registration of this G650ER because that’s the year that Nike-brand shoes were introduced. I will give Nike credit for registering this to their own corporation instead of trying to hide it in a trust or LLC. In Stuart, Florida as I was preflighting the venerable Cirrus SR20-G2.
Newer and less famous than its Miami Beach cousin, Art Basel, Art Palm Beach 2026 happened at the end of January and your fearless host braved Climate Change and fallen iguanas (down to freezing overnight!) to bring you the story. It’s the same concept at Art Basel and Art Miami: art galleries from around the world set up booths within a big open space and those interest in art roam the aisles, with a ratio of 1000 ticket-buyers to every collector.
First, hats off to the HVAC engineers who set up the Palm Beach County Convention Center back in 2004. Except for the bathrooms at the edges, the cavernous structure was warm and comfortable despite what was likely a temperature seen only about once in every 5,000 days.
I valet-parked the Honda Odyssey because it was too much trouble to park in the adjacent $2/hour structure and walk for 5 minutes:
(Grok: That’s a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III convertible (also known as a Drophead Coupé), likely from the 1963–1966 production run. The model was the last iteration of the Silver Cloud series, featuring a 6.2L V8 engine, updated quad headlights, and bodywork often customized by coachbuilders like H.J. Mulliner or Mulliner Park Ward.)
Tickets were $40/person and easy to buy at the door. Kids are welcome, but each must have a full-price ticket (unusual for Florida, where kids are typically free or heavily discounted).
If you show up without a service dog, you’re doing it wrong.
Unlike Art Basel Miami Beach, this show seemed to be geared to active shoppers. Gallerists sought to engage and were approachable. Nearly every work was labeled with a price as well as a description. Prices were often reasonable, e.g., $3,500 for a small Hockney print, $15,000-30,000 for an original work by a not-so-famous artist, and hundreds of thousands of dollars at the top of the labeled range.
Adam Greener’s $14,500 works to inspire young scholars:
Perfect for the kitchen if you’re fully stocked with Ozempic (Rogerio Piexoto, “Be Butterfly” 2024, $188,000):
I can’t figure out who would pay $17,000 for this 48×60″ David Drebin C print (standard photo paper for printing from a color negative or digital file). Would a woman want a photo of naked women being showered with $100 bills? If not, how would a man get approval from Senior Management to bring this work into this house? Maybe a man who was single and wanted to remain single would be the customer? Someone who appears in the Justice Department’s 3.5 million pages of Emmanuel Goldsteinism and who tells visitors “I took this photo at Jeffrey Epstein’s place in Manhattan”?
Doug Powell made this 54×54″ Monopoly mosaic from “upcycled” keys:
A couple of New York gallerists wearing masks to protect themselves from the Science-deniers of South Florida (I hardly ever meet anyone here who is sick; by contrast, a tremendous number of friends in Cambridge reported recent or current respiratory illnesses when I was there in January):
An $85,000 Warhol Mao for your elite progressive friend:
A $10,000 3′-square Sarah Fishbein glass mosaic that would be perfect for our righteous brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in Minneapolis if the characters were redesigned to make it clear that it was a native-born Kamala voter promising “I’d set the world on fire for you” to an undocumented migrant:
Here’s an entire wall of Obama-era Hope from Robert Indiana at $50,000 in today’s fascist dollars (edition of 125 since the rest of us 350 million must live without hope?):
The cafe in the middle is remarkably good and not insanely priced considering the captive audience. Here’s a $26 poke bowl with which I fortified myself before a Swiss friend’s Raclette dinner (complete with the special ovens):
A 6.5′-square $27,000 reminder to limit the population to 1 inch of fish per gallon of water, from Eric Alfaro:
Here’s an $18,500 Porsche 911 painting by Conrad Leach. How tough would it be for an AI+Optimus robot to design and paint this?
(The gallerist noted my interest and said, helpfully, that they had a wide range of car models on canvas from the same artist. I replied, “We have a Honda Odyssey.”)
Here’s a clever $12,000 work by Caroline Dechamby (Dutch-born; now in Switzerland?) highlighting the ease with which Optimus might recreate a Mondrian:
A medium-sized Calder that I would love to own ($165,000):
If you want a gift for an older person, here’s a $14,000 mid-sized painting by Scottish-Italian Leon Morocco in his 83rd year. (“Marocco” was the original family name, but it got corrupted to “Morocco”.)
Any friend who is a member of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community might enjoy this $125,000 30×36″ John Whorf painting of Provincetown, Massachusetts:
If you need a gift for Zohran Mamdani, a couple of paintings of IDF soldiers by Natan Elkanovich (#FreePalestine #FromTheRiverToTheSea):
Speaking of Israel, Tali Almog’s encaustic-on-cork works seemed like great choices for public spaces:
If the public space is a Rolls-Royce dealer, maybe this 6′-square $362,000 print of Ormond Gigli’s Girls in the Windows (1960) photo? Wouldn’t this be easy to update with Photoshop or ChatGPT? My version would have a Honda Odyssey on the sidewalk. All of the humans would be nonbinary. There would be a range of golden retrievers, Samoyeds, and Sheep-a-doodles sticking their paws and heads out the windows underneath the humans. It would be called “Hes/shes/zes/theys in the Windows”.
A photo of the valet area on my way out. Check the range of vehicle size between the Bronco in front and the Ferrari 296 GTS Spider ($400,000) in the background. An alien might conclude that these vehicles were built for different-sized species. (If the Bronco back up and rolled over the Ferrari, would the driver even notice?)
Summary: It’s a great event that is less snooty and more kid-friendly than Art Basel Miami Beach. It’s a better place to learn about art and artists because the gallerists are more open to conversation and the artists themselves are more likely to be there in the booths.
Separately, it’s Tax Day. If you’re mailing in a hardcopy return and check make sure that you put some extra stamps on the envelope. Your money needs to go all the way to Somalia by way of Minnesota.
During our two weeks in Ft. Lauderdale we learned that a beachfront house costs between $3 and $8 million. Most of these are approximately the same height above sea level as a crushproof cigarette pack. If the seas are rising up to swallow Florida, as the climate change doomsayers predict is imminent, why are these houses still worth so much?
The beachfront houses of Ft. Lauderdale aren’t worth $3-8 million anymore, just as the Climate Doomers predicted. The price to live in a house that Science proves will be swept away soon is $5-40 million. Is there any new Science that could explain this meteoric rise in the nominal price? “A Global Perspective on Local Sea Level Changes” (Journal of Marine Science and Engineering 2025) looks at IPCC predictions vs. observations. The paper says that sea level worldwide is rising at about 1.5 mm per year. How does that compare with the Climate Doom narrative from the IPCC? The authors say that the observed sea level rise is somewhat lower than predicted and dramatically lower for Florida: “the overestimation along the Atlantic coast of North America is 4 mm/year to 5 mm/year; the highest overestimation found anywhere”.
The authors found little evidence of acceleration of sea level rise (Conclusions), but the same section seems to contradict the above map: “Empirically derived long-term rates of sea level rise in 2020 were in majority found to be in excess of the contemporary projected rates of rise. The current generation of projections can therefore be considered conservative”. Maybe someone here can read this more carefully and figure out how most of the rates based on local measurements are lower than the model predictions while at the same time the model predictions are “conservative” regarding doom.
[Global mean sea level] GMSL from tide gauges and altimetry observations increased from 1.4 mm yr–1 over the period 1901–1990 to 2.1 mm yr–1 over the period 1970–2015 to 3.2 mm yr–1 over the period 1993–2015 to 3.6 mm yr–1 over the period 2006–2015.
GMSL will rise between 0.43 m (0.29–0.59 m, likely range; RCP2.6) and 0.84 m (0.61–1.10 m, likelyrange; RCP8.5) by 2100 (medium confidence) relative to 1986–2005.
If we take the 1.5 mm/year rate of the new paper and a 50-year time horizon for beachfront house ownership, the sea level rises 3 inches in Fort Lauderdale over the next 50 years. If we use the 3.6 mm/year rate, the sea level rises 7 inches. In other words, the acceleration prediction by the IPCC would need to materialize in order for the sea level to rise by half a meter (20 inches).
Our house is at 11′ above sea level (approximately 3 miles inland within Abacoa) so I think we need a rise of about 7′ (2 meters) before it becomes impractical to occupy (need a bit of buffer to handle storm surges). Even under the Doomiest Doomer’s prediction, that will take so long that the house will have required reconstruction, potentially elevated by a few feet, purely due to age.
From September 2024, WSJ, regarding a (present-day) sea level house too shabby to be left standing:
(Imagine the environmental impact of dumping all of those almost-new solar panels into a landfill!)
Finally, let’s look at the climate change alarmists. Here’s Democrat Senator Merkley saying “Climate chaos is the existential threat of our time. We need bold climate action now, before it’s too late” less than a year ago:
(Curiously, the tweet complaining about “Trump’s illegal war” was posted a day after Trump had announced the U.S.’s surrender to Iran (“ceasefire”), i.e., when the war was already over.)
I went to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex yesterday to watch at least $2.5 billion of our tax dollars getting incinerated via the Artemis II mission. The best graphic that I’ve found to explain this somehow comes from Al-Jazeera:
My journey began with a flight (2005 Cirrus SR20 with no A/C) from our South Florida redoubt to KTIX. The sole FBO was slammed so they established a piston ghetto parking area on the east side of the field and deputized flight school employees to park the planes that weren’t worth dealing with. Here’s the Cirrus row:
I arrived around noon and my Enterprise rental car wasn’t there. “They had to deliver 300 cars to NASA,” explained the FBO gal. Eventually a 19-year-old flight instructor gave me and two other Cirrus pilots rides to the downtown Titusville Enterprise office. The 19-year-old had gone straight from high school to flight school and, now in possession of all her ratings, was working as a CFI rather than paying $400,000 to listen to PhD mediocrities (being a Florida, she could presumably have gone to college essentially for free via Bright Futures, but her flying career would have been delayed by four years; she can get an online bachelor’s degree if she ever needs one). I then stopped at Publix to pick up sandwiches and returned to the airport to pick up a friend in his ghetto-adjacent Piper Malibu JetPROP. My friend, an AI-coding entrepreneur, had found unauthorized resale tickets on Reddit for Kennedy Space Center viewing at $155 each ($99 face value; to have gotten our own tickets we would have had to notice an email sent from the KSC that Gmail maps into Promotions and then purchased the $99 or the $250 “feel the heat” ticket within the first few seconds (“feel the heat” is viewing from the Saturn V building, just 4 miles from the pad; the main KSC has a much larger capacity and is 8 miles away)). He brought along a guy who has some connection to a commercial space company. Let’s call him “Space Friend”. At the “real FBO” we met a father-daughter pair who’d just stepped out of their personal Challenger (“I work in finance” said the dad, when Space Friend asked). They had arranged a car service to take them to a public park, but Friend had two extra tickets so we invited them to jump into the Enterprise minivan with us and go to the KSC.
[AI for Cool Kids Tip: Claude Code for initial development. Codex for finding bugs.]
Combining the delays of getting the Enterprise car, Space Friend fighting through Miami traffic to reach KFXE, and Friend+Space Friend having to sit on the ground at KFXE waiting their turn to take off (45 minutes due to heavy flight school volume), we ended up on the road at about 3:15 pm, a mistake of monumental proportions. There was a security check to get onto the NASA Causeway and we were also asked if we had tickets, but didn’t have to show them. Somehow this caused an epic traffic jam despite the fact that the security check for us took about 15 seconds (everyone trusts minivan owners!). We arrived at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor complex around 5:30 pm (i.e., 2+ hours for what is normally a 15-minute drive). The parking lot attendant asked us to show a phone screen of our ticket, but didn’t scan it. There were some people watching the launch from the parking lot (pretty much the same view/sound as inside) so I wondered if they had pictures of someone else’s ticket or perhaps they had the $99 tickets and didn’t like crowds.
It’s a shame that we didn’t bring Mindy the Crippler because we were greeted by a bunny near the entrance:
Our sketchy Reddit tickets actually did scan, so we were able to enter and find a golden retriever:
Also the Artemis backup team:
The bleachers and prime viewing areas near big-screen TVs were packed, but nearby areas almost as good weren’t crowded:
The weather was perfect:
The launch itself was loud, but not to the point that it would have been nice to have earplugs.
We had binoculars, but it was uncomfortable to look at the vehicle with them because the rocket exhaust is so bright. I didn’t make a video because I believe in “f/8 and be there” (i.e., the cameras set up by NASA and affiliates close to the pad are going to “be there” and do a much better job).
The trip back to the airport took about 45 minutes through some traffic.
I flew the Cirrus back to her Stuart, Florida home, about 35 minutes under a full moon. Orlando Approach refused to provide “flight following” (formerly there was a big push to call this “VFR Advisories”, but that seems to have died along with “Notice to Air Missions” as a replacement for “Notice to Airmen”) due to “staffing”. Florida is bursting at the seams!
Was it worth a whole day for a 4-minute launch experience? Sure. I was glad that I was there for a Florida community experience. Although we weren’t there for long, we chatted with people who’d been there for hours in folding chairs and who were extremely passionate about space flight, e.g., a family from Melbourne, Florida whose kids are techies in Atlanta and have come home for every Artemis attempt. It would have been a lot less traffic and more fun to enter the KSC at around noon and spend the day waiting with the crowd. If you just want to experience the sound and fury of a rocket launch, though, it would be just as good to get a “feel the heat” ticket to watch a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch (much less likely to scrub) from the Saturn V building. It’s a smaller rocket, but being only half the distance away means the visceral effect is as large or larger.
Let’s hope the Artemis mission is a success. If it is, though, we’ll be forced to conclude that it is easier to send an Astronaut of Color, an Astronaut of Femaleness, and an Astronaut of Canadianness (another victimhood category?) to the moon than it is to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Mahmoud Khalil, or most other migrants.
(Given SpaceX Starship, what is the point of the SLS and Artemis, you might ask? A friend at NASA Goddard: “It’s a jobs program so that NASA didn’t have to fire the people who worked on the Shuttle.” In his view, all of the SLS/Artemis goals could be accomplished at a much lower cost by SpaceX. Keep in mind that Science NASA is jammed with haters of the manned space program!)
Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed a controversial bill to rename Palm Beach International Airport after Donald J. Trump. The newly approved legislation, House Bill 919, gives the state authority over naming major commercial service airports and officially designates the facility as “Donald J. Trump International Airport.”
Palm Beach County, of course, has more registered Democrats than Republicans, so this isn’t going to be universally popular with our neighbors…
#Ironic: Via his regular weekends in Palm Beach, Donald J. Trump has done more to reduce the utility of PBI than anyone in the 90-year history of the airport. (Temporary Flight Restrictions imposed when DJT is in town make PBI cumbersome/burdensome to use.)
Whether one loves Donald J. Trump or not, I think everyone can agree that PBI offers an awesome traveler experience. Security is a breeze, even without PreCheck. The check-in counters are always fully staffed so there are minimal lines for checking bags. The gates aren’t as crowded as in FLL or MIA. I do wish the ceilings were higher in the gate areas.
Here’s the view of Mar-a-Lago while sitting on JetBlue climbing out of PBI (DJT?) in December 2025 (en route to Minneapolis):
A car in the airport garage back in June 2025 (rare to have any political bumper stickers in this part of Florida, but it is also possible to go big):
Permanent airport exhibit on David McCampbell, “the United States Navy’s all-time leading flying ace”, who spent his youth and retirement in Palm Beach County:
Battle of Leyte Gulf: “When he landed his Hellcat aboard the USS Langley (the flight deck of Essex was not clear), his six machine guns had just two rounds remaining, and his airplane had to be manually released from the arrestor wire due to complete fuel exhaustion.”
Speaking of naming… if we had an aircraft carrier named for FDR why not one for Donald J. Trump (assuming that he wins the current war against Iran!)?
I took the 10-year-old to the 12 Hours of Sebring IMSA race, conveniently located right next to the Sebring airport.
Chevy, whose team finished just behind the Porsche 911 team, brought the latest Corvette ZR1X to the event:
I’m not sure who needs 1,250 horsepower to get to Publix, especially given that the nearest curve on a public road is in Georgia. The sacrifice of the front trunk space seriously compromises the ZR1X’s utility as a car. Chevy also brought the “Stars and Steel” 250th anniversary of the U.S. edition Corvette (a car that is made out of plastic (body) and engine (aluminum)):
Consistent with the quantities of alcohol previously consumed at Sebring, a drunken 4-day experience for many, Ford brought a Mustang tipped on its side:
Access to the elevated viewing deck is limited to Mustang owners and, presumably, their friends, so try to show up with a Mustang owner. Here’s the view from the top:
There’s a small museum next door. Reflect on the fact that today’s Islamic Republic of Great Britain was once sufficiently mighty to engineer and manufacture cars that could run continuously for 12 hours:
The next car event for the weekend was Cars and Coffee in Boca Raton at the office park in which the IBM PC was developed 44.5 years ago. I’ll cover that when the PC turns 45.
The final car event was a show here in Jupiter at the Double Roads Tavern. This show was heavier on antiques than the usual South Florida event. Here’s a 1946 Ford cab-over-engine (COE) truck:
A Lincoln Continental next to a 1955 Thunderbird (the first year for a car that lasted until 1997 and then had a retro version from 2002-2005) next to a 1957 DeSoto:
A lot of old pickup truck action:
This Chevy 3100 was a work of art:
Maybe the El Camino (1968) should be brought back for those who want to transport bicycles rather than the heavy cargo for which the Ford F-150 is spec’d:
What happens to all of these collectibles when Americans are no longer able to drive because robots have taken over? Will it be fun to sit in the passenger seats while the Optimus robot does the driving of a classic car? If not, do the ones that aren’t in museums get scrapped?
In 2022, Washington State imposed a 9.9% tax on the only income that a guy like Schultz is likely to have (capital gains). They also have a 35% death tax (estate tax). Moving to Florida will save Schultz and his wife more than $1 billion because the Florida income and estate tax rates are 0%.
Schultz says that he yearns to pay higher taxes:
No, Ali. I forgive you for talking over me when I said the wealthy should pay more in taxes and get less. We should tax all capital gains as income and close loopholes. We need to preserve our free market economy so everyone can succeed. https://t.co/jmhwFQIwlv
(Taxing “all capital gains as [ordinary] income” would be truly epic given that capital “gains” aren’t calculated with respect to inflation, i.e., a person who sells a property or stock at a loss in real dollars may still owe capital gains tax due to the rise in nominal dollars.)
“I myself should be paying higher taxes — and all wealthy Americans should have to pay their fair share. I think we can all agree on that,” Schultz said at the university.
Maybe this is the explanation for why Howard Schultz won’t be joining Donald Trump in Palm Beach. From 2020:
“In my view, our choice this November is not just for one candidate over another,” Schultz wrote in a letter to supporters. “We are choosing to vote for the future of our republic.” Schultz went on to say, “What is at risk is democracy itself: Checks and balances. Rigorous debate. A free press. An acceptance of facts, not ‘alternate facts.’ Belief in science. Trust in the rule of law. A strong judicial system. Unity in preserving all of our rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Taking aim at President Trump’s repeated attacks on voting by mail – which many Americans feel is a safer option due to health concerns over in-person voting at polling stations amid the coronavirus pandemic – Schultz stressed that it’s “essential that Americans turn out to vote, that every American is able to vote safely, whether by mail or in person, and that every vote is counted. It would be a grave miscalculation to think this election is secured for a Biden victory.”
He believes in Science, but voluntarily moves to a state that rejects Science and a city that rejected masks in favor of partying on?
Speaking of Science, what has the proud owner of a condo in a beachfront Four Seasons building (i.e., sea-level coastal exposure to Climate Change-caused hurricanes) said about Climate Change? In 2019, he said that he was “gravely concerned about our planet, climate change and things that we have to do” (though he wasn’t on board with Full AOC)
What does ChatGPT have to say about a guy who is moving within an easy drive of Alligator Alcatraz?
Schultz has also backed a legalization/citizenship approach on immigration. In his 2019 Purdue speech, summarized by GeekWire and OnTheIssues, he called for “common-sense immigration reform,” including “a path to citizenship for Dreamers” and broader legalization measures. Florida’s recent immigration policy has moved in the opposite direction: SB 1718 bars local funding for IDs for people without proof of lawful presence, invalidates certain out-of-state licenses issued to unauthorized immigrants, requires some hospitals to collect immigration-status information, and strengthens penalties tied to employing unauthorized workers.
What about the move to a state with the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection guarantee is taken seriously?
Schultz’s race- and DEI-oriented corporate activism is also hard to square with current Florida policy. His “Race Together” initiative and his broader view that companies should engage on racial issues fit poorly with Florida’s anti-DEI direction. Florida’s Board of Governors regulation now bars state universities from spending state or federal funds to “promote, support, or maintain” programs that advocate DEI or engage in “political or social activism,” and the regulation defines DEI in part by reference to classifications based on race, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Florida law also restricts certain race- and sex-related instruction in education settings
The hotel is within a large business district that I had never heard of and that is the home of the Evil Empire (from a small airplane pilot’s point of view):
Would I take Brightline or Orlando again? It doesn’t make much sense for a family and takes longer than driving from Jupiter (partly because one has to drive south for 25 minutes to the station before heading north), but for a single traveler who will fly out of Orlando and then later return to a different airport it is awesome. It will make more sense if they can ever get a station built in Stuart, Florida, which is to our north.
A friend moved to Florida in the middle of 2025. He went back in February 2026 to deal with issues around selling his old house in the Boston suburbs. Some of his messages to a group chat:
After Florida this is indeed f***ing torture
I spent the entire morning doing useless shit that is neither fun nor contributes to my future well being. Shoveling snow, salting.
Even though I pay hundreds of dollars a month to an entitled lazy idiot gardener who doesn’t do anything unless you tell him repeatedly.
The house was empty yet my heat bill was $1500.
In Florida that will be the electric bill for a 20k sq ft house with another 15k sq ft of usable outdoor living space
I forgot a snow brush
Now I will have to scrape snow off my car after a [gym workout], all sweaty and freezing
Took me an hour to get to my house from the airport on Friday [about 20 highway miles]
But it is good because I can spend this time listening to NPR
He included a photo:
A little later in the chat group, from a participant who lives in a South Shore suburb of Boston:
How can anyone commute to work? It’s an hour and 20 minutes going to Cambridge now [27-mile trip, mostly highway]. I guess people don’t work from home anymore?
[me] They stopped taking the T. So even though fewer are working the traffic is as bad or worse. ChatGPT: [the MBTA has] about ~64% of pre-pandemic ridership
Speaking of NPR, we had a dealer loaner while our Honda Odyssey was being serviced (some more battery trauma, this time with a 4-month-old Duracell AGM; I paid $308 for a Honda OEM part instead of trying to get another short-lived Duracell under warranty). I didn’t want to go to the trouble of getting Apple CarPlay organized so instead of my usual Audible book I listened to Treasure Coast NPR. When I tuned in they were talking about the real victims of the Gazans’ October 7, 2023 attack into Israel: American Muslims. Islamophobia in the U.S. reached crisis proportions after October 7 and then became an emergency crisis emergency when Donald Trump was elected by the haters. This piece was followed by a story about Black-white interracial marriage 60-150 years ago in the U.S. In a country that has been transformed by Latinx and Asian immigration, thus enabling the entire economy to do without Black workers (see Replacement of Black workers by migrants in Cambridge, Massachusetts), NPR remains stuck on the idea that Black-white relations are the defining issue of our time.
As New York City moves toward a ban on pet dogs (consistent with the Hadiths; see Nerdeen Kiswani’s February 12 tweet that stirred up Rep. Randy Fine), a former Club Med in Florida has gone in the opposite direction: a Fido-welcome all-inclusive resort. Here’s a report on a weekend spent at Sandpiper Bay. We brought the kids and Mindy the Crippler, our golden retriever.
There are tons of great restaurants in Stuart and Port St. Lucie. Why would anyone want to eat three (or five) meals per day at the hotel? We met a lot more people than we would have if we stayed in a regular hotel and everyone dispersed at mealtime. Of course, not everyone agrees that this is a great system…
The setting is right next to a marina on the St. Lucie River:
One can sit on the shore in the shade and read a book with birds and jumping fish for company:
This isn’t a “drop off the kids after breakfast” place like Club Med. There are some kid-oriented activities, but not enough that kids or teens can form a tribe and entertain each other. Where the resort shines is in tennis. The grounds are shared with RPS, a boarding school for future professionals, similar to Bradenton’s IMG, though much smaller (Mindy the Crippler introduced us to some of the boarding students; they do academics 4 hours per day and sports training 4 hours per day and they seem to love it. Some students do all of their sports training at RPS while living at RPS, but then do virtual school for their academics, e.g., the (free) Florida Virtual School). There are group tennis lessons every day except Sunday and you can also arrange private lessons with RPS staff.
If the kids are getting on your nerves, the good news is that unlimited alcohol is included. Don’t expect high-end vino, though, and, in fact, the Kirkland wines are superior to what we were offered at Sandpiper Bay. Perhaps that was just as well because I consumed just one drink per day as a result. There’s a relaxing riverside adults-only pool that also has a hot tub that is actually hot.
Not too many people had brought dogs, but all the ones we met were friendly. They included two Corgis, several Doodles, a Spaniel, and a Standard Poodle. There were no hassles regarding paperwork (i.e., undocumented canines are not illegal) or weight limits. Dogs were welcome almost everyone in the resort, but not within the pool fences nor inside the various buildings, including restaurants and bars. Consistent with most of the rest of Florida, it was possible to eat or drink at outdoor tables, including at the main buffet restaurant, with a dog. Mindy the Crippler used her dog bed despite the sizing mismatch:
The resort is equipped with an arcade (pay per game) and free ping pong, pool, and table shuffleboard. The shuffleboard table was a magnificent 22′ regulation length example, but almost unplayable because the hotel managers hadn’t figured out that they needed to buy wax for it (I told them to call up Shuffleboard Federation and order the correct speed for their table; they also had no silicone spray that I saw nor did they have a wiper to use between games; all very sad considering the time and trouble that some wood nerds had gone to when building the 22′ playing surface).
What about the fact that the resort isn’t directly on an ocean beach? It’s a 20-minute drive to Jensen Beach, one of the nicest in Florida.
A lot of the staff members had warm and welcoming personalities. As with nearly every other hotel in the U.S., though, they’re somewhat understaffed. Expect to wait in line and don’t expect daily room cleaning.
How are the rooms? The family rooms are huge, much better than the family room we had at Club Med Michès Playa Esmeralda (Dominican Republic). The Club Med “family room” was just a regular-sized room chopped up with more doors to the point that there wasn’t anywhere for the entire family to hang out except in the queen-sized bed of the “parents’ space”. At Sandpiper Bay, the parents’ room has two huge sofas and plenty of space for the entire family, including the pup who got her own bed ($75/day extra for the animal). The kids’ room is small, but sufficient:
What kind of people did we meet?
A retired but super fit pickleball enthusiast from Albany, traveling with his wife.
A mechanical engineer from Tampa and biomedical engineer wife who came to the U.S. from Cuba at age 16 and eventually earned a PhD in biomedical nerdism (she could be featured on my four random immigrants page, though I don’t think a Democrat politician would want to highlight her due to the fact that she was unequivocally anti-socialism and generally pro-Trump (at least preferring him to the Democrat alternatives)). They were celebrating their 20th anniversary and had left their children behind with grandparents.
An architect from Delray Beach whose firm was about to finish a Palm Beach barrier island starter home ($100 million construction cost; I was afraid to ask what the land had cost or what his firm’s fees might have been; remember the WSJ says $200 million is the new luxury home buy-in).
a mom from Plano, Texas on a three-night break with two kids and a grandma (father left behind to take care of a cat; a great metaphor for modern marriage)
A pre- or post-trip suggestion: the Port St. Lucie Botanical Gardens (admission is free; donations encouraged). They’ve got about 100 orchids and several hundred cacti and succulents.
Conclusion: The price is fair. The location is great. The dogs are friendly. The food is about what you’d expect from a Hilton or Marriott. You’re not trapped as you might be at a foreign all-inclusive. If you forgot something, drive 10 minutes to Walmart or Publix. If the kids are bored, take them to the Regal movie theater or go another few minutes to Hobby Lobby, downtown Stuart, or the Play Money unlimited pinball and video arcades (one in Stuart and one in Fort Pierce).
Packing list:
your own ping pong paddles
your own Pickleball gear
your own tennis racquets and balls
your own shuffleboard wiper, silicone spray, and speed wax
Nearest airports: Stuart (if flying yourself), PBI, Vero Beach. It’s 1:45 from FLL with a lot of interesting things to see and do on the way. It’s 1:53 from MCO with absolutely nothing to see or do in between (you could take an indirect route from MCO, though, and stop at the Kennedy Space Center in one direction (allow a full day) and Valiant Air Command in the other (all a couple of hours).
Prices right now
I checked for March 7-14, 2026. The site gives the same price for two adults or two adults+two kids. Riverside life begins at $324/night plus ruinous taxes:
