It is Christmas at the White House



It has been an eventful year for the White folks.

The start of the year found us living in Richland Washington, where I was working on nuclear waste cleanup safety issues at the Hanford site. In April, I retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory, and we permanently moved into our condo in Islamorada Florida. Downsizing from a 3 bedroom house with a three car garage to a 2 bedroom condo without a garage has been a challenge, but we managed to sell over 7 tons of junk to fit in. In the process, we sold two trucks, a hot tub, a jet boat, and a lot of furniture. The move was hard on both of us, but it was especially hard for Betty. It was difficult for Betty to move away from her babies (the quintuplets she has been doing volunteer work with). It was also hard moving away from some good friends we had made, as well as old friends we had met up with again.

Now Betty has a new set of babies that she is working with. Betty is now doing volunteer work with the Dolphin Research Center. Once a week, she makes the trek down to Grassy Key, where she spends as much time as possible with Pandora, a dolphin recently born at the Dolphin Research Center. Pandora likes to grab a chunk of seaweed and throw it in your face. Why she puts up with this, I'll never know, but I do suppose Pandora has her charms.

It was difficult for Bob giving up sturgeon fishing, but he is trying. When Bob isn't fishing, reading about fishing, or talking about fishing, he spends a lot of time managing our stock portfolio and surfing the web. Bob is currently hooked on the ebay auction site. If he isn't careful, he will have to go back to work to pay for the bargains he is getting. Bob has been doing a bit of consulting. We spent the summer in Sante Fe while Bob was doing a bit of work at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Bob has also started doing a bit of web page design work. We occasionally rent out our condo which affords us the opportunity to travel. We are planning a cruise to the Bahamas in February, and we are thinking about a European vacation next summer or fall, if we can find a sucker to swap condos with us.

Our New Toys



One of the first purchases was a new boat, a 25 1/2 foot fish-around cabin Dusky, with twin 140-hp outboards which we named "Gone Fission", which is similar to those pictured. This has been a project boat which has occupied a lot of our time. We had the boat hauled out to put a new T-top on it, and while it was out of the water, we scraped and sanded the bottom, put two new coats of bottom paint on it, installed a new 3-D depthfinder, and made several other repairs. We spent many 10-hour days in the boat yard in the peak of the summer heat. All our old clothes, our hair, and even our skin still has black bottom paint on it. Now that we have got the boat running and rigged up for offshore fishing, we have been spending an average of two days a week trying to exterminate all of the fish in the gulf stream. Fishing has been so good, we are starting to hunt for a new freezer, since Betty is getting tired of storing all of the bait and chum in our freezer. Islamorada is called the 'Sportfishing Capitol of the World', and we have barely scratched the surface of the fishing opportunities. We have been concentrating on sailfish and dorado (locally known as dolphin) out near the famous Islamorada Hump (a seamount that is about 11 miles offshore). I expect to start concentrating on the tarpon fishing, as 'winter' moves in, since the weather tends to make offshore fishing somewhat rough in the winter.

Another one of our new toys was a "Keys Cruiser". A Keys Cruiser is, by definition, an old car that you can throw a dead fish in the back seat and not worry about it. In our case, our cruiser is a 1986 Dodge 600 convertible. The trouble with the car, however, is that it becomes possessed whenever it leaves the keys. Last summer on a trip through Louisiana, while stuck in a traffic jam, the "life support system" (also known as the air conditioner) conked out. It also let us down as we were fleeing for our lives from Hurricane Georges, but more about that later.

Life in the Keys



Things are different down here in the keys. For instance, the water temperatures in most homes is bass-ackwards. You see, our water comes from wells up near Miami, and the water travels down the keys through a big black pipeline that runs over the ground. As a result of sun shining on the pipe, the water gets warm. It is so warm, in fact, that many people turn off their hot water heaters in the summer, since the tap water, after running awhile, is just about the right temperature for a shower. The water in the hot water heater gradually cools down to room temperature due to the effects of air conditioning. As a result, in order to get a cool drink of water, you turn on the "hot" water tap, or to get cooler water for the shower, you turn on the "hot" water tap, but to get warm water, you turn on the "cold" water.

Another strange thing about the keys is the lack of dirt. The reason the pipeline runs over the ground is there isn't any dirt around here - it all got washed away in the hurricane of '35. Betty has been buying a lot of plants lately. She says she can spend as much money on plants as I do on cigars. Right now, the condo, the front porch, and the back lanai is full of plants. You almost have to grab a machete to get to the bathroom! She has been collecting orchids lately, and they come with exotic bugs in them, so we have some really interesting bugs in our place too. She bought a huge pot the other day to fill with plants, and she needed some dirt to put in the pot. She went to the dirt store, and wound up spending more money for the dirt for the pot than she did for the plants that went in the pot!

The weather is weird down here too. After a while, you get used to the strange weather, which can make you a little weird too. A few days ago, we had a "cold snap" - it even got down to the high 70's. What with this "blast from the arctic", Betty went into her "prepare for winter" mode and put on a big pot of chili, turned on the hot water heater, put a heavy quilt on the bed, and dug out her winter clothes (the thick T-shirts). We are still running the air conditioner frequently, however, and it is difficult to get into the Christmas spirit when the weather is in the low 80's.

The Hurricane



We had 4 major storms hit the keys this year. We had a groundhog day storm that blew up out of nowhere that caused considerable damage in the lower keys. Then, on Independence day, another big storm blew up and also did a lot of damage further down the keys. Later, Hurricane Georges hit in the lower keys. The major effect that Georges did was damage to the harbor and damage to the trees. Still later, tropical storm Mitch passed through, and several tornadoes touched down nearby, but fortunately, out of all of this, we had only a very small amount of damage to our condo complex, and none to our condo or any of our belongings. Many of our neighbors lost their freezers and dock boxes in the harbor, due to the storm surge. We also had a lot of damage to the trees on the condo complex, but fortunately, the damage was not severe, and the place is back to normal now.

While we were running for our lives ahead of Hurricane Georges, I jokingly asked Betty "Wouldn't this be a great time for our car to conk out on us?" I looked down and noticed that the car was overheating. We topped off the car with water, and once we reached the mainland, we discovered that a freeze plug on the engine block was leaking. We filled the radiator full of stop leak, and managed to get down the road to our destination which was near YeeHaw Junction (I am not making this up!) near the middle of the state. We spent the next several days enjoying the varied cultural opportunities near YeeHaw Junction while keeping a sharp eye on "The Weather Channel", which can make you crazy. Since every motel north of Lake Okechobe fills up during hurricane evacuations, we were lucky to get a place to stay. We were under tornado watches just about the whole of the three days we were there, and even had a tornado warning when one was spotted on the ground headed for our motel. We looked around at the motel we were in, and even though it was constructed out of the finest heavest grade of tar paper, we decided that we had better take our chances on the road than in the bathtub of the motel. Once we hit the road fleeing for our lives again, our keys cruiser again became possessed, and our windshild wipers conked out in the height of the storm. Before the trip was over, a headlight fell out of the fender. I can see why a lot of the locals choose to ride out the storms if their cruisers also become possessed outside the keys.

Our Kids



Our kids are doing well. David got his MBA in Business Management, and is living in Albuquerque working for Consultec, a company that handles Medicare billing for the State of New Mexico. His e-mail address is superdave007@earthlink.net.

Misty is a senior at the University of California at San Diego majoring in biology. She took a semister off during the fall and bummed around Europe, visiting England, France, Germany, Poland, and severl other countries. She expects to graduate in the not too distant future, and expects to attend graduate school in Oregon. Her E-mail address is mistymistywhite@hotmail.com.

Well, this letter is getting out of hand, so I had better close. We would love to hear from you, and we love visitors. As a matter of fact, Betty would love someone to come down to go fishing with me so that she wouldn't have to go so often! May this holiday season find all of you as happy and healthy as we are.

ADDRESS




Home/Work:   88181 Old Hwy, #H21, Islamorada, FL  33036 (305) 853-5606
FAX/Email:   (305) 853-5606 / whitej7@ASME.org
This page was last updated on 12/9/98.