Our days here on Geiger Key continue to be packed to the gills with activities, which you already may have deduced from the distinct lack of blog posts lately. “How can a ‘retired’ couple with no kids stay so busy?” you might ask. Most days I wonder the same thing. But when we take a few minutes to slow down and reflect on the past couple of months, it’s easy to see what fills our typical days.

In the previous post, I took everyone on a journey through January which included a visit from my parents. I’ll maintain this loose chronology and begin with the events of February. Ashley continues to focus on her Meandering Stitcher business, which is way more than simply designing patterns and publishing them on the internet. She’s been diving deep into marketing and creating connections within the fiber arts community, which means weekly calls with peers supporting each other, online workshops, and face-to-face gatherings with the knitters and crocheters of Key West. Her “Arrows Shawl” pattern is growing in popularity – two of the physical shawls are currently on display on opposite sides of the country. The local yarn and material shop in Key West has a sample version of the Arrows shawl in the store along with copies of Ashley’s pattern available for sale. In even more exciting news, a second shawl is on display at a store called Gather DTLA in Los Angeles as part of the LA Yarn Crawl. Pretty cool, right? Maybe you’ll catch it adorning the shoulders of your favorite celebrity in the near future.

Ashley continues to work part-time as hostess at the local restaurant around the corner (or through the mangroves, if you choose to paddle instead of pedal to get there). She deliberately made this decision because she knew she’d need a reason to step away from the often solitary pattern-design process and interact socially with the world around her. Not only is she “forced” to socialize with strangers, she’s also made quite a few new friends at the marina – a welcome thing to be sure, but something that will make leaving even harder in May. So between this part-time job, a little digital bookkeeping on the side, and her focus on Meandering Stitcher, Ashley’s retired life of leisure is anything but.

In a strange turn of events, I too started helping out at the marina by working in the RV park office at least one to at most a few days a week. After an unexpected change in personnel, I stepped up to temporarily fill the void and brushed the cobwebs off of my latent office-lackey skills. While I’m glad to be useful and happy to help when needed, this foray back into the life of spreadsheets, phone calls, emails, and filing reinforces my notion of not wanting to be attached to an office long-term. But a little extra income is certainly nice to supplement our non-traditional “retirement” funds. The topic of continuing to earn income after you’ve achieved your version of financial independence has been written about by Mr. Money Mustache and the Mad Fientist, so no need for me to repeat it here. Check out their websites or send us an email or comment below if you’d like more information.

One day a week working at the RV park, no big deal – there’s still six more days in the week, of course. Since I’ve been playing music regularly, that also means I’ve been practicing regularly. Just getting my lip back into shape for extended sax playing took a few hours a day when we first arrived in the winter. I’ve dialed back on the sax practice and stepped up my mandolin routine to include singing. Yep, singing. Trust me, it’s as painful to me some days as it might be to your imagination right now.

Have you ever received a phone call on a Sunday afternoon from someone asking you to provide three to four hours of musical entertainment at a community picnic? Well it happened to me in the middle of February. I accepted the invitation and then immediately started adding songs to my repertoire like an ill-prepared college freshman cramming facts the night before mid-terms. I can play the sax for two hours straight during brunch on Sunday mornings at the marina, but that’s really background music. Just a little jazz for ambiance. Of course I try to play as well as I possibly can, but it’s not a performance meant to entertain the unruly masses on Duval Street on a Friday night. I didn’t want to just play solo sax for this picnic, so I decided this was the perfect opportunity to play the mandolin and sing in front of people for more than just the weekly Open Mic Night at the marina.

You see, I’ve been slowly learning new songs each week. I like to have two or three new songs to sing every week and I’ve decided to never repeat a song that I’ve previously performed on an Open Mic Night (unless specifically requested on occasion). So let’s say I sang during eight or so Open Mic Nights before I received this phone call. That’s 16 to 24 songs I felt comfortable enough to perform in front of people. At an average of three minutes per song, that’s about an hour’s worth of music if I’m lucky. I needed at least two more hours of material for this picnic in the middle of March. Basic math tells me that’s another 40 songs. With three weeks between the call and the picnic, that’s 13 new songs per week. And not just any songs – I’m not exactly a great singer, so I need to be comfortable with a song to sound decent at this point in my singing career. Suddenly a “retired” guy has a fairly busy schedule.

I won’t keep you in suspense – I learned a bunch of songs, played both mandolin and sax for the picnic (with the help of a loop pedal, which I resisted using for a long time), and entertained the residents of Tamarac Park on a Saturday afternoon for a few hours. I won’t say every song sounded great – because not all of them did, to be sure – but the people were appreciative and my tip bucket was full by the end of the day. Maybe they were paying me to stop singing but I’ll choose to ignore that possibility. And with all of this singing and playing over the past couple of months I’ve realized that I really do like singing. I may never be as comfortable in front of a mic without a sax sticking out of my mouth, but I’ll be happy to have a solid set list that I can warble out anytime in the future.

My sister and her family visited in early March the week before the community picnic, so they also endured my big vocal debut. In between practice, weekly performances, and occasional office work, we explored Key West and the surrounding area while entertaining my young niece on her first visit to the Keys. They checked out some of the more kid-friendly tourist spots, like the Key West Aquarium and the Butterfly Conservatory, and we ventured onto the water in both a real fishing boat and kayaks. We even caught a few fish from the canal behind our RV when the conditions were right. I won’t get into all the details of their visit because it’s family time – just like when my parents were here in January – but I certainly cherished the time we spent together, especially since my niece will probably be as tall as me the next time I see her in person.

While Ashley’s creating fiber art and digital patterns, I’ve also picked up a new hobby that naturally accompanies my desire to fish – building fishing rods. The start-up cost is quite minimal for basic beginner’s equipment and the process is similar to tying flies, which I started doing last year. I’ve built two rods so far – one small, lightweight rod for catching bait in saltwater or panfish in freshwater, and a heavier rod for everyday saltwater use. I’ve learned the skills to repair broken rods, replace guides, and fix handles which seems to be useful knowledge when surrounded by fishing gear and anglers – and since I’ve already broken two borrowed rods this year.

When the wind isn’t blowing and Ashley’s dad is in town, we jump on fishing days. Calm days seem few and far between this winter (and now spring) so any missed boating opportunity is all the more painful. Fishing is definitely a luxury, but when you’re surrounded by water it’s too much of an opportunity to simply ignore. On those rare nice days when the wind is reasonable and I’m not cramming songs or working in the office, I continue to fish either on Ashley’s dad’s boat or from the kayak.

Ashley and I enjoy paddling around the mangroves when we have spare time together, and we even attended the recent Blue Angels airshow from the water. We paddled a tandem kayak loaded with a cooler and a couple inflatable floating seats out to the Boca Chica sandbar area to join a horde of other boaters already anchored in place. The Blue Angels flew from Boca Chica Field at Naval Air Station Key West, which allowed excellent viewing from the waters between Geiger and Boca Chica Keys. I never thought we’d ever spend a Sunday afternoon paddling a kayak through the ocean and floating in clear tropical waters while military jets performed aerial stunts overhead, but that’s exactly what happened at the end of March. Still hard to believe even though we have photos and videos as proof.

We’re preparing to depart in May for the first old time music/fiddle convention on our summer itinerary – Fiddler’s Grove in Union Grove, North Carolina. As much as I like fishing and playing music here in the Keys, I’m looking forward to a change of scenery and playing music in a different environment for a few months. Our plans include attending five or six old time music festivals throughout Appalachia this summer, with a few weeks spent catching up with family and friends in Pennsylvania. I’ll have more frequent updates once we’re back on the road and actively traveling again. But in the meantime, we’ll continue to soak up these tropical rays and squeeze in more floating days!