We’re in for a cool day today with a high of 67 but after that, in the long-range forecast, I see only one temperature below 70! Hopefully this last segment of our 2012-13 winter in Florida will be lovely until we leave. Unfortunately our return to Michigan seems like it’s approaching much too fast.

We will be leaving about May 13th.

Soon I’ll be starting to pack up our “stuff.” I’m already working on lists. This year I vow not to drag as much back and forth. Eventually I’d love to fly back and forth rather than taking our truck but haven’t convinced John yet (although at least he’s now “thinking” about it.)

John feels it’s cheaper to drive our truck down, but I really doubt it. We could save the cost of five nights in motels (going and coming), meals on the road, and the storage area here in Kings Point where we store the truck, not to mention the wear and tear on us as well as our vehicle when we drive down on the very dangerous highways. I-75 is over-run with semis that make the trip truly scary.

True, if we fly down, we’ll need airport shuttle service to and from the airport and the cost of our flights. There’s also the problem of getting Charlie, our bird, to Florida but he’s getting really old, and we could always take him in a small cage under the seat in the plane.

A bigger problem might be our musical instruments. I hope I can find a way that the instrument problem can be resolved.

There are a couple solutions I can think of: We could use our extra instruments which are currently in Michigan when we’re in Michigan. Next season we can leave our favorite instruments in Florida. With instruments in both locations, we can consider flying down the following year (in October 2014). It’s the sort of change that we’ll have to plan for. The other choice would be to wait and when we decide to start flying, we can box up the instruments and ship them down (at a cost of approximately $30-$40 per instrument).

I think we need to seriously start working out the details so we can fly. John’s not getting any younger, and flying is so much safer than 1,300 miles each way. If I can convince John, we’ll need to start the long-range plan by bringing back stuff in the truck from Michigan to Florida in October 2013.

Mailing stuff is always possible but I’d hate to have to pay the postage to get things like my favorite dinnerware serving pieces which I’m missing here in Florida. I need to carefully review both places for items that need to be relocated and bring down as much as possible in October when we come back here.

The only maybe insurmountable problem I see will be our wine supply. We count on enjoying John’s wine over the winter. (I wonder if we could ship our grapes or the grape juice to Florida at a reasonable price so he could make the wine down here. It’s something we can look into.)