West Cocoa Chat

I have been amazed in my almost 47 years how many friends have come and gone in my life. I don’t say that to be negative. To me, new friends add spice to life.
I think it was 3 years ago when Randy first entered my life on the floor of one of the apartments at the Pepperdine Bible Lectures. Randy wanted to "crash" with my good friend Greg and me, sleeping on the floor that week. I’ve now grown to look forward to not only hooking up with Greg at Pepperdine but Randy as well.
Randy and his family (Beth, Madison, and Reese) drove to our home from their vacation resort in Daytona Beach this past Saturday. It was great to get to know his family on a personal level. We decided to take them to the "world’s famous" surf shop, Ron Jon’s in Cocoa Beach. Our trip also served to allow my son to try out his new surfboard. His friend Kyle came with us as well. As we were driving to the beach on the newly re-named "Beach-line," Kyle’s surfboard (only a month old) flew off my rack and landed on the highway behind me. It was a miracle that it didn’t hit a car as well as not being run over by the cars behind me. We were able to back up in the median and retrieve the board before it or us were ran over.
I always knew that Randy was a talented individual but he really excels at strapping surfboards to moving vehicles! Although Kyle’s surfboard was dinged up, it didn’t come out of the strap again.
We arrived at Ron Jon’s next. His family along with Barbara and me perused the store while the boys walked to the beach. We spent about 30 minutes inside Ron Jon’s and then drove over to the beach. I’ve always said that beach would be a nicer place if you didn’t have to put up with the sand and the salt.
We drove home about an hour later to shower off "the beach." My wife made the call to take Randy and his family to Florida Seafood Restaurant. It was the right call. We called ahead to put our name on the "Wait list." By the time we arrived we were immediately seated and served. Our good friend Chuck and his family also joined us swelling our ranks to 10. There was a guy making balloons for the kids. He made a balloon "parrot" for Madison and Reese chose a snail. Sounds like Reese might make a good "elder" one-day.
We went home for some of my wife’s world famous bread pudding. I didn’t know that Randy was quite the bread pudding connoisseur. He informed us that Barb’s bread pudding was the best he had ever had. I told him the story about her bread pudding going for $50 at a desert auction that we held at the church to help our youth.
We hated to see Randy, Beth, Madison, and Reese leave our humble West Cocoa home. They drove back to Daytona Beach that night.
It’s good to have another family added to our ring of friends.