That’s Bradenton, BTW.
As work issues continue, and it’s been over three weeks at this point, I’m bouncing between the mindsets of "I need to take advantage of this free time" and "I need to be conserving cash and making contingency plans". However, trying to be optimistic, I did break away on a Friday to go to on a thrift run. I also had plans to go out of state on the weekend, but the success of this run put off that more-distant run for another week.
With my now routine procedure of building a list of starred places in Google maps for all the shops in the area to visit, I left the house right after the company’s weekly status meeting – around 9:30. It will take me about 90 minutes to get to my first stop: an antique mall. As I got closer, I realized I was really cutting it close on gas. When my low fuel light comes on, I can pretty much count on over 30 miles left. But still, once the needle moves below the E line, it gets a little nervous.
Today I was taking the MX-5, so I did not have Android Auto to guide me. I had a Garmin GPS, which didn’t have a lot of the stops in its POI database, so I had to manually enter addresses for most. I tried setting up my phone in another window mount, but Google Maps was not giving me voice directions. I tried using Android Auto on the phone, but Google has updated the software to only work when attached to a car screen. That’s so lame. So Garmin did what it could with the addresses I pulled from my phone.
I had to overshoot the first stop to get to a gas station, filled up and went back. Traffic in this area is really stupid. It’s a Friday morning, but it feels like a Saturday afternoon. And anyway, nothing of note at the first stop. The next two were "flea markets", which were really nothing of the sort. The first was more like a vendor mall, which yielded one CD. the other was just a hoarder. But that was the intro to the city, and now I would be hitting proper thrifts.
It had been a while since I’d been to this area, so only a few places were familiar to me, many were new. I can thank my pre-planning for the discovery of all the new places. In summary, there were only two places that I really bought multiple CDs. The first one I had been to before and it was a church thrift shop. I got to hear a heated discussion between a Biden and a Trump supporter, which is always disheartening. That got me to speed up my search and got me right out of there.
One shop that I hadn’t been to before was the crown jewel of my trip. Usually, you can find one or two albums by an artist, but in this place, there was a large collection of early Neil Diamond. He’s not one of my favorite artists, but I do have some albums of his and when I do have some of an artist, I try to complete the full discography. Especially when I can do it cheaply and the CDs are early pressings. And this was the case. I picked out seven albums and actually left some behind. Not much regret about leaving some, seven is plenty. While pulling them out, I also spotted an early Olivia Newton-John disc, then another. I grabbed three of those, one being a dupe of one I already had. As it turns out, it was good I grabbed that dupe, because the disc inside was swapped with another, so I might’ve ended up with a mismatched case. But the best news was that one of the ONJ albums was a highly desirable OOP album (out of print). It sells on EBay for $50 (realistically priced) or $300 (unrealistically priced). I left that shop with 13 discs.
By around 2:00, I was pretty hungry and tried going to a Wendy’s but they had a long line. I then tried going to a Thai place, but it stunk so badly I wouldn’t have been able to sit there for any length of time. I tried going to Jimmy John’s, but their lobby was closed. I ended up at Chili’s for the first time in at least three years. It was ok. It made me sad that Chili’s used to have such incredible burgers and now they weren’t all that good.
And Chili’s was right near my last stop, which yielded three extra CDs, and I made my way home again.
So in summary, the whole trip was worth it for finding Olivia Newton-John – Totally Hot. But overall, getting 22 CDs out of a run is pretty impressive. Probably spent about $30 in gas, maybe $30 in discs. I’ve been purchasing in cash when it’s under $10, so it’s kinda hard to track my total expenditures. But it’s close enough.
Comments are closed.