Category: It Happened to Me

It’s a lovely day — or at least, it’s a lovely day here in Tampa. Get outside!

I try to do a 10K bike ride most weekdays and on at least one of the weekend days, and I manage to fit in most of my grocery runs on these rides (unless I need to buy stuff that won’t fit in my backpack).

As a result, I’m not as tubby as I could be, I’m lowering my risk for lots of health problems, I get to catch up on a lot of podcasts and audiobooks, my mind is clear for the day’s work, and I have to gas up my car once a month or even less.

Anitra is on the board of the Glazer Children’s Museum, the home of the world’s largest triceratops skeleton — lovingly known as “Big John” — for the next three years. Big John’s exhibit opens to the public this Friday, May 26th, and we got a sneak peek at the VIP party last week.

I wrote about Big John back in January, in a post titled The world’s largest triceratops is moving to Tampa Bay! Since then, the museum has been hard at work getting this 66 million year-old beast and his room ready for the public in time for the Memorial Day weekend.

The museum’s CEO, Sarah Cole, gave us a quick welcome speech and thanked everyone involved in bringing Big John here, with a big special “thank you” to the Pagidipati family, who purchased Big John in late 2021 and have arranged for him to be publicly displayed instead of being tucked away in a private collection.

Since the occasion called for it, I brought my triceratops sunglasses…

…which came in handy with the viewing domes underneath Big John:

If you’re downtown and driving down Ashley Drive or in Curtis Hixon Park, you’ll be able to see an inflatable triceratops atop the museum:

If you’d like to see Big John, he’ll be available for viewing at the Glazer Children’s Museum for the next couple of years, starting this Friday!

I saw the “palapa boat’ pictured above on the Hillsborough River from my vantage point on the balcony of the Glazer Children’s Museum, where I was attending a pre-launch party for Big John, their new tricertops exhibit (which opens this Friday!).

I couldn’t read see the sign on the boat from that distance. Can anyone tell me whom to contact to rent this boat? I might want to do so for…reasons.

The answer

Leave it to none other than Daniella Diaz, local tech person and cofounder of High Tech Connect and HireUp Florida to give me an answer within a couple of minutes of my posting this!

It’s the Tampa Bay branch of Cruisin’ Tikis, who provide the boat with a bar. You bring the drinks (including booze), food, and music. $300 for 90 minutes.

There’s an unexpected, growing tech scene here in Tampa, and Made in Tampa is dedicated to covering it. Their latest installment is about an accordion-playing techie whom you might know.

My thanks to Amanda Kern for the wonderful interview and write-up, and to Jason Allen for setting this up!