With the sun peaking in and out of the clouds, I headed down to Lido Beach to see if anyone was actually having fun down there. Sure enough, there were beachgoers. No, it wasn’t Sunday afternoon type crowds. In fact, there might have been a mere 50 people in a stretch of about a half mile of this beach. But there were families and groups of friends out here, rain or shine.

I convinced Sarasota’s Bill Richards and Cheri Grabau to talk to me on video about their plans for Wilma. They were with friends who were enjoying some fine beverages on the beach, swimming and generally having fun. I didn’t ask them what type of work allowed them to be on the beach in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday. They were in their 30s and 40s—far too young to be retired. Maybe they were independently wealthy. They had one friend visiting from Germany and another, Lana Mills, is a native of Latvia now living in the area. While Bill and Cheri talked to me on camera along the water’s edge about Wilma, one of their friends up on the beach decided to drop his swim trunks and moon them.

After regaining his composure from that unexpected incident, Bill said he will head to his brother’s house in Orlando if Wilma threatens Sarasota. Cheri is waiting to see what the storm does in the next day or so before making up her mind. Their friends on the beach? They were having way too much fun for me to bring them down with a question about hurricane preparedness.