I made an appearance at the pool today. Earl snapped quite a few photos instead of swimming. After we got back to the room I went to upload the photos from the camera and noticed a few shots of one of the lifeguards.
He must have hit the shutter button by mistake.
![[J.P. and Earl @ Epcot]](https://i0.wp.com/www.jpnearl.com/blog/disney/epcot2007.jpg?resize=322%2C448)
This is our fourth trip together to Walt Disney World. In the past we’ve devoted one day to each of the theme parks. This year we’ve extended our trip by a day and a half, allowing us to approach the activities at a more relaxed pace. So we decided to devote two days to Epcot this time.
For those unfamiliar with Epcot, it is one Disney World theme park divided into two main parts. The front part is geared more toward “innovation” and environmental kind of stuff (called “Future World”), while the back part is the “World Showcase”, eleven different pavilions representing eleven different countries.
A full explanation of Epcot can be found here.
Since I wasn’t really raised as a Disney kid, it isn’t blasphemy for me to say that it’s a toss-up between Epcot or Animal Kingdom as my favorite park here at Disney World. (Adults raised as “Disney kids” will tell you that Magic Kingdom is their favorite and that’s the way it must be because it’s the original.)
I love Epcot. I feel Epcot embodies the dream that Walt Disney had of actually educating families in a non-institutional way. If you pay attention to all that’s going on through the park, there’s a lot to be learned at the various displays, exhibits and rides. From “Ellen’s Energy Adventure” to the boat ride on “The Land” to the GM Test Track, there’s a lot of interesting things going on at Epcot.
I must say that I’m quite proud of my partner as he has used the “Earl Glare” on several occasions to people using their cell phones on a ride or during a presentation. It must be icy cold, because the couple of times that he’s fired off that glare the cell phone conversation has come to an abrupt end. I love it.
After Epcot, Earl and I returned to Saratoga Springs to freshen up and then jumped on a boat to Downtown Disney and Pleasure Island. We decided to have dinner at the Raglan Road Irish Pub, where the food was excellent, the authentic Irish music was lively and the Irish jib dancer was talented and loud.
All in all a great day in the sunshine.
Earl and I are safe and sound at our second home, Saratoga Springs Resort at Walt Disney World in beautiful Orlando, Florida.
The drive from St. Petersburg was relatively short. Earl and I are Disney Vacation Club members, so we have a time-share type place here at Disney. We stocked up on groceries before getting to the property, at a grocery store called “Sweetbay Supermarket”. I guess living with me for over a decade has rubbed off on Earl in a geek sort of way, because he was to deduce, from the logo of the store only, that it was owned by the same company back at home that we call “Hannafords”. This was confirmed by the store brand of everything on the shelves in the store. I’m so proud of him.
After getting situated in the room, we did some exploring around Saratoga Springs. The weather was is absolutely gorgeous and the folks here are quite friendly. The market/restaurant here is quite nice. We munched down a flatbread pizza type thing before continuing on.
We then hopped a bus to the Magic Kingdom. It just seems like you should go to the Magic Kingdom first when you come to Disney World. I don’t know why it feels that way, but to do otherwise seems just wrong.
Since we arrived earlier than planned, today was a “bonus day” so we just kind of took our time around the Magic Kingdom. We visited some of the recently refurbished exhibits, grabbed some chow and did some generic site seeing.
There are many reasons to find the Magic Kingdom fascinating, and one of them is the blending of all the different cultures of the visitors. I could just sit and people watch at any of the Disney properties all day long. There is such a mingling of various regions of the country with a wide selection of accents and regional phrases, mixes of social class and all that stuff. And that doesn’t even take into account all the people visiting our country from other parts of the world as well. I just find it so interesting.
After spending the afternoon and evening at the Magic Kingdom, we wrapped up the night with the “Wishes” fireworks display over Cinderella’s Castle. Disney certainly knows how put on a fireworks display.
I’ve decided to keep the computer time to a minimum this vacation, limiting my bits and bytes to a once a night blog entry.
I’m feeling re-energized already, and the vacation has just begun.
Earl and I were on the road bright and early this morning, continuing our journey south. We are not due at Disney until Sunday afternoon, and since we made such good time yesterday we are way ahead of schedule. What to do, what to do.
Drive to the Greater Tampa Area, of course.
Before I continue, memo to self: bring phone number of cousin and high school friend whenever we think of heading to the sunshine state. We can still leave Anita Bryant’s pie at home though, she doesn’t live here.
Earl and I have set up for the night in St. Petersburg, Florida. Neither of us have been here before, though Earl has been to Tampa several times. The drive was beautiful and fast (traffic on I-75 was moving at nearly 85 MPH, which was great fun). We poked around the bayfront area, including The Pier. If you’re in the area, we both recommend the restaurant “Fresco”, the food is very good and it’s nice to sit on the waterfront while enjoying your meal. My lettuce wedge had “Maytag Blue Cheese” on it. I don’t know what that is but I really hope it didn’t involve a Maytag repairman or an old washing machine.
Tonight we’re going to relax a bit and then maybe go exploring the nightlife.
Have I got a tip for you. If you’re in the market for a vasectomy and are anywhere in Florida, Dr. Doody-doody has 20 offices between Gainesville and Miami that can do that deed, without a scalpel or needles and for only $290! Installment payments available! Don’t believe me? Drive down Interstate 75 from Georgia southward and you’ll see huge billboards proclaiming said “deal”, complete with a full color picture of the doctor, who looks so creepy it’s not hard to believe that he likes to play “snip snip” around men’s balls.
God Bring Back South Of The Border!
When will the medical related advertisements go too far? It’s bad enough that we have to see someone’s nasty leg plastered on a movie screen to entice us to have varicose vein surgery. For crying out loud we just want to see the Fantastic Four trailer. I don’t need to see someone’s spindly, hairy leg with magic marker marks all over it while I’m trying to eat my Raisinettes.
And of course now we’ve become such an exceedingly lazy society that we need medication to help us take a dump. Just watch Lifetime or TV Land during the day sometime. Hour after hour you’ll see a medication that “doesn’t make you go, but it does make it more comfortable when you do.” Are you fscking kidding me? Human beings have been dumping for eons but now it’s uncomfortable for us to do it so we we’re urged to take medicine to make it just fall out.
The world has lost it’s mind.
After our little stop in Pulaski, Va. Earl and I made our way through Virginia into Tennessee where I met a roadgeek goal: we drove to the other end of Interstate 81. I have now officially driven every inch of I-81. Most would say “big deal”, to me it was because I’d always wanted to do that.
We were going to spend the night in Knoxville, TN but we decided to continue our trek, so we stopped at a “Steak ‘n Shake” in Athens, TN. I haven’t done any research on the popular chain yet, but so far it is an acceptable substitute for Chick-Fil-A.
One thing I noticed is that when we were being seated we were asked if we wanted to sit in “smoking” or “non-smoking”. New York banned smoking in restaurants and bars years ago, so we had sort of forgotten that wasn’t the case throughout the entire country. (Virginia seems to have the same rule, at least where we were). Having been in a smoke-free environment for so long, I feel confident to say that having a smoking section in a restaurant is no different than having a pissing section reserved in a swimming pool.
The food was excellent though.
I did have to take a bathroom break, and while I was doing so an employee of the restaurant came busting in grumbling to himself about that “damn manager”, dropping a few “what the hell”s and other assorted blue phrases. Once I got myself together and went to the sink to wash up before returning to my seat, I noticed that he was standing at the sink shaving. I hadn’t run across that in a fast food restaurant before (though I have seen it at Planet Hollywood for some odd reason), he told me he was in trouble for not being clean shaven for his shift even though he had just shaved yesterday. Apparently the manager has run into the problem before with his or her employees, because this employee was well prepared with the necessary equipment to shave.
After supper we did some necessary shopping at the local Big K and then jumped back on I-75 where we headed south. We passed through Chattanooga where I waved a silent wave to my uncle that passed on years ago. He and my mom were picking me up at the train station back in ’88 and when the train was delayed, apparently he kept stopping people and singing to them “Pardon me boys, is that the Chattanooga Choo-choo?” It still makes me smile to remember that.
We decided to stop for the night a few miles short of Atlanta in the little ‘burg of Acworth. Earl and I are catching up e-mail and blogging (he’s going to blog this trip once we’re at Disney) and then we are hitting the road again in the morning. We haven’t finalized our plans yet as we’re not expected at Disney until Sunday but we don’t have nearly as much driving to do.
Earl and I hit the road early this morning. Not really an early bird, I realized that we had finished Pennsylvania (almost 100 miles), had passed through Maryland (12 miles) and were almost through West Virginia (about 15 miles) when I woke up.
And I was driving!
First order of business was to send a friendly wave to Thom in Northern Virginia as we passed his off ramp. Remembering our visit with him last year made us both smile. That was quickly followed by a wave to Jimbo in D.C. (via I-66 from where we were). We haven’t met Jimbo yet but he gets major woof points.
And then we made our way down I-81 through Virginia. There’s a lot of Virginia along I-81, but it’s a scenic drive. I had never been south of I-64 before so it was relatively uncharted territory.
Our first stop was for some grub in a delightfully homey-feeling chain of a place called “Country Cookin'”. These appear to be in old Perkins (or something like it) and are a lot like “Eat ‘n Park” that you see in Pennsylvania. The waitress, Gina, was friendly and tolerant when we made the huge southern faux pas of ordering “iced tea” instead of “sweet tea” or “unsweet tea”. We were corrected and learned our lesson for the duration of the trip.
After Country Cookin’ we washed the car (yay! for warm weather!) and then made a trek into Pulaski, Va. Ever since I was a little boy and discovered another town with the same name as my hometown on my grandparents’ map mounted on the dining room wall (very 60s chic), I’ve wanted to see what this other town was like. So Earl and I drove up Main Street of Pulaski (rhymes with “whee!” whereas my hometown of Pulaski, N.Y. rhymes with “why”). It’s a little bigger than it’s northern counterpart, but it has two interchanges with Interstate 81 and Route 11 runs right through the middle of it. It was kind of cool. Earl took the obligatory picture.
Betcha didn’t know that the simple things make me happy.
Earl and I are officially on “Spring Break”. We are en route to the House of the Mouse in Orlando. It’ll be our first time staying at the new Saratoga Springs Resort at Disney. It’s also our first trip to Disney where we haven’t planned our activities in advance. We’re taking it easy this trip.
Tonight we have settled for the night in Grantville, Pennsylvania, about seven miles from Hershey and 20 miles or so north of Harrisburg. This motel is filled to brim with high school wrestling teams.
Let’s hear it for eye candy (though they are a bit young for our tastes). I don’t know how well they are going to do at the tournaments over the weekend, judging by the loud voices proclaiming how drunk they are getting.
Let’s hear it for Pennsylvania boys that drink!
We’re planning on hitting the road nice and early tomorrow. Earl is accommodating my dream of driving the entire length of Interstate 81 on this trip, tomorrow by this time we’ll be quite a way into Tennessee and hopefully within spitting distance of Georgia.
jpnearl.com is moving to a new host. This blog entry will only appear on the old host. If you see it, then you’re still looking at the old location of jpnearl.com. Your ISP will catch up with the internet within 72 hours. 🙂
See you soon!
Update (3:10 PM EST): I’ve decided to wait until after our trip to Florida to do this maintenance. I need to pack first and I can’t be going away with my blogging software in flux! 🙂
I’ve been desperately been trying to avoid the subject this entire week but I can no longer hold my breath. In the infinite wisdom of the United States Government, the dreaded Daylight Saving Time starts this Sunday at 2:00 a.m.
Now look it. It’s bad enough that we’re subjected to this flip flopping of the hours twice a year as it is. Since 1986 it has taken place the first Sunday in April and the last Sunday in October. Now in an effort to distract the American public further from things that really matter (“don’t look at that war behind the curtain!”), now we’re moving the clock around the second Sunday of March until the second or third Sunday in November (I don’t remember the specifics because in all honesty I wish I couldn’t care less.)
This new configuration of DST is part of the latest energy bill to get passed through Washington. Because of this new approach, electronic calendars and various clocks are going to be skewed for the next three weeks while we all decide whether we should eat breakfast or lunch before going to bed because it’s dark when it shouldn’t be and light when it can’t be.
I wish I could get away from the trouble by jumping a time zone or two but that would interfere with my college courses which I’ll probably have to take by candlelight because the timers on the classroom lights won’t know what time it is. Oh it’ll look like nighttime but in reality it’ll be 9 a.m.
Here’s how time is suppose to work: “noon” is when the sun is at it’s highest point in the sky. That’s what “noon” is. For convenience sake we use a rough estimate of this so that cities like Syracuse, N.Y. have the same “noon” as Toledo, Ohio, though in actuality “noon” should be several minutes apart.
But now our “noon” will be 1 p.m. By doing this, according to the government, we use less energy because we don’t use as many lights in the evening when we’re awake out playing in the snow. (Unless, as someone mentioned on their blog that they overheard in a conversation, the extra hour of sunlight melts the snow faster.)
So next week when you’re stumbling around in the dark, late for work because someone has frigged around with the clock, remember that it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature. I don’t know why you should remember that but I find that it helps me get through the day.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
Weird? Eccentric!
