Frances is coming! Frances is coming!
I'm less myopic in my observation of the hurricane story in Florida this time. Last time, to the south, there were dozens of people dead or missing. There were countless homes destroyed or severely damaged. There were people stranded for days because they missed their flights home. So what articles did I read? The ones about what theme parks were reopening, and when.
This time, I'm watching more out of concern for the people there, including quite a few whom I met last week. I'm watching, in part, on one of my favorite new sources for news: Fox News 35. I liked WFTV News 9, too.
While I was actually in Florida, the news was all Williams, Williams, Williams. In a nutshell, the stories were as follows: Ricky Williams is an ass. Willie Williams got what he deserved. Mike Williams got screwed.
I agree with that last point. The NCAA sucks. Jeremy Bloom and Mike Williams should be playing college football this fall. If you disagree, you are an ass.
Though its game against Virginia Tech supposedly kicked off the college football season last Saturday, USC was not the first team playing. Glenville State at Murray State and West Alabama at Samford kicked off 45 minutes earlier. Miami, Ohio played Indiana State at some point that night, too. But the USC game got top billing at ESPN Club, where we won a free trucker's hat for guessing that Sonny Jurgenson was the answer to one of their pre-game trivia questions.
USC has just the third longest winning streak in college football. Miami Ohio and Boise State are both on bigger rolls. Well, longer, at least.
Our vacation was almost perfect. We liked our resort. We had fun every day, but we only went commando at the amusement parks on three of those days. There were only two bummers the entire ten days.
The first was when we ordered a convertible from Thrifty and arrived at midnight to find that they were all out. And the guy at the counter was a jerk about it. He didn't apologize. He just gave us a full-size car in parking spot 50. So we went out there and spot 50 was empty. "Oh," he says, "I meant spot 134." And he still charged us the rate for convertibles. I didn't get my convertible until two days later.
The second bummer was pretty minor. Thunderstorms caused three short (30-60 minute) shutdowns of Typhoon Lagoon while we were there. I forgot how intense those tropical afternoon thunderstorms got.
Nonetheless, we had a blast. I got to drive the convertible down the beach at Daytona. The girls and I swam with baby hammerhead sharks. We took a ferry to Caladesi Island for a day of beaching with maybe -- maybe -- 50 other people on the entire island. That ferry ride was one of the best entertainment values I've ever nabbed.
The flights over and back were smooth. We had stopovers on the ride over, but I got to enjoy an underrated pleasure of traveling with stopovers: the chance to read newspapers from three or four cities in one day. I watched very little television for a week, too. Other than a couple of minutes of news each night, lots of Crissa on the Disney Resorts channel, and a few viewings of the world's most annoying commercial for Appliance Direct (See it all & save! I love appliances!), I was Internetless and TVless all week.
Crissa cracked me up. Is there a rule that travel shows need to be hosted by dirty-blonde short-haired dorky chicks? If so, Disney obeyed with their Top 7 Must See Attractions at Disney World. It was a blatant Disney commercial, of course, disguised as a Travel Channel feature, with the requisite dorky blonde shorthair. The most absurd part of it: "Downtown Disney offers some big names in 'Yum!'" Then they showed House of Blues, Wolfgang Puck and ... McDonald's. McDonalds?!? Gross. The McDonald's in the Orlando airport had Happy Meals with apple slices that were stamped "Use by Aug. 27" on August 30th.
In addition to great restaurants such as McDonald's, Downtown Disney had two circles with cool water jets that shoot out of the ground. The kids had lots of fun running through them for something like an hour. That was cheap entertainment. Even cheaper entertainment: two fat ladies walked through the water jet circle, and I was like, "Oh, God, please, please, please, please, now!" I was sorely disappointed. For a moment. Then ... splash! Oh, yes!
I miss Orlando. Even tonight.
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