our trip to florida

friday:
we begin our journey relatively early in the day, but 40 minutes down the road i realize i forgot my toiletry bag. i convince ray to turn the car around so we can go back to durham and get it.

as we hit the road for the second time we decide to take advantage of the extra space our rented SUV allows... we fold down one of the back seats which enables us to sleep totally flat, with head behind the driver's seat and toes at the tailgate. i get about 5 hours of sleep that morning while ray drives, then we switch off.

saturday:
our late arrival the night before causes us to start the morning late as well. ray & i have a big lunch at the local quizno's (which actually turns out to be our only meal by ourselves until thursday) before we head off for a quick visit with jordan, a high school friend of ray's. on the way we notice that there are still a lot of roofs covered with blue tarps. everywhere we look is hurricane damage, even 3 months after the fact. roofers have apparently been working 12 and 14 hour days to keep up with demand.

later in the day we go to a party... a big part of the reason we scheduled our trip to florida this particular week. one of ray's childhood friends turned 40 and his wife organized a giant (GIANT!) surprise for him. i don't know a soul there, of course, but ray catches up with a some great friends he hasn't seen in 20 years.

the theme is hawaiian, and i get a little weirded out during the entertainment portion of the party (singing and telling stories about the birthday boy, etc.) when a group of three very young scantily-clad girls begin a hula dance. everyone's eyes (including adult men) were trained on 6-year-old bare midriffs. call me crazy, but i felt uncomfortable and had to leave the room.

sunday:
we meet david (the surprise party victim) and rob (another super-nice childhood friend of ray's) for a late brunch at a hole-in-the-wall diner none of us had gone to before... excellent food, tucked away in a run-down strip mall. i find out david's wife is a paid consultant for NOW and wish i could talk with her more in-depth (particularly about this amazing article i've been reading in the latest issue of bitch).

later that night ray's aunt rita and uncle ray come over to cook us dinner. something called 'chicken marengo'... a dish purportedly cooked for napoleon before he went into battle. it was a great meal, but i tend to feel really sutpid around uncle ray and aunt rita, who love to talk about movies/books/tv shows that my-ray and i have never seen. my-ray jokes, after his aunt & uncle have left, that he wished he had a sign that said "No" which he could just hold up after every question that uncle ray started with, "have you ever seen __this obscure british tv show__??" or "have you read __this mystery novel by an author i've heard of__??" it was pretty funny, actually.

monday:
ray, his mom, and i begin a two-day cross-state journey to visit more distant relatives. we first go to USF in tampa to see andy, ray's nephew. he's a freshman and seemed to enjoy showing us around campus. he even treated us to a lunch on his meal-plan at the cafeteria near his dorm. lemme tell ya, we didn't have no grilled panini sandwiches at my college... i seem to recall that when i was in school i ate many frosted flakes out of desperation.

later that afternoon we went to the IMAX theater across the street from USF. ray had never seen IMAX before. we were disappointed that we had just missed the movie about space but were just in time for a film about... the vikings. d'oh. still, it was a nice film, full of picturesque scenes of iceland and greenland. the trouble, though, was that every one of those lovely scenes made me queasy. the camera flies low over a rich, verdant field and as the lakes and trees zip by i feel sick to my stomach. during the scene reenacting a viking battle at sea i thought i would totally lose my lunch as the camera bobbed up and down over the waves.

after the film i had to sit outside with my head between my knees for a few minutes, then we hopped back in the car and drove down to sarasota to visit andy's mom, paula, (ray's sister). she immediately takes us to siesta key where we stick our feet in the water and watch the sun set. it's phenomenally gorgeous... the sand at this award-winning beach is super-fine and white and the beach itself is very wide. it seems like hundreds of people (many of them amish) gather there every night to watch the sun plunge into the ocean. paula then whisks us off to coasters for dinner, where the food is great, the company is fun and ray rules the trivia game (much to the chagrin of his closest competitor, who happens to be sitting at the table next to us).

tuesday:
after spending the night in sarasota, we head back up to tampa to meet my high school friend, bridgette, for lunch at a funky little cuban restaurant near her office. lots of beans and meat. yum. i haven't seen her since 2001, when she let me sleep at her house during my cross-country drive after 9/11. (i got stuck in colorado on that date, and my only way home was by rental car.) anyway, bridgette has had 3 kids since then, so we had a lot to catch up on.

we drop gidge back off at her office then the rest of us drive up to maitland (north of orlando) to see another contingent of ray's family: his brother, john, and his wife and 3 kids. those chillun damn near wear me out in the few hours before we all sit down to dinner... they're --what?-- 11, 8 and 5, i think. they have buckets of energy.

after a delicious meal, ray, his mom & i drive back to satellite beach and are happy to be "home" again. however, i'm becoming a bit disconcerted by the amount of gas we're having to buy this week. the SUV seems to swallow gallon after gallon after gallon without much regard for our wallets.

wednesday:
i'm starting to crave time by myself. i decide to stay in my bedroom for a little while after i wake up and just read for a bit. everyone thinks i sleep really late, but i'm really just setting aside some "me" time.

when i finally emerge around 11 we're told that rita and ray will be bringing lunch over to the house. my-ray and i giggle about our imaginary "No!" sign. it was a very nice afternoon, though, as i feel i'm beginning to hold my own intellectually with them.

after they left, we finally get in touch with two of ray's nieces and agree to meet them for dinner at the texas roadhouse. ray misses the exit off the interstate, slightly delaying our consumption of many, many steaks.

thursday:
we decide last-minute to go to disney world. it totally rocks in every possible way. the weathermen predict a 70% chance of rain, and we suppose that's what keeps the crowds away most of the day... we never wait in any line for more than 5 minutes. a couple of times we even get off the ride and go right back around and get on again without standing in line for a minute. we rode thunder mountain railroad three times, and saw the amazing 3-D movie twice. ray was also entranced by a barbershop quartet on main street. (4.3 MB .mov)

what's more, it never rained at all. it was a superbly gorgeous day, in the low 70s, partly cloudy, breezy... perfect. because we didn't have to waste a lot of our day waiting in lines, we had time to do everything in the park we wanted. we were leisurely about food and pee breaks, too.

one thing i wasn't aware of about disney world (it's been probably 20 years since i've been) were the lines to get your picture taken with the disney characters. the longest we saw was for woody the cowboy from toy story. donald duck and goofy had long lines, too. we happened to spot mickey coming on duty, so before a huge line could form we hopped in the very short queue. as we were posing for the photo, though, ray got in trouble when he tried to give mickey rabbit ears... mickey actually tsk-tsked him quite emphatically, so ray posed with his own mea culpa: rabbit ears behind his own head.

the only other news of note was that i got queasy of a few rides (shock!) like the innocuous teacups (2.5 MB .mov), but other than that it was a stress-free day. ray even got some details about a secret behind-the-scenes disney tour and i met a woman in one of the gift shops who had been a participant on a rather fiery episode of trading spaces.

friday:
it's our last day in florida, and i "slept late" again, primarly to give my blistered foot (a disney souvenir) a chance to recover a little. we then meet up with kathy & don (ray's sister & her hubby, who happen to be celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary this week) at wild oats, where ray's brother, fritz, works. we all had a big sandwichy lunch and big sandwichy laughs.

afterward ray and i run an errand for his mom: getting an old coin "collection" appraised. it consists primarly of old wheat pennies and 1940s silver dollars, but we manage to get $56 for coins worth a face-value of $25. it turns out there wasn't anything rare in the collection... simply coins that had decently high silver content. on the way home i have ray pose in front of my favorite beach sign. i laugh every time i see it.

finally, a big farewell dinner party at a fine restaurant called "the dove" with aunt rita & uncle ray, kathy & don, me & ray, fritz and ray's mom, terry. it was a delicious 3 course meal (complete with a digestif of something that sounded like "lemon cello"... it was essentially a shot of an intense lemon liqueur). ray asked me to dance and we twirled clumsily around the adjacent bar's dance floor to some schmaltzy billy joel tune or something. we go back to terry's house afterwards and ray serenades us.

saturday:
we hit the road early (8:30am) in order to create some time in the afternoon to visit ray's friend jordan and his wife laura in savannah, as well as my friend rick who lives there, too. unfortunately, rick's schedule jams up on him and he has to back out at the last minute, so we spend a full three hours at jordan's house.

and if not for that extra time with jordan, we might not have have heard him mention that he was planning on selling his 35" tv. ray jumped on that... money was quickly exchanged and we left savannah with a giant television in the back of the SUV. (screw the gas-guzzling, this seals the deal... that TV would have never fit had we not upgraded to the SUV from a sedan.)

even with the 3 hour stop in georgia we still get home by 9:30pm. the first thing we do is run in and kiss the kittens. then i get my laptop hooked up to the wireless... we only had access to dial-up all week long and i thought i might go mad. finally, we check to see what tivo did for us while we were gone...

Posted by xta at February 6, 2005 10:29 AM | TrackBack