Travel

I’ve made my first stop just north of Macon, about two hours into the trip. Not too bad, considering Atlanta traffic and the copious amounts of coffee I have had today. Not one to be too shy about these things, they have had to evacuate the mens room.

I go on vacation next Wednesday. Unlike what the title of this post says, I am not going anywhere 🙁

Christopher is flying up to Anchorage on the 3rd, which should be pretty cool. He will be staying with friends for a couple of weeks. I told him that I would send one of the cameras with him and kick his ass if he doesn’t take some pics.

Stephanie and the girls are probably going to spend a week or two in Hilton Head around the same time. Gonna have to send the pther camera with her. I know they are all looking forward to the trip while they are gone.

I think that I will have a yard sale while I am on vacation next week, so that I can eat while they are out spending my money. Good thing I work in a fucking restaurant.

Actually, with everyone gone, I can sit around the house in my underwear, drink beer, and smoke. That will be cool for a couple of days, then I will get bored and start missing everyone. The hard part is at night. I have a very hard time sleeping when my wife isn’t here, so I may end up being up for 120 hours straight.

It’s spring break again for the kids, as well as Stephanie. This will be the first one in a while that I was not able to take my vacation when they do. She and the girls are going down to Hilton Head this weekend. I am keeping Chris here, have to drag him to work with me this weekend. He is going to have to start saving some money to help pay for car insurance, as well as a car, if I don’t get the van fixed first. I don’t think that he realizes just how much money it actually takes. Gonna find out though. I guess I will stop in at my insurance agent and see how much my policy is going to cost to add him. That is just going to suck.

Not really, but it looks like I will be flying to Mississippi on Wednesday afternoon, my first day back from vacation. I will have to make sure to bring the camera.

Found this over at Gut Rumbles this morning

All of these are places I’ve been and will not be going while on vacation this week :>

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

I don’t know what it is, but the closer I get to vacation, the longer it seems. Damn, two days left.

Reading this post over at Acidmans abode got me thinking about oysters, which immediately led to road trips.
It was back in ’85 or ’86, when I was at my utmost unemployable, irresponsible (I was 17-18). One of my good buddies had a dad who was a VP of sales for IBM. Me and a couple of other guys lived at their house. No jobs (maybe occasionally, if we were really cash-strapped). Didn’t need them since Mr and Mrs C took care of the food thing, as well as gas. Chicks took care of the rest.
It was mid to late November, about 4pm on a shitty winter afternoon, and we all decided that we needed raw oysters. Not to fuck around with that frozen shit in Atlanta, but real raw oysters. So we made the drive to the redneck riviera (Panama City Beach). The Oysters were ok, but it was the TRIP that was so fucking cool.
I travelled the eastern seaboard and southeast several times during a four year period before I settled down. Roadtrips were a hell of a lot more fun in my teens than they are now, that’s for damn sure.
Gut Rumbles

Our last day at the park was Friday. We spent it at the Magic Kingdom again. Rode some of the stuff that we had not had a chance to the previous day. Personally this was my favorite park. I suppose that is because it is more geared for younger kids than the other parks are, or at least it seemed so to me.

We started out the day with a late breakfast at the Crystal Palace, another one with characters wandering around.

After that we went to the Jungle Cruise. The dude that drove the boat told some horribly afwul jokes and puns. Hurt my ears every time he opened his mouth. The SO loved them.

After that we rode the train around the park. The two older kids loved it.

Not.

Tom Sawyer’s Island

Another play area.

Waiting for Stephanie and the kids on a ride.

By this time I was ready to leave them here.

The last thing we did was watch the Cinderellabration show at her castle. This is when she gets crowned as a princess.

Can’t forget Mickey and Walt.

Stephanie wanted to get a picture of me sitting here. We have one, or maybe my parents do, of me on one of these benches in the Main Street area when I was about ten years old. If I come across it maybe I will scan it and post.

I took somewhere around 300 photos. I used to work as a photographers assistant and have always felt that the trick to get good pictures (there are one or two here) is in volume. Sooner or later you will get a good shot. Like 300 monkeys and 300 typewriters.

Thursday we slept in a bit, and went and had the Ohana Breakfast at the Polynesian Resort. There were several of the characters there. I particularly liked the character dining at the resorts, as well as the Magic Kingdom, it damn sure beat standing in line for a 30 second photo. This way they just migrated around to the table eventually where we could get pics.

After breakfast we grabbed the bus and headed to the Animal Kingdom. We had a good time, and it was fun, but all in all this was my least favorite part of the trip. It also rained quite a bit harder than the other days, and it was very hot and extremely humid.

Chris tried pretty hard, he took most of the pics on the Safari ride, most of them sucked though. The biggest part of the problem is that my digital camera is great for stills, but moving, it blows.

For supper we went to the Rainforest Cafe. It was pretty fun, but I was wet, cold, and it was expensive. I was damn sure ready to get back to the hotel and dry out.