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We'd left about 8:30am, but with a quick stops at Mom's, a couple of stops for breakfast and lunch, and four bladders that operate on completely different schedules, the commute ended up lasting us a good 9-10 hours. Not sure how much of that was actual road time, but according to MapQuest, it should only have run us about seven hours. Traffic was all right for the most part, up until we got to the Orlando area. Evidently we weren't the only ones with the bright idea to fly south for the Thanksgiving holidays. Other aspects of the trip ... well, it was about as i'd expected. Sis and Seth got into it before we even got to Mom's. Devin's TV-VCR combo had a cigarette lighter adapter for easy viewing on the road, and so we thought it'd be a good idea to bring it along to help the trip seem a little shorter. He'd recently come into possession of the movie Scarface (the Al Pacino-Brian dePalma version), and i'd never seen it before, so he thought he'd introduce me. Welp, the problem with the TV wasn't getting it to play ... it was finding a bloody place to put it. Now, in Sis's old van, "The Beast" (at least, that's my name for it -- cuz it's freaking huge), you could've shoved a widescreen plasma who-in-the-heck-really-pays-$6000-for-a-tv in the van, and no one would really notice. But in this guy -- by the way, i think i called it a Quest earlier, but it's a '98 Ford Windstar -- even Seth's little 13-inch bugger seemed to take up a ton of space. So he spent half an hour in the driveway at Sis's house trying to situate it while the rest of us (save for the Li'l Monster) packed and loaded, finally got it to a semi-comfortable spot as we were backing out, and fired up the movie. Within the first few minutes, the notorious "F-word" appeared like 30 times. Seriously, i thought dePalma had cast Pacino in the role of "The Dude" and somehow turned him Cuban. So needless to say, Sis disapproved. Then, the TV slipped out of its spot, and Seth spent another few minutes trying to get it re-situated. He finally gave up, decided we'd just wait 'til we got to the hotel to get our Scarface on, and started looking for some out-of-the-way place to put it. But, as previously mentioned, there was no such place. So, Sis suggested we just drop the TV off at Mom's and forget about bringing it to Florida with us. Not what Seth wanted to hear. So yeah, it was minor stuff like that, all week. But heck, like i said, Seth's a teenager, and Sis is his mom. So they're going to be like that. Luckily, the remainder of the car trip there passed in relative peace. Seth had also gotten an adapter for his GameCube and one of those li'l flip-up screens (think he'd gotten them for Christmas or somethin', he's had 'em a while), so after the Scarface thing fell through, he plopped in Viewtiful Joe and spent the next few hours screwing with time (it's fast! it's slow ... it's fast! it's slow ... now it's fast again!!) and i just kind of zoned out for a bit. I'd brought an extra controller along, hoping to "get some throw-down" on SSBM -- but, neither of us brought our copy so that was out. I did get some F-Zeroing in, tho. So yeah. We get to the hotel, everybody and his dog Skip are in the lobby, waiting to check in. So Sis and Seth run in, leaving BIL (the "bro-in-law") and me to entertain LM. It was all of three seconds before LM noticed her mom wasn't around and went ballistic. Weird Spanish-lullaby-singing teddy bear from Avon to the rescue! That managed to keep her occupied until all could be taken care of. We had a pretty sweet deal. We were on International Drive -- which is pretty much where all the restaurants, shops, and hotels are located -- right across from the "World's Largest McDonald's" (basically take Frankie's Fun Park, subtract GoKarts, laser-tag, and bumper boats, tack a Breyer's ice cream joint and McDonald's restaurant on the side, and jack the price of a Big Mac up to six bucks). And there was a Denny's and IHOP not far from us. A free bus took us to all the parks -- both Universal parks, Wet 'n Wild, and the Zoo (Sea World). And ... (get ready) ... there was a pool. =D Seth and i ended up walking around, looking at all the shops, didn't get back to the hotel in time to swim (pool closed at 10pm), but we had a good time nonetheless. He got himself a couple of signs for his room, and i ... got some walking done. Anywho, not a bad night at all. Think we were all relieved just to get off the road. |
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