Well, it’s that time of year again, where we ask ourselves, “Will I need more sealant for my teeth? Is that pier under water? Does the conadio have functioning air con?” This year, we can answer no to all of those. But how did we get here? Well, after I operated a flight from Eugene to Los Angeles in the morning, we regrouped and headed right back to the airport to catch a Delta flight to Orlando. One particular TSA officer must have been bored and needed something to do so he flagged 80% of the bags going down the pre-check conveyer belt by making up various issues like, “You can’t have two electronics in the same bag.” I don’t think we’d ever taken longer than a few minutes to go through security in LAX, but this was a record (and hopefully an exception) today.
It was otherwise an uneventful flight to Orlando in seats 18D and F, and we arrived around midnight before being welcomed by Buddy Dyer on the monorail that smells like feet. We thus continued to Winter Garden and woke up the next day around 10. Central Florida is typically muggy and stormy this time of year, and Nicole was hoping for a big storm. Absent of Nicole’s desired downpour, we nonetheless found ourselves inside to escape the heat. In the midst of World Cup mania, we watched a few games before I became world cupped out. I brought several jerseys with me to tacitly cheer for the underdog. This included wearing the socceroos jersey for the U.S. / Australia match. Inevitably Australia lost. From our travels, I have amassed quite a collection of soccer jerseys from Albania to Zimbabwe, so if there’s a team you’d like to see lose, for a nominal fee I can wear that team’s kit and basically guarantee their demise.
We did not take on a whole lot in the Orlando area other than observe a few World Cup matches and occasionally step outside to sweat. We didn’t see any gators this time around which was disappointing, but we did see this lizard below doing some pushups and throat stuff. Salt, everyone’s favorite senior travel couple, did their best to entertain us with mini golf and Chick-fil-A, but most activities promptly resulted in back sweat.
As has become more routine for us, we have been making our Florida exit through the Tampa airport as we have found it do be virtually dead in comparison to Orlando. Not only is Orlando’s airport a disorganized mess at the security checkpoint, but their TSA also tend to be a bit condescending and attempted to steal my camera some years back. Also, despite some alleged updates to the terminals, they still smell like a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit. Also Tampa has a Potbelly’s. And lastly, Orlando tends to amass some delays this time of year because of storms. Though Nicole was deprived of her big storm, they seemed to arrive in Central Florida just as we were leaving it — with sudden downpours causing traffic on the highway to Tampa to slow to a crawl at times. But as we got west of Plant City and toward Tampa, the rain stopped and the towering thunderheads were now only visible in our rear-view mirrors.
passports & pepto bismol 