AUGUST EDITION
If you remember a couple months ago I wrote about how life can throw things at you when you really don't expect them and how you have no control over anything anymore because life has a way of just throwing things at you. Well, last month life threw a two week trip to Florida at me.
It started off with well thought out plans to get away, head to Florida and stay with my wife's cousins. They live outside of Orlando and have a house in the Keys also. Sounds fun, huh. We had it all planned out. We knew exactly what we were going to do on each day, what we needed to take and how much money it required. Wrong!
Plans never work out. As the departure day got closer and closer, we (me) realized we had way too much to do to be gone for two weeks. Originally we were going to leave on Friday. Then I decided to go to the last perf of the YRA Finals in Gonzales for a future video segment on Saturday. Then Cross Canadian Ragweed was playing at the fairgounds that Saturday night so we didn't want to be tired driving on Sunday. Then Sunday we were tired so we didn't get anything done we were supposed to get done, so we were going to leave on Tuesday morning really early. Then I decided I wanted a haircut if I was going to be gone for two weeks. The only place to get a haircut for me is my local barber and he doesn't open until 6:45am on Tuesday.
Remember all that stuff I had to get done before I left? Well I finished it at exactly 3am on Tuesday morning. My alarm went off at 5:30am and we were off. We were sitting at the barber shop at 6:40am and by 7am we were on the interstate heading East.
Do you know how far you can drive with 2 1/2 hours of sleep? Just about from Sealy to Katy, 30 miles. When I woke up my wife was coming into Beaumont. The next time I woke up we were pulling into the Cracker Barrel in Baton Rouge for lunch. The next time I woke up was the Cracker Barrel in Tallahassee. Finally at 9:30pm Texas time, she'd had enough.
I'm not sure if a nights stay at a Holiday Inn Express makes you smarter, but I did feel more refreshed. From then on I was the designated driver. She was done.
Did I mention we ate at Cracker Barrel? I do love my chicken and dumplings. Each time we stopped we got a bag of Bit-O-Honey and we were off. Do you know how many bags of Bit-O-Honey it takes to go to Key West, Florida and back? Four, and we ran out twice.
Our first night in Florida at her cousins was spent on the airboat chousing alligators. We caught between 15 and 20 gators anywhere from 1 to 5 feet. Maybe one of these days I'll get around to posting the pictures on my Facebook page. That was a blast. We caught them all with our bare hands. I felt like the Crocodille Hunter a little bit each time we caught one. Of course the next morning I was told what we were doing was a felony. Not to mention we weren't supposed to be on the lake in an airboat anyway. No harm was done and no tickets were issued, so all ended well.
You'd think when you get to Florida you were there. Wrong! It took us a whole other day just to drive to the Keys from Orlando and boy is there lots to look at on the Florida Turnpike.
Key West is like no place I've ever been. Let's just say that there are people there you wouldn't normally see anywhere else on earth. We saw it all and lived to tell about it. Ol' Big Al even went down 50' scuba diving. That's saying something for a freckle faced redhead from East Texas. Once I got over the fear of dying it wasn't that bad. There were reports of oil in the Keys but I'm pretty sure that was the oil slick from my sunscreen each time I got in the water.
On our way back to Texas we stopped for a day at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom. As a kid I went three or four times and loved it. I can scratch that off of my "bucket list" now. What amazed me the most beside the fact that people spend good money on this place is the amount of wheelchairs in the line at the roller coasters.
After a day with Mickey and the previous 10 days with the gators and fruit-loops we were ready to head home. 16 hours later we were in our own bed. It never felt so good. The next day we ate Tex-Mex for lunch and supper. A big rib-eye hit the spot the following day and I guarantee you I'd never been so happy to be home.
A Proud Texan,
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