Orlando

As you may recall, the site was dormant for a while over winter break, while Jeff and I traveled to Orlando, FL with the marching band. Nowadays, it's cheaper to travel by bus than plane, so that's exactly what we did. We took a 26+ hour bus ride to Orlando.

Now, it wasn't terrible. These were nice buses, almost like tour buses. The seating situation was rows of 4 seats, separated in the middle by an aisle. I sat with Drew most of the trip and Jeff sat with Micah. We weren't confined to our seats, so that was good. You could kinda get up and stretch occasionally and our rest stops were plentiful, so you never really felt too uncomfortable.

We watched a lot of movies there and back on the bus TVs and everyone was allowed to bring their own movies for nomination. I like funny movies, so I brought Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Airplanes I and II. On the way there, I was lucky enough to have Airplane I picked to watch. When they first put it in the DVD player, there was a large groan from the back of the bus, which as you can guess made me a little mad. We had watched all kinds of movies prior to mine, specifically How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days. As you can imagine, I wasn't too ecstatic to sit through a chick flick with Drew, but hey, I did and I didn't complain. It was actually a pretty good movie... Anyways, back to Airplane. So, there's a scene where a small kid is sitting in his chair reading "Nuns' Life." I guess the kid looked a little like me, because someone from the back of the bus yelled "Hey Elijah, how'd you put yourself into the movie?!" I didn't put myself in the movie. Go buy the damn DVD. That scene's still gonna be in there. And the situation wasn't helped with a second-long scene of a topless woman later in the movie. Everyone's like "Oh, how'd you edit that into the movie?" First of all, I'm a little confused as to why that was even in the movie (which is rated PG.) It was just a little scene to make you laugh I guess, but that same kid from the back of the bus just HAD to comment. I didn't add that scene into the movie. Go buy the damn DVD. That scene's still gonna be in there.

So after a while, the chatter died down I guess and we went back to watching movies... We did this all day (we left at 6? in the morning), until nightfall when it came time to sleep on the bus. That sucked! The bus is not a bed. You know why they don't make bus beds like they make the plastic car beds? Because sleeping in buses sucks! And sure enough, we got the seat next to the window that rattled. I slept horrible. We arrived in Orlando at 11? and we went straight to Universal Studios, which I made it through just fine despite the lack of sleep. It wasn't that bad. Except for the line for The Hulk. 2 hour wait for a roller coaster?! There was a blimp above us that said DirecTV, so now I have to buy DirecTV.

In the line for one of the rides, there was a kid. As he moved his way up in line, he didn't say a thing, but he kept kind of "cutting" in the line as he made his way through it. Then, when he got to my group of 6 or so kids, he started kind of cutting in between all of us. I was kind of suspicious and I figured he was cutting in line, so I started telling my friends to kind of cut back in front of him. By the time we got to the entrance of the ride, the kid was right in the middle of us all, so he ended up on the same ride-trip-thing as Jeff and I. While we were waiting for our ride-car-thing to get there, he struck up conversation with us (by the way, this kid was like 10). He started speaking English and asking where Jeff and I were from. Thinking he would joke with me and stuff, I started asking him things like if he was gonna puke or yack or barf or vomit or technicolor spit on the ride, and he just kept looking at me like "Whaaaa?" Turns out, his question of where we were from was about all the English he knew. Or so he said. He said he was from like Austria or something. But I'm not buying it. I bet that kid was a Southern Florida local who spoke perfect English and had a season pass and just pulled that crap so he could cut in line...

As the day progressed, everyone grew pretty hungry, so we began looking for a place to eat that our meal tickets covered. Everyone decided on Circus McGurkus Cafe Stoo-pendous. That was the trippy burger place in the Dr. Suess portion of the park. As we made our way towards it, the December heat (it was like 80 degrees) was getting at me, and my eyes were starting to get tired, so I closed them for a few seconds and when I opened them again, we were inside the Dr. Suess area and I thought I had passed out. There were so many bright colors. It was making me sick.

There was even a running train in the burger place!