Add It To The List.

I noticed this on our condo’s refrigerator last night. Apparently, S7 has made a list of the things we are supposed to do today.

So far we are on track. My BIL brought over Baby Joe (my nephew) this morning bright and early* and we have been playing with him all morning. He had a bit of a rough start due to some minor jet lag/travel overstimulation/tiredness/unknown baby issues, but BIL got him settled while the girls and I went for a dip in the pool. By the time we got back for lunch, JJ was up and at ‘em, playing some peek a boo and rolling his ball with the girls.

Yesterday (which did not have a list, but was still important) we picked DH up in Tampa. While Tampa does not collectively refer to itself by its airport code (TPA), it does have a kickass airport. And unlike PIT(tsburgh), which makes people who are there to pick up arriving passengers orbit around the airport in their cars instead of offering them a place to park and wait, TPA absolutely rocks the hospitality with a huge cellphone lot- complete with restrooms, a large arrivals board visible from space, and FREE WIFI. You just don’t get much better than that, unless perhaps you have folks on rollerskates bringing milkshakes to you car window while you wait.

TPA is about an hour from our hotel in Orlando, so we decided to hang out there for the afternoon and see the Florida Aquarium. It was a great day for it, because it rained most of the afternoon and was fairly chilly for Florida. It was far more interesting to wander around the Aquarium than to hang out at our condo and be sad about the weather (which is still 1,000,000 times better than Ohio’s).

The Florida Aquarium was pretty nice. We saw some really great exhibits on Florida coastal life, including some close-up views of alligators and river otters. The river otters put on quite a show by doing a never ending series of backflips right in front of the girls. Since their enclosure is clear acrylic, you can see them both above and below the water, which is infinitely fun. The girls really got a kick out of that.

More importantly, we saw real, live Florida Gators. I particularly liked the fact that they were also behind very clear, very thick acrylic.

We also saw lots of birds in the wetlands exhibit. But while interesting, we really didn’t come to the Aquarium to see birds. However, you would not know that from the number of photos of birds I happened to take while we were there.

After all the birds, we walked through an exhibit on aquarium design.

I liked that exhibit a lot, particularly the very modern Glass Themed Aquarium.

Even the fish were glassy.

My favorite were the vintage aquarium bubblers.

Finally, we got to the cool stuff: sharks. There is a really big viewing tank in a dimly lit room that gives you lots of shark-gazing. They are amazing animals, those sharks. I could have watched them all day, if it hadn’t been for the small people at my side starting to whine about wanting to go on to the next exhibit.

We saw jellyfish, sea dragons, and sting rays. They had a touch tank with star fish and sea anemonae that you could brush your fingers against. DH and I thought those were really cool.

The girls were more interested in the giant ceramic hermit crab shells that you could climb into. Something for everyone at the Florida Aquarium.

The rest of the Aquarium had various random fish in beautiful exhibits. It was very pleasant just to walk through and take it all in. It helped immensely that the exhibits are very kid-friendly.

Well, mostly.

Finally, it was time to head back to Orlando. We dodged a few lingering rain drops, found our van, and got on the road. The end.

*Bright and early is, of course, a relative term.

Hi.

Well, we made it to Florida. The kids were real troopers in the car. We brought a cooler with drinks and some food and only stopped for gas and a couple potty (read: coffee) breaks over the whole 16 hour trip.

I suppose I should be happy to note that absolutely nothing of note happened on our drive down. We left Pittsburgh right after the girls’ Paleontology class ended at 2:30, and headed down in a light rain through southwest Pennsylvania and into West Virginia. The roads were fine but the mountains and rain made me a little nervous, so I lost a little bit of time through there. Once we hit Virginia, though, the skies cleared (just in time for it to be dark) and we got to Rock Hill, SC by 11:30 pm.

We stayed in Rock Hill overnight. That’s a nice place to stop southbound because, not only are you half way between my house and my mom’s, you are just past Charlotte, NC. Charlotte, NC is a very large city with a very large amount of traffic. It’s not bad to drive through at night, but if you are heading out in the morning during rush hour, you will be very glad you drove the extra 20 minutes the night before to get to Rock Hill and out of the snarl of commuters.

The girls had a quick breakfast of Froot Loops (I’m glad they spell it “froot” and not “fruit”, since I’m fairly sure there’s no actual Fruit in Froot Loops) and juice and shared a bagel. I had a slightly-better-than-mediocre coffee and some yogurt. We were on the road by 8:45 AM and enjoyed the lovely sunshine as we headed south through SC. There were an inordinate number of police on the highway so I kept my speed in check. Georgia was much the same way- sunshine, open road, and cops. But in Florida the traffic sped up and I had to go surprisingly fast to keep up with the flow.

Since the girls had been so cooperative, I stopped for treats just outside of Jacksonville, which is locally referred to as JAX. (I love when cities refer to themselves by their airport code. PDX is another fine example of an airport-minded city.) We found, happy of happys, a Dunkin-Donuts-Baskin-Robbins, which meant that I could get a nice coffee and the kids could get ice cream cones. Everyone was happy and the weather was warm enough that we could actually sit outside and enjoy our refreshments. Imagine! Ice cream outside in February!!

It only took a bit over two hours to get to Orlando from JAX. We did run into a bit of traffic in Orlando itself, which was inconvenient since we had to travel all the way through it to the southwest part of town during rush hour. But we managed, and got in just after 5:30. The girls rushed up to find our hotel room, where Nana was waiting.

And here we are in lovely Orlando. Orlando has an unfortunate airport code: MCO. So I can’t really blame them for not adopting that as the city nickname. And if they did use a nickname, it would probably be something like DIZ because everywhere you look there is a Disney-branded something-or-other. We are alarmingly close to the Empire of the Mouse. But I have no plans to venture there this trip. We have too many other things to do, like seeing manatees and going to the space center. Yay!

Bye.

Ha, I’m not really going anywhere. Well, I am, but it’s got nothing to do with my blog (although really, as far as the blog is concerned, I probably ought to re-introduce myself since I never seem to post anything here). No, the girls and I are leaving for Florida tomorrow. And we are driving. And this should be interesting. Hopefully it will be interesting in a good way, and not that euphemistic “ah… interesting” way people say when they don’t want to come right out and say “damn, that sucks.”

So in planning this trip, which is almost exactly 1000 miles from my doorstep to our destination, I debated a long time about the best mode of travel. I considered flying, which I enjoy about as much as my cat enjoys taking medicine. And I pretty much [and enthusiastically, I might add] eliminated flying right off, because (1) the times were inconvenient, (2) the price was very inconvenient, and (3) I simply am not allowed to check the amount of luggage I need to take. We are staying a week in a condo-style hotel, and I will need a coffee pot and lots of knitting and my big, floppy hat. All of those things are bulky and heavy and would be really really hard to take on an airplane. That would be, uh… interesting.

Plus, we need a car when we get there. I could rent one, but the cost to rent a comparable mini van for ten days was hundreds of dollars. It seemed much better to have my own lovely mini van and just pay for the gas.

Next, I considered the auto train. We did the auto train two years ago and it was fabulous. Unfortunately, lots of other people also seem to think it’s fabulous. Not only was it a lot more expensive on the dates we wanted to travel, it was sold out. Drat.

So we are left with driving or taking the bus. And since taking the bus will not accomplish the goal of having a vehicle down in FL to gallavant around in (and pick people up at airports and such in, which will be occurring at least twice), we are driving.

I am driving, since my children are not quite tall enough to do so yet.

I like to drive, so this is not a big deal. I have driven to FL twice before, once with DH and the kids and once with my mom and the kids. I did about half the driving with DH and all of the driving with my mom. So I am an expert driver. No, really, I am. I have a commercial driver’s license with passenger endorsement. I might give that license up this year when I need to renew and fill out some new form that the state is requiring, though. But fortunately, a commercial driver’s license with or without passenger endorsement is not necessary to operate a mini van, so we should be okay with just a regular old driver’s license.

The situation that I am currently facing is the Mother’s Corollary to Parkinson’s Law, which pretty much states that

The amount of luggage/toys/clothing required for a trip expands to fill the amount of space available in one’s mini van.

I am really trying not to overpack. And in the way of clothing and toiletries, I have done a marvelous job. But I also have a large box of kitchen items, because I can’t bear the thought of not having a good knife or a good cook pot or- heaven forbid- a decent coffee pot for an entire week. And if you have those things, then you must have accessories, like spices and a vegetable peeler. It’s a downward spiral into kitchen insanity if you really start anticipating all the things you might need and all the things that the hotel’s kitchen probably won’t have. I’m trying hard to breathe deeply and focus on the fact that all we are likely to eat at our hotel is cold cereal for breakfast and salads for lunch, but it’s hard not to add the food processor and stand mixer to the packing pile.

Happily, though, we have audio books ready to listen to and maps to follow and lots of munchies (healthy, of course) to eat along the way, so as long as the suitcase with my contact lenses makes it into the van, we can probably replace just about anything else we happen to forget. So I’m not going to worry much more about it, other than to cross off the things on my to-do list.

It’s something of a long list, but that’s another blog post. Bye!

It’s The Small Things

We did not make it back to the islands this weekend, but DH and I managed to sneak away for a little short weekender up at Lake Erie. We drove up to Geneva-On-The-Lake, which is a quaint and curious little town (and it’s right on the lake, can you imagine? Truth in advertising is so rare these days.). Maybe I will put up some photos when I get around to clearing off the camera card, but honestly, there isn’t much to show you. The most interesting thing we saw was the drawbridge in Ashtabula Harbor, about 10 miles away. And really, the only interesting thing about that is we do not have a Bascule lift bridge anywhere near us (Ashtabula Harbor is the closest one) which meant that we were endlessly fascinated by it. Tourists.

However, what our mini-trip lacked in fascinating scenery, it more than made up for in relaxation.

• Beautiful weather, cool enough to want a jacket but not so chilly that your teeth were chattering
• Pleasant hotel with comfortable beds, a bottle of wine in our room, and a serviceable restaurant on-premises
• A chance to share not just one, but two meals with my husband without being interrupted by/for anything
• No dish-washing or laundry-folding for a solid 18 hours
• No refereeing of toy-fights or she-touched-me fights; actually, no fighting whatsoever
• 4 straight episodes of Storm Chasers on Discovery channel in our room
• knitting galore
• sleeping in
• drinking coffee while gazing out at Lake Erie
• casual stroll out by the lake and out to the little lighthouse at sunset
• listening to a half-dozen Doctor Who podcasts on the way home

I really should stop now. This is getting rather depressing.

What I realize, of course, is that I am something of a home-body. Travelling and sightseeing and getting out-and-about are all well and good, but I am rarely impressed by it all anymore. Home is infinitely more appealing.

Hopefully this is not sign of being snotty and cynical (or worse, prosaic), but rather that I am content with the things I have. Besides: what is the purpose of travelling, anyway, if not to come back home again?

Journey’s Begun

Here is a quick summary of our trip, in pictures. I’ve added captions so I would sort of feel that this qualified as an actual *blog* post.

We left Pittsburgh around 7:30 in the morning.

The train was very roomy and comfortable.

O2 even got a special hat. She liked that it was special, but did not particularly care to be wearing it.

I believe the special hat was recycled somewhere near Virginia.

In any case, there was a lot of pleasant scenery to enjoy along the way.

We soon settled in on our train, starting, of course, with the requisite cup of morning coffee.

How is train coffee, you ask? Hmm.. I am not sure how to answer that delicately. Perhaps I can just say that train coffee is a step up from gas station coffee, but still inferior to a cold, two-day old cup of Dunkin Donuts. Unfortunate, that.

Actually, the most unfortunate part was that I had both a coffee grinder and a bag of beans in my carryon bag. That was unfortunate.

In any case, we entertained ourselves all the way to Philadelphia. The girls spent some quality time with their Nana,

we played some cards in the dining car,

we checked out even more scenery,

and generally just kept busy.

Eventually, we hit Philadelphia, where it was time to change trains.

Philly, as I found out, is a mecca for weary travellers who have only suffered unfortunate train coffees.

All too soon, it was time to catch our southbound train.

Fortunately, we had just enough time for some much-needed refreshment.

More pictures soon…

Here We Are

We’re in FlorEEda!

We actually got in yesterday afternoon, but I was too lazy things were too hectic to get in a post.  The train ride was fantastic.  It took us about 7 hours to get to Philadelphia, where we had a little layover before getting on a new train to come down to Deland.  The second leg took about 18 1/2 hours.   If we had driven that same route, it would have taken us about 5 1/2 hours to drive from Pittsburgh to Philly and about 16 hours on to Deland.  But add in rest stops, food breaks and vehicle maintenance, and I bet the time would have come out about the same.  In a car, however, we would not have had reclining seats with foot rests, nor would we have been able to get up and walk around, go to the toilet, or sit at a table and play cards.  The train was definitely an enjoyable way to go.

Flying is obviously much faster, and I suppose that we could have more than made up for the lack of leisure time on the train with an extra 18 hours of time at my mom’s house.  But at my mom’s, we’ve been sitting around the table, playing cards and visiting.  Guess what we did on the train?  Yep.

I knitted an entire little dishcloth while on the train, too.  Yesterday morning, very early, I sat at a table and knitted while the kids slept with my mom and brother.  A handsome older woman came in to the dining car and asked about the yarn I was using, as she was also knitting and had brought an afghan panel to work on.  She sat with me while we waited for the coffee counter to open.  I asked her about her slight accent, which sounded French; she said that it was, and that she had grown up in Northern France after fleeing Hungary, where her family – who were Jewish – had been persecuted during World War II.   We had a delightful conversation about everything from language, children and education to yarns and politics.  Before I knew it, an hour had passed. 

But now we are down at my mom’s, and it has been wonderful to see my brother again and hear about his incredible stories of life on the left West coast.  I am very proud of him.  He has been through a rough bit, with a foray into drug abuse that nearly cost him his life.  Now he is sober, and writing about his experiences.  They are hard to read, because I see what he has been through with a too-vivid lens.  But his stories are compelling and real, and I think he will get them published one day and enjoy some success with them.  The best part, though, is watching him interact with the girls.  They warmed up to their uncle right away, even though they’ve only seen him a few times before.  O2 has especially taken to him, wanting to sit with him on the train and hold his hand when we are walking places.  I only wish we had more time with him, but he has to leave tomorrow to get back for work.  So tonight, we are going to celebrate his birthday (Nov 1) and my mom’s birthday (Nov 15) with cake and a little party, Florida-style.  Now, I just need to find a recipe for a citrus cake.

(Pictures soon, once I figure out how to upload them.)

Better Than A Rechargeable Battery

We’re back from our lovely weekender at Put-In-Bay. This is the first time DH and I have gone away from the kids since they were born. It was tough leaving them, but I managed. (Snort.)

It helped knowing that Nana was staying with them. I’m not even sure they knew we had left, actually; they were having that much fun. Yeah, that’s it- we took this weekend for them.

Getting to the Lake Erie islands is easy. You drive north until you hit water. You go west until you get to Catawba Island (which is a cheater island, since it has a big bridge getting you to it). Then you do this:

I don’t know why I was so enthralled with the whole crossing-over thing. It probably has something to do with the fact that I’m from the landlocked armpit of my state, where the only water we see is the stuff that falls from the clouds. Getting on a boat to get somewhere is new for us. I am such a dork that I actually watched the GPS track us over water. Apparently, it doesn’t care if you’re on a road or not. I have no idea why that thought absolutely fascinates me. Oh, right – dork.

Hey, it’s all about the journey, right?

So of course I took a billion pictures of the darn boats.

The ferry guy probably thought I was casing their operation. I even took pictures of us, in the truck, on the boat.

I don’t get out much, okay?

To fully enjoy every moment of our trip, we got out of the truck and went up on the top deck. It was a beautiful sight. Here we are, leaving Catawba Island for Put-In-Bay.

And then, we really felt like we were on vacation when we saw this:

Of course, I had to look down and take a picture of our truck from above, because I’m geeky like that. Please don’t judge me.

After ten minutes or so, our island came into view. The first thing you notice is Perry’s Victory monument, which looks like a giant UFO parked on a roman column. It’s kind of funny, actually.

Finally, we reached the dock and prepared to debark the ship. Ha.  I just wanted to say “debark”.

Ahhh. Let the weekending commence.

There is a special rhythm to island life. Here, people drive golf carts.

They also drive cars, scooters, rollerblades, mopeds, motorcycles, and buses on the island. I suppose it’s not really all that different from the mainland, after all. But my head was already on vacation. I wasn’t processing things well. I thought everything was just fascinating.

We stayed at a lovely little B&B called the Arbor Inn.

It took me a while to figure out why they called it that. Then I noticed this across the street:

Get it? Grapes? Arbor? Arbor Inn?

Oh, nevermind.

And, yeah, I thought about getting some of that wine, but then I noticed this at the end of the field:

Not very appealing, I’m afraid.

On Saturday morning, we got up early. And when I say early, I don’t mean like 10 AM. We were up early. 7:00. I had no intention of sleeping my vacation away. By 7:30, we were on our bikes and exploring. We did more between 7 and breakfast than we normally do in a whole day. But that’s vacation for you.

By noon, we were ready for a break.

We stopped in the middle of downtown for a quick energy boost.

There is a large park in the downtown commercial district. It’s a nice place to sit and people-watch. You can generally find things to amuse yourself if you just sit in a public place for a while. Personally, I like signs. They crack me up.

And my personal favorite:

(However, while you can toss lakes, you apparently must strain out the wildlife.)

Talking about your funny signs, we ate lunch at a joint called the Chicken Patio. No, really. I’m serious.

They call it that because you sit on the patio and eat chicken. Like, a half of a barbequed chicken.

And if you ask them, the guys who work there will tell you that the sauce is the boss.

After lunch, we did some more riding. We quickly discovered that our butts were not prepared for this onslaught of physical activity and were, in fact, rather sore. Ouch. But we pressed on. Our mission was to find a suitable launching point from which to get our kayaks into the lake. It was surprisingly hard to find one, considering we were on a fricking island, after all. Desperate times called for desperate measures. We went up in the Perry’s Victory monument to scope things out.

Unfortunately, it didn’t help. So we got our sore butts back on our torture-device bicycles, and rode around some more. And then we found the state park, which seemed like a nice place to sit and rest. So we did. And what did we see? We saw kayakers. In the water.

We also saw the Perry Nuclear Power plant. But that’s not important here.

The important thing is that the kayakers had to have had a place to put their boats into the water. And if they could get in, we should be able to, too. Right? Right. And then we saw it:

So now that we found a place to put the boats in, we decided to relax the rest of the day, and rest up so we could spend the next day kayaking. I decided to work on my knitting. In fact, I worked on knitting a lot this weekend. And in a lot of places. I had already knit several rows on the drive up. I also knit here:

and here:

and here:

I even knit on the ferry ride back:

but now I’m getting ahead of myself.

So, Sunday morning we again rose bright and early and prepared to stick our now-sore butts into our kayaks. We drove to the perfect put-in place and somehow managed to get the boats down off the truck without embarassing ourselves in front of the [mostly young, tan, lithe, slim] other patrons hanging out at the dock. That was a major victory for morale.

I then gathered our important supplies.

(That is what happens when I let my husband shop for the snacks.)

Now, at this point I opted to lock my camera in the truck and leave it on dry land. It had been, up until Sunday, nearly five years since I sat in my boat. And I’ve only ever taken it out on Lake Erie twice. And the last time I did, I dropped my binoculars into the water (where they still reside, to my knowledge). Taking the camera out on the boats did not seem prudent. Therefore there are no photos of our voyage. Alas.

Good news: my ass did not get stuck in the boat. In fact, the bike did far more damage than the boat could have ever hoped to do.

More good news: I did not tip my boat. I have never tipped it, at least not on accident, and I am proud to say that my perfect record and dignity are still intact.

Even more good news: while I am not exceptionally young, slim, lithe, tan OR athletic, we did look wicked in our kayaks. Everyone was watching us. All the kids stood by and watched as we pushed off. They marveled at our skill and prowess. They gazed in admiration as our paddles slipped effortlessly into the water. They coveted our snazzy PFDs and matching spray skirts. I haven’t felt that cool in a very, very, very long time. Perhaps ever.

After the kayaks, it was pretty much downhill. Nothing else was nearly that exciting, not even the discovery of the espresso bar downtown or the ice cream patio out by the airport. So we got up Monday, ate breakfast, and came home. And our girls were happy to see us.

The end.