and this means things can move slightly higher speed.
dr. bob may be a chowder head in many, many ways, but he's also a timeshare savant. many times in my life i've had a call from the good doctor that goes something like this:
"b1! how're you doin'? anyways ..." ... he always starts his pitches with that exact word ... "... i've got a time share in lake tahoe this weekend, you want to use it? or how about santa fe? i've got one in pocatello too."
"all three on the same weekend?"
"yes. turns out i can't use any of them."
which means i've got a little timeshare credit that can be burned. so of course i do and we move from our great comfort suites $26/night room (free internet and jacuzzi) to a super-swank timeshare ... we'll end up burning a night we don't even use.
we both slept in, merely because we could, and then went to giordano's for pizza. there mere fact that you can get what many people consider to be chicago's best pizza (i like lou malnati's better -- although i used to pick up a G's any time i was in ORD [you can't buy that way any more]), 2000 miles away, shows how weird things have truly gotten.
[as a side note -- chicagans are extremely proud of their pizza ... i guess that's what you focus on when you're forced to live in a hell hole like chicago ... but it's not really pizza ... it's casserole.]
and yes, it was the full-on real mccoy. the only difference was the crust wasn't quite the right combination of flaky/chewy and i'll bet you anything that's due either to the water or the humidity here. the pie you see above is for "1-2" people. the my accomplice and i, as a team, were able to eat 2.5 slices of six.
on the way out i stopped by a place to see if i could get any park/hiking information ... they advertise themselves as tourist information, but they also have this sign, which should be a clue.
in fact, it was a clue, but i wanted to go in anyway.
i'll keep the synopsis brief, but here's the brunt ... if you go into a place that advertises tourist info, to a place that is, literally, one stone's throw from walt disney world, you will draw blank stares when you say, "no, not theme park, national park." you'll also be given the opportunity to attend a timeshare.
the clock still wasn't running full on, so we went back to the place to nap for 20 minutes before, that's right, going to the tie dye activity at the time share. for me, tie dye is just like pinhole photography ... somehow i managed to dodge it my entire childhood (no intentionally, unlike circuits and animal classification in biology), so i wanted to do that.
the "helpers" were teenage women, a korean and a chinese national. they wanted to do the entire tie dying process themselves but my accomplice nearly bitch-slapped them into next week and they backed off. i went at it with the kind of furor and venom an 8 year old boy can pack into a midlife over-weight body. when they wrapped the t-shirt in a towel and said, "jump on it hard ten times," my accomplice only had just a chance to say "oh no," before i blew die half- way across the floor of the "activity room."
i got a swell $8 shirt along with conversations like these.
korean woman, "why don't you speak korean?"
"two reasons. one, for the same reason i don't speak hebrew, there aren't any of you, really. you guys like to think there are lots of koreans, but there aren't. if you're a dumb ass american, you should learn a language that has a little weight and practicality to it. like chinese [score one point] or spanish, which i do speak. two, as long as you have our missiles for protection, you have to speak my language. as soon as we use your missiles, i'll learn your language, i promise. i have one korean friend. i force her to speak english for missile reasons. she understands."
i'm guessing the number of non child-molesting mid-life men who show up for tie dye class is small -- probably something like only me -- so you could see the wheels turn as they were trying to decide "is he serious?" or possibily, "how about a little A+ red to go in that shirt?"
the outdoors beckons so we head to the tibet-butler nature preserve. like bayou savage, this is a tiny little hunk of nature still left in the middle of development on all sides.
a couple pix.
really nice preserve ... there was only one other person in the entire area.
they closed at 16:00, but there was still daylight, so we went to lake louisa state park. with only an hour of daylight left, it'd essentially be a sprint-hike. my accomplice battles hip problems (not related to, but probably exacerbated by, the fall), but motion actually helps considerably.
these are the biggest damn ant lion dens i've ever seen.
big spiders (i think these are banana spiders, or a very close relative).
we closed the park -- getting mildly chewed by a park rep.
and then it was on to the one thing my accomplice and i kept coming back to ... miniature golf with an active volcano ... we go in, coupon in hand, and the proprietor is clearly ready to deal. there's only three groups on the 36 holes and they pretty much just need money. i don't even remember what we cut -- i think we paid $18 for the two of us for 36 holes. and you and i both know it's a big kahuna bargain.
i must have mixed up the hard and easy courses because the easy one seemed hard. we played super hardcore rules (penalty strokes and the works) in and around the volcano.
but the star attraction, by far, is the volcano. "it erupts every ten minutes" the proprietor said, almost sounding like it wasn't the worst question he was asked every day.
and it does. but what i wasn't expecting was the raw shock of it going off. it emits two fire balls, separated by about three seconds, that would make even the wizard of oz proud. big, long, rollers with just a whiff of hydrocarbon afterward. but they're pushed out with such velocity that the pipe howls as they're emitted. and the great balls of fire are big enough that you can feel the heat from anywhere on the course.
it turns out that the inbred human wariness mechanism for things that will scare the hell out of you is about seven minutes. so at ten minutes, every single damn time that thing went off i needed a new pair of shorts.
which is to say it was great.
now you may think i'm exaggerating, but let's look at it from the point of view of the people across the street. they're out on their balcony watching the nightly finishing fireworks at disney world. the kids cheer and applaud as they go off.
and then the volcano pyro-belches.
and the kids get real quiet.
and one them them says, almost in a whisper, "oh my god."
and the other says, "that was awesome!" (which, by the way, was the exactly correct use of the word.)
they didn't applaud fireworks after that. they did wait on the balcony for, yes, three more eruptions.
this photo is actually shot about 1/8 of a second too fast. i was actually waiting to shoot the volcano and the first eruption scared me enough that i fired on the second blast too fast.
we ate leftover giordano's and made plans for tomorrow. the last AYCJ day.
