Big things ahead

In my previous post, I said I wanted to “eat healthier, catch up on travel and rely less on ‘convenience apps.” The first one is going well enough, and I’m working on the second one as I type this (I might have something fun planned for the second half of this month)… and the third is a work in progress.

What I didn’t mention was, I want to stop living in fear of my previous editors and get my novel out there. I also want to put out a shorter book about my life in Baltimore which has the added benefit of enabling to delete all or part of my blog posts from 2009-2014 (as, believe me, no-one is reading them) which would free up a considerable amount of space for future writing/photos. The problem is, I don’t know if I have enough material for the latter book (as the copies of said posts on my laptop are long gone due to a transfer error on my previous computer. #techisfun), and it’s a bit late to start adding to it now.

I have other plans, some of which I can’t make yet due to the pandemic (I think have or, at least, had COVID at some point) as many events are either cancelled or postponed. For instance, Universal Orlando has not announced the dates for its Mardi Gras celebration (though Busch Gardens has :p), and Family Kingdom in Myrtle Beach, SC has no operating hours through the end of April.

Unfortunately, I just spent the past hour trying to fit multiple attraction visits for the second half of the month into my itinerary and my budget. I wasn’t accounting for “we downsized our routes to smaller airports” wall. All I want to do is fly into Sanford on my return trip so I can get some pictures of the Central Florida Zoo (that closed the day I came back from Baltimore last year) and then take the Sunrail back to downtown so I can transfer to… you know, I think I’ll just fly into MCO and be done with it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, my groceries are here…

2021 resolutions

So, the New Year is upon us. A year of hope, opportunities and boundless adventures… and lots of undeserved trauma that will very likely keep me from having a pleasant thought ever again. Oh, yes, and a chance to begin anew, and how do I that? New Year’s Resolutions!

The first and most important: Rely less on “convenience” apps. I just saw a story on Google News about how delivery apps like Door Dash and Instacart, as important as they are in our “contact free” age, are killing the very businesses they are purporting to help. The poor driver is not only caught in the middle, but they are essentially shafted pay wise.

Thankfully, now that the I-Ride Trolley is back to at least a partially normal schedule, I can go back to shopping in store again… four days a week anyway with it’s advertised “15-20 minute” waits ballooning to an hour – or more – with fewer vehicles running/less drivers working in other words: less gas, fewer paychecks. Okay, so it’s not that much of an improvement, but it’s cheaper than taking Uber/Lyft to the grocery store.

The problem is, the four-day schedule requires more advanced planning than Uber/Instacart does. I don’t need milk today or tomorrow, but I might on Wednesday which is too bad since trolley service is (for the moment anyway) “THURS-SUN only.” Yes, I know, there’s a 7-Eleven 500ft outside my bedroom window, but that doesn’t mean I can do ALL of my shopping there.

Besides, if I’m going to eat at least a little healthier (a phrase with a certain amount of wiggle room), I’m going to have to cut down on the amount of junk food I buy. The easiest way to do that is to remember I’d have to CARRY IT from the store, across the parking lot and eventually to wherever the nearest trolley stop is. Whereas, Instacart shoppers can buy all the ice cream, cookies, chips, etc. I want because they have a CAR to load it into.

So, why not just use Uber or Lyft? Easy – because I did! Given the most direct route to the nearest Publix, my fare comes out to $7.65 plus tip… and how much does it cost to come back? Therefore, it was cheaper to pay the $9 “delivery fee” for Instacart (later lowered to $3) than it was to go round trip to the store myself. Also, there was less chance of catching viruses that way.

Speaking of which, now that the vaccine is available in Orlando (as well as a shiny new mutation!), I can play catch up with all the travel I had planned for last year. My trip to Baltimore in March was supposed to end with a weekend in Sanford (as my flight was on Friday and Sunrail back to downtown only runs on weekdays… unfortunately, Friday was the day Governor DeSantis issued his “Stay-at-Home” order for the state. Even the check-in woman at the hotel said I was “stupid” for doing so (yes, that’s a quote, as I’m supposed to just intrinsically know these things when I’m 3500ft in the sky with no access to news/information).

I had also planned a week in Charlotte, NC (home of Carowinds – owned by the same company as Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom, which I also planned on visiting). Obviously, I would not spend the entire week at one park, as I’m sure there are museums, galleries, and other attractions to see in Mecklenburg County. Probably a wide variety of food and drink options as well.

If everything goes according to plan, I won’t be stepping foot in Disney until March or April… that’s assuming I pay down my Instacart and Lyft bills first.

Photo: Somber statistics

Afternoon updates

Normally, I “live blog” my way through these storms, but I haven’t decided if I am or not this time around. Yes, it keeps me focused on things outside my crudely furnished apartment. I know it hasn’t even made non-landfall yet, but I’m already sick of hearing about it. #burnout

I hate to “break tradition,” but they are as much fun to read as they are to write. Maybe, I’ll change my mind tomorrow… after the scheduled meme post drops.

 

A broken heart and tattered jeans (part 2)

My Uncle Tom pulls up to the ticketing area around 1:30pm, and I very carefully get myself and my bags out of the car so as not to cause any more damage to my jeans. The only place I can possibly change out of these ripped pants was in the restrooms.

Fortunately, I had a spare set of dress pants in my bag, and conveniently enough the only trash can in the lower terminal was under the sink across from the exit to my stall. So, I rezip my bag, throw the jeans in the trash and head to airline check-in as if nothing happened – because it didn’t.

Yep, dress pants on, hoodie on (as I couldn’t fit in my carry-on), ticket, ID and shoes in hand. And, just as I get to the front of the line, I can barely hear a woman over the PA saying: “would the person who lost their PANTS please pick them up at the Allegiant counter. Thank you.”

Let me see if I get this straight. Someone saw the ripped jeans in the trash, fished them out of said trash, (!) followed me to the airline counter and turned them into the representative? Okay, I can sort of see the logic of that from a “security” point of view. But, seriously, let’s think how positively STEW-PED both of these individuals think I am?

AT BEST, I am a laughing stock who has given up not only his place at the front of the line but now I have to explain this to the agent. Oh, and I’m guaranteed to miss my flight so I now have 18 hours to figure out how to fit those unwanted jeans I couldn’t fit into my carry-on into my carry-on. Yeah, thanks, Good Samaritan!

What would REALLY happen is this: I’d lose my place in line, become a laughing stock of everyone in the airport (who are naturally filming this on their phones), I get to the ticket counter and am met not by an airline representative but by airport police and the TSA who will not give a damn about my “story” because I’m obviously a nutjob of some kind (the A-word would definitely NOT help me in this case). Not only do I miss my flight, I get a free trip to JAIL and the opportunity to explain this to a judge who will care even less about my “story” than the police/TSA, but at least the media (who saw the inevitable YouTube video of me) would, shoving their mikes in my face and shouting loaded questions over each other as I leave the courthouse. Yeah, all that attention, and I don’t even have a book to plug… but I would get to rebook my flight at my own expense, so there’s that.

Thankfully, neither of those situations happened. I ignored the announcements (as I could barely hear it anyway) and proceeded through the machine rewarded by a full pat down with complimentary cock groping (literally the first person to touch my cock in yeeears) and gun powder residue test (which was a new one on me) and them sent me into the terminal like “yeah, I totally not freaking out. I am not ‘violated,’ I am 100% sec- oh, shit, my flight is boarding RIGHT NOW!!”

I managed to get to my gate just before they closed the plane door. I was the last person to board the plane (which made finding my seat a snap), but I was still on the plane.

Thankfully, my dress pants held up for the duration of the flight…

 

UPDATE (3/13/2019): Writing this post made me angry in spots, but it also reminded me how lucky I was in this regard as “funny” as the rest of the line found this incident, it could be seen a legitimate security risk… even if my actions made logical sense, at least to me anyway. Heck, this non-incident happened two days ago, and I keep expecting HSA agents to show up at my door. Fortunately, this hasn’t happened… yet.

Photo: My favorite part of going home…

Misadventures in Sanford

10:19am – A later start then I would have liked, but I am ready to go out and take photos today. I never did post those pictures from Epcot International Festival of the Arts as they’re still on my phone…the one I forgot to plug in before I got in the shower. Eh, whatever, I’ll be back before it dies anyway.

11:20am – I was starving when I got off the bus across the highway from the Sunrail station (the closest the driver would drop me off as she INSISTED Sunrail doesn’t operate on weekends) so I stopped at the McDonalds adjacent to said station. I’d already missed the 11am train so I had a bit of time to fill anyway.

-1:06pm – I arrive at Sanford Sunrail Station, the expansive parking lot is empty and there are no buses or cabs in sight. I put the zoo’s address into Google Maps and let the friendly GPS lady (whom I can barely hear) guide me.

-2:01pm – Google sent me Rand Yard Rd, which is a one-lane service road for the distributor on the corner and after traipsing through several acres of scrub grass I found myself in some kind of landfill\processing center (looked deserted, but it was a weekend). The latter was fenced off (10 feet from the connection street Google wanted me on) but no, I was the correct route so I was forced to backtrack all the way back to the main road and follow their DRIVING directions to the zoo.

-2:53pm – Finally arrived, with slightly under 2 hours to see everything. I haven’t even gone into their iconic pink\red gate yet, and I’m already exhausted.

-4:09pm – This very well could be a post of its own, but I’ll put in here anyway. No, I’m not going into a tirade about their tiny cages stacked on top of each other. No, my complaint here is that after I left the zoo, I asked the worker at “Admissions” window (couldn’t find “Guest Services”) to call a cab for me.

She looks at me like I’m stupid: “Duh, just open your Uber app, and they’ll…okay, fine, I’ll see if I can do that for you.” She disappears behind the wall for a moment and comes back to give me a sticky note with a phone number on it: “You can call them whenever you’re ready.”

“I don’t have the reception or the battery life for it,” I said showing her my phone with its 22% power that’s supposed to last until I get back.

“Nah, you can do it,” she said with a shrug. “After all, YOU’RE the one who wants it.” Yes, she actually thinks she’s doing me a favor. But at least she pretends to “believe” in me.

I go over to the parking area and do MY due duty as a cab wanting citizen. “I’d like to or… I said I’d like a cab to… I SAID ‘I’D LIKE A CAB TO…’“

Like I said, a huge fucking favor. People are staring at me because I am literally screaming at the top of my phone, and he STILL “can’t hear” me, but, hey, the girl at the “Admissions” window said I “could do it” so why disappoint her?

Finally, I get far enough away from the kiddie rides that he can finally hear me, and at 4:25pm, a black minivan (they sent a minivan for ONE person?) finally pulls up to the curb outside the gate.

-4:48pm – Cab driver conveniently “missed” the station saying ‘’don’t worry, we take the entrance around back.’’ Nice try, I saw the back of the station, there is no “entrance” there. Any other lies you’d like to throw at me?

-6:05pm – Arrive at the Sandlake Station. I spent the next ten minutes waiting on the only bus serving the station on weekends before stupidly deciding to get dinner at the Denny’s adjacent to the station (I should have used the dwindling natural light to find the next regular bus stop). Don’t get me wrong, I was hungry and the food was good, but service was definitely of the turn & burn variety (even though there were only five other patrons in the entire restaurant).

-6:47pm – It is pitch black outside, save for half lit store signs across the street and the blinding glare of the speeding cars. Oh yeah, perfect conditions for finding a bus stop in an unfamiliar area – especially since I now have an extremely expensive brick in my jacket pocket.

-7:39pm – After waiting at the unlit stop for approximately 15 minutes (my only source of time is a dead phone), the bus I wanted finally arrives. I take a seat and fight sleep for the next hour.

-8:49pm – Arrive safely back at the apartment. I’m glad I’m out of quarters since my feet will probably need all day tomorrow to recover from that “shorter route” Google Maps suggested (that ADDED an hour of walking to my trip). Don’t expect any updates from me before noon.