Volume 5: Pete in the USA Part 9. A young balding mans journey through 20 something states and back
Day 17 – Pensacola to Orlando
As the 3 hurricanes from the night before slowly departed, they’re devastation was still being felt as I fell straight back to sleep after my alarm went off. It was only that inbuilt sensor, the one that gets you off at the correct station when you fall asleep on the train, that set itself off and woke me 20 minutes before the bus was due to depart that saved Gav and I from a totally mad dash to get our stuff on the bus. Sure, we were rushed and plenty of profanities were exchanged, but we got our stuff together with at least 45 seconds to spare.
Today was a largely uneventful day spent in transit between Pensacola and Orlando. We set the usual Formula 1 pit stop pace at lunch (although I did have enough time to do my zip up afterwards) we’re I enjoyed the local cuisine of McDonalds Family restaurants, before dodging rain drops the size of light bulbs as I attempted to get back on the bus.
I felt quite a sense of well being and a lot of love that day on the bus, as according to the many billboards we passed that day on the highway “Jesus loves me”. I thought it was a great initiative from the big man to spread his love in a way that could reach such a wide audience and that it wasn’t inappropriate to spend his cash on advertising as, opposed to say, bread and/or wine for the homeless and needy. Yes, each sign was a big welcome to the American religious heartlands, where countless big white teethed perfect hair suit wearing former used car salesmen were all queuing up to bilk the stupid and old out of all of their cash all in the name of Jesus. I don’t know whether it was the heat that affected people’s judgement in this part of the country, or the fact that a hurricane could come and rip their life and house away on any given Sunday that turned these people to chequebook evangelists. And the fact that Florida was America’s retirement capital added to the number of people who were on the verge of finding out if the bible was true, so they’ve hedged their bets at the 11th hour by dumping their cash into a religious organisation to give them some currency on the other side.
Anyway, we got to the hotel late in the day (not before laughing as we passed the hotel sign of the “Gaylord Palms”) where most of the tourers headed off to “Old Town” (apparently the earlier settlers must have had a lot of neon signs with them) which was basically a long strip of takeaway restaurants and carnival games and rides aimed at taking the cash off tourists that the fine folk at the Disney corporation hadn’t managed to get earlier in the day. Gav and I, opted to do the smarter thing, go and buy 2 slabs from the local service station and eat at Denny’s.
After dinner we all convened at another bar without personality, Dennigans, which for some reason surprised me despite the fact JP had hyped it as being a great bar that served beer in large steins. Not even the large steins saved this from being another lifeless night on tour and before long we headed back to Old Town. Gav and I decided to take on a ride called the “Sling Shot”, ignoring the warning sign that said we shouldn’t be on the ride if we were pregnant, had a heart condition or had been drinking alcohol (2 out of 3 ain’t bad). The Sling Shot basically is a globe that is attached to 2 large rubber bands that launches you high into the sky and in which leaves you bouncing up and down for about a minute afterwards. As an added benefit they video you on the ride so we got to relive the first 5 seconds of the ride, which largely consisted of us shouting “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!”.
Releasing this night wasn’t going to be anything special we went back to the hotel shortly after to sleep.
Day 18 – Orlando
Today we all caught the tour bus to Universal Studio’s Island of Adventure. I foolishly took my camera along which would only serve to annoy me all day as I tried to prevent it from getting wet or going flying off into outer space as we completed loops on the many rides.
The day started off sensationally with the Incredible Hulk roller coaster. Now, me, being a person who has frequented many a roller coaster in my days, had thought I had the formula down. Which is slow climb up hill, fast trip down that hill, go through a few loops, shout the occasional profanity, before coming to a stop where you started and turning to your mates and saying “that was awesome” as your heartbeat slowly gets back to something under 150 per minute. The Incredible Hulk ride makes a subtle, yet awesome, change to that formula. It starts of with a slow climb, but about a quarter of the way up just as you’re thinking “if they could just get rid of these slow climbs these roller coasters would be a lot better” the ride explodes from about 10 to 80 miles an hour and launches you up the hill and of the tunnel that had succeeded in covering up this awesome start from suspecting patrons. The rest of ride applied the standard formula, but when you get off the ride you turn to your mates and say “how awesome was that start?”.
From there we went on to the Spiderman 3D ride which combines 2 of my favourite theme park things, 3D movies and violent G forces. From there it was on to the legally obligated theme park flume/log ride, the Looney Toons water ride which was quite refreshing in the hot Florida sun.
Refreshed, we headed to the duelling roller coasters, Ice vs Fire. This was another new concept to me. Essentially they shoot off 2 roller coasters at the same time, but build the tracks so close together you swear you’re about to crash into the roller coaster on the other track. Cool. What was equally cool is that this ride consistently had short lines all day. “Line”: another cultural difference. Back home we call them “queues”, but in the US I’m reliably informed they are lines. To me, the word “line” conjures up the image of something straight, which is something these “lines” are definitely not as they twist and turn around blind corners that lower you into a false confidence that you are close to getting on the ride, only to turn one of those blind corners and discover a few hundred people in the “line” whom many of which shared a similar thought 30 minutes ago. But what can you expect from a country that can’t spell the words tyre, colour, and centre, let alone correctly pronounce the word “aluminium”?
The next ride we took on was the Jurassic Park ride, which was the same as the one at the Universal Studios Gav and I had visited a few weeks earlier. From there we headed to the Poseidon Fury show. As it turned out it was yet another perfect forum for JP to have a John Denver moment. He had hyped the show so much you’d think he had a financial interest in it, so it was no surprise when the show turned out to be as exciting as the stories my nana used to tell about “Georgie boy” (who ever he is).
I think the most memorable thing of the day was watching some bloke riding a children’s roller coaster with a beer in his hand. Yes, I had caught a future glimpse of myself as a father.
We rode many of the rides many more times during the day before noticing a bar that had a happy hour that when from 4 to 8pm. I’m not sure what the bar was called, probably something along the lines of “The sore footed parent”. It was there I had a heated discussion with Danielle about just how better a ride I thought the Looney Toons ride was compared with the Jurassic Park ride. You know you’re doing okay when your biggest concern in life is deciding whether animatronic dinosaurs are better than animatronic cartoon figures.
Everyone eventually met up to have dinner at the NBA City restaurant. JP, in an attempt to make my $2 tip for that day obsolete tried convincing the waitress he should eat for free as he had brought a bus load of people into the restaurant. Unfortunately for the extremely tight JP she didn’t share the same feelings and he was forced to pay for his meal that night.
After dinner it was back to the hotel where I had a few moments to flick around the dial on the TV and watch 4 to 5 channels of religious programming or the Kobe Bryant debate on ESPN about whether the chick he had cheated on his wife with was consensual.
After that, we made good use of the 2 slabs of beer we had purchased earlier with a multiple room room party. In my room a group of us were playing the card/drinking game of “Asshole” we had learned from American Katie and American Victoria. Essentially, each person’s status is based on the results of the last game, ranging from President (the winner) to Asshole (the loser). Everyone is considered a higher rank than the Asshole so they can make them do whatever they want, which at best is making you finish your beer. As Gav isn’t overly bright, he spent much of the night being the Asshole. It was also a catch 22 situation, the longer you’re the Asshole, the longer you spend skulling beers which means the quicker you get drunk which means the quicker you lose your ability to play the game in a coherent matter. As Gav was now getting really drunk, he kept back chatting the President, which initially led to him being forced to skull his beer. After a while the President got sick of his lack of respect and at various times in the night he was forced to hump a chair and give head to a beer bottle resting between Bob’s legs. The funny thing was the chicks on tour were amazed by Gav’s head technique to the point where I think a lot of them learned something that night, and also took some written notes. At some time during the night JP humped a tree (I think he was the Asshole at the time, either that or he’s someone who loves nature) with the night finishing in the wee hours of the morning after countless complaints from other guests.
It was at that time just as I was getting into bed that I discovered Gav had done something stupid. As Gav had absolutely written himself off as the Asshole after countless skulled beers, he hopped into bed early. Big Sam thought that was soft so he bum rushed the room and threw ice on Gav and his bed. Gav’s drunken logic ignored the fact he left the door unlocked, so he figured I must’ve let Big Sam into the room. Based on that, he figured if he was going to have to sleep in a wet bed, so I was I. So he got up, filled a bucket with water and proceeded to pour it over the 2 other beds in our room (As this was a big hotel room it had 3 beds, all of which were now wet). I was drunk and tired, so I just slept in the wet patch (not the first time). The odd thing was Gav got up during the night and slept in the other wet bed, after about an hour can’t have been happy and went and slept in the first wet bed.
Interesting night.
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