My glaring weakness as an office bound civil servant is my penchant for daydreaming. Something catches my eye, stirs a memory, and away I go… off to lands far and wide. It can happen at home just as easily as at work. In fact, I just got back from a flight from the inner realm a little earlier this evening.

The catalyst for tonight’s journey was a photograph I took on a weekend getaway, about a year before our first child was born. We spent a weekend in Ft Meyers, a stone’s throw from Sanibel Island, at a resort just across the intercostal waterway on the mainland. The photo I was looking at is right above this entry… or was when I typed this… a shot of the clouds gathering off shore, a mile or two off the beach on Sanibel Island. While the selection of that picture has significance beyond the scope of this entry, it reminds me of one of my favorite mornings of all time.

It was the first trip I took with my first SLR camera. I’d been dying to dabble in more serious photography (which I figured required something other than a point and shoot), and I had enthusiastically jumped at the chance to pick up an old Pentax that someone was giving away. As a recent college grad budgets were tight, we had aspirations of buying a house and having children, and I already had two relatively expensive hobbies (cycling and computing)… so I’d been waiting for an SLR for a long time. It’s only power requirement was a small watch battery for the light meter (everything else was manual). There was no built in, auto flash; there was no auto focus… and I loved it. If I wasn’t such a stickler for the instant gratification of digital photography, I’d probably still be using that old Pentax (out doors anyway… the external flash unit died six years ago and I just couldn’t justify the expense of replacing it).

It was the first time my wife and I had stayed in an expensive resort (we were only there because we got the room for free). As I often did in the pre-children era, I brought my bicycle along. Cheryl was planning to sleep in, and I was in the habit of taking early morning, Saturday bike rides. So just before sunrise on our first day I walked my bike out the resort lobby in my lycra outfit, my cycling cleats clicking on the ceramic tile (in case I wasn’t conspicuous enough), sporting a backpack containing my newly acquired Pentax and lenses.

I couldn’t take any pictures for about twenty minutes because of the change in temperature and relative humidity, going from the resort to the muggy early morning outdoors… all the lenses fogged right up. On other days I might have been frustrated, but it was an otherwise gorgeous Florida morning, and I set out across the deserted causeway heading out to Sanibel Island. The sun was just peaking above the horizon and I felt like I was the only person awake in the world. It was quiet. The water was calm; like a sheet of glass. I was on my bike traveling a road never before traveled, and the scenery was postcard Florida. After my camera lenses warmed up I’d stop and dismount to snap the occasional shot with the Pentax.

Put together my love of bicycling, the excitement of exploration, the serenity of my surroundings, and the fun playing with my new (long sought after) toy… and you’ve got one hell of a morning.

We don’t do that kind of thing often enough. Maybe that’s something we’ll have to change when I get better.

I think I have the symptoms of a serious chemical imbalance. Specifically, America’s favorite stimulant doesn’t seem to be working as a stimulant. I am familiar with the concept of tolerance… but this goes well beyond your garden-variety tolerance issue. It’s as if I’ve punched my ticket to bizarro world, or left this plane of existence, did not pass go, did not collect my $200, and went straight to hell. You see I’m strapped in the back seat of a van barreling down the highway towards Orlando, Florida.

*** This is a test of the Vacation Disaster System. In the event of an actual vacation, this alert would be followed by an intervention; to make sure you really wanted to spend your vacation in Central Florida. ***

As it happens the occasion of this trip is not a vacation, but a visit with some blood relations of my in-laws. Anyway, I’m sitting in the van with my knees pushed back into my appendix, sipping some store brewed joe, when I begin to feel drowsy. DROWSY?!? I just sucked down thirty-two ounces like a horror movie monster; I should be wired like the gas tank of a ‘76 Ford Pinto hatchback.

I’m beginning to suspect foul play. I can just picture a disgruntled Dunkin Donuts employee indiscriminately slinging decaf to the unsuspecting a.m. customers with an evil gleam in his eye.

There is little I find relaxing about a summer vacation in Florida. What about Central Florida theme parks? Here’s a theme for you: dehydration, heat exhaustion, and sun stroke.

So here are my first three responses to the proposed weekend trip to Orlando that just passed:
1. “No.”
2. “Please don’t make me go.”
3. “Ah… um… (Sigh)… fine.”

Now here’s where the whole thing gets a little weird. Despite years of experience suggesting the contrary, I had a decent time. This was due largely to much of the Kennedy Space Center being enclosed and air conditioned. Although we spent A LOT more money than we anticipated, I felt good knowing that the folks at NASA seem to be putting that money to use keeping up and expanding the visitor facilities. Perhaps the biggest surprise was finding the old Saturn V rocket still on display… but indoors… in a newly built facility showcasing the Apollo missions. Where else can a space buff eat pizza underneath the third stage of a moon rocket? I’m telling you right now, that all by itself was worth it. Everything else: the walk-thru of the International Space Station assembly building (seeing the next pieces to go up being worked on), the tour of the launch facilities, touching a moon rock, seeing the newly recovered Liberty Bell 7, watching an AWESOME 3-D IMAX movie about the Apollo missions – that was gravy. I’ve been to Kennedy several times, and before this weekend I never would have said there was too much to see in one day. No more. We barely had enough time to go on one tour, eat lunch and see one of the IMAX movies. Left unseen was three quarters of the original visitor’s center and all of the Astronaut Hall of Fame (which was included in our admission fee).

It was one of the few times as an adult that I left a Central Florida attraction not feeling satiated. You don’t catch me being overly enthusiastic very often, so when I say: “I was blown away,” you know it must have been good.

Imagine sitting on a plane as it barrels down the runway, approaching the speed necessary to leap into the air… and the pilot hits the breaks. As it turns out our pilot was asked to abort our take-off due to some bad weather near the airport. When the plane came to the proverbial “full and complete stop,” I heard at least fifty people take a breath. Sounds like a good time, eh?

So here we are, deplaned and back in the airport, waiting for the weather to pass.

I am here, back in my domain. The home field advantage is once again mine. My first blush impression of the vacation past, and of South Carolina in general, is that it was a lot like home. As it turns out, South Carolina is in a part of the country known as the “south.” As such, its climate in late July is best described as “hot, damn hot, and wet.” As it happens, the same can be said for Florida. As the name implies, Myrtle Beach is on the coast, a coast with a lot of sand. As it happens, Florida is known for it’s beaches too. In fact, shortly after we arrived in Myrtle Beach we were asked where we were from. After hearing our reply, our fellow vacationers mumbled something about not understanding the appeal of South Carolina when you live in Florida. Indeed. We were still in Kansas (so to speak), and that was precisely the problem.

Way back in October or November Myrtle Beach seemed like such a good idea, but looking back on it, we may have been caught up in the emotions of having a child, that or we weren’t getting enough sleep. I was living in a dream world where all vacations are created equal, where they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable traits, that among these are: rest, relaxation, and the pursuit of entertainment. Alas, unlike our founding fathers, my revolution was not won. Our vacation was a slice of home, strapped to the top of a van and driven eight hours north, to a stretch of tacky, paved over sand, the likes of which mine eyes have not seen since an ill-fated road-trip to Daytona during my college years. The rest of the trip was tainted by the fact that I could have skipped the eight hours in a car with two kids and two in-laws, and driven all of thirty minutes to a hotel right here in the Sunshine State. These many moons since the trip was conceived, I had visions of seeing sights and taking in sounds not known in these parts. Yet in six days we ate at a grand total of three restaurants that don’t have locations in central Florida. And to top it all off, South Carolina is pretty damn flat too. Their idea of a hill is a highway overpass. Sound familiar, Florida residents?

Ah, but it wasn’t really so bad. It was somewhat relaxing (at times). The hotel we stayed at had a really cool pool. Saturday night we took a drive down the coast a ways and had some of the best homemade ice cream I’ve ever had, perched on a pier overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Thursday evening we walked the riverfront of historic Savannah, and had the second best homemade ice cream I’ve ever had. Now that I mention it, Savannah was the saving grace of the trip (and home to two out of those three restaurants I mentioned before). If I had it to do all over again, and I could have my pick of destinations, I’d pick Savannah over Myrtle Beach and not think twice. It was on that Thursday evening, our first of two evenings when Georgia was on our mind, when I walked on my first, honest to goodness cobblestone street – ate in a place called “Spanky’s” – and had the second best homemade ice cream I’ve ever had (sitting at a cobblestone street-side table in a wonderfully strange city, watching the pedestrians and occasional car go by, looking out over the river, on a breezy, lazy, weekday evening).

Now that’s a vacation.

After a stopover in Savannah the previous night, we made it into Myrtle Beach the following afternoon. We stopped in on our room to lecture Beth on the finer points of empathy, consideration, and not using your feet to push off on the side of the car to gain leverage against your father in obtaining more of the space in the back seat. From there we went to Planet Hollywood. Yes, they have one here too. We didn’t heed the first warning, that the Hard Rock Cafe next door had an hour wait and Planet Hollywood’s was ten minutes. No, for that kind of clue to work you’ve got be able to reach up with your hand, hold the big red flag out of your eyes, and read the neon sign that says, “DON’T EAT HERE.” We were just like so many tired, tourist-flavored lemmings marching to our culinary doom.

Cheryl ordered a chicken pasta dish that was heavy on the pasta and not so much on the chicken. She was the victim of a classic bait and switch. The menu pictured this dish that featured large, prominent cuts of meat. Reality featured two thin strips of chicken that were so well hidden they were only found with assistance of the waiter’s expert eye.

“See, it has chicken.”
“Not quite like the picture in the menu, though, is it?”
“Well, sometimes they just stir it up.”
“Stirring doesn’t explain the fist sized breasts of chicken in the menu, and two pinkie sized strips on my plate.”

Since Cheryl was sharing the dish with her mother, and neither one were satisfied with a single strip of chicken, they sent it back. Cheryl’s father ordered a hamburger, a seemingly safe choice. The problem was once again one of expectations. He was expecting a round patty, but instead he got a crescent moon. Now, I’ve got nothing against the crescent moon, but it makes a lousy shape for a hamburger patty. Not least of which because everything else on follows the circular paradigm of sandwich building. He sent it back.

Now I’m no expert, but I’ve learned from countless horrible tales of the restaurant business that you NEVER send your food back. Having sent two dishes back, I was beginning to worry that our next reservations would be at the nearest hospital.

With all of these problems, it is customary for a management type to come out and address the problem in one fashion or another. There go our expectations running wild again. One youthful management type stopped by our table to ask how everything was, and my wife answered, “cold.” We didn’t hear from him again.

A tip is a terrible thing to waste.

This is my first, live update from a remote location (re: hundreds of miles from home – home is where the server is after all). Ah, but the fun ends in about fifteen minutes. Then I have to do what I’ve been paid to do, do some work. Where’s the fun in that? While not exactly fun, it may be interesting, seeing what the same state agency does in a different part of the state.

Alright, maybe not THAT interesting,

There is a place, deep in the heart of Tampa’s urban wilderness, where the locals go to cool off. Like an oasis in the midst of desert wasteland, it is a place filled with life. It is also a place of death defying falls, unrelenting surf, and the never-ending smell of Coppertone. This place has a name, and its name is Adventure Island.

Theme parks are a place where even the hardiest native Floridians can wither and perish during the summer months. They can have the fun cooked right out of them, leaving behind a scorched, dried out husk. But a water park? Well, at least it won’t get dried out.

Three things led to my decision to go Adventure Island on Sunday, the look of joy on my kid’s faces as they splashed in the water, the promise of a little cooling off, and Cheryl telling me I had to go. However, one thing almost called it off before it started: the weather forecast. Our local weather experts had forecasted a 60% chance of rain before noon, a 17% chance of rain between noon and 3 p.m., and a 40% chance of rain after 3 p.m. Personally, I think weather personalities are jumping up and down on the thin part of the branch as it is – without giving hour by hour forecasts. Fool me once,

So we left home at 11:45 a.m.

Come one, it’s a water park for cripes sake! What’s a little rain at a water park? If you can swim around in diluted children’s urine (chlorinated for your convenience), you can stand a little water dispensed from nature’s distillery, right?

Um, yeah. The thing with rain is that it can be quite cold. That’s why we spent twenty minutes getting intimate with the side of a building yesterday afternoon. Being wet is one thing, but the cold wet from a Florida summer storm is pretty uncomfortable fully clothed – let alone in your swimming skivvies. Then there’s thunder.

Being cold and wet is one thing, but throw in a little thunder and lightning and even the slow of foot will be prancing through the parking lot like gazelles on the Serengeti.

We were home by 3:15.

Since all events are now measured in terms of how they relate to my rash, this tale is right smack in the middle of Genesis – based on the events of three weeks ago.

In the beginning his skin was void of blemishes or imperfections, and the Lord said, “let there be a rash,” and there was a rash, and it was most assuredly not good. On the second day the Lord said, “let he on whom I’ve bestowed this rash go to Busch Gardens,” and he went to Busch Gardens, and that too was not good. Later that same day the Lord saw that he on whom he’d bestowed this rash and sent to Busch Gardens was thirsty, and said, “Let Busch Gardens give them their choice of free beer,” and there was Bare Knuckle Stout, and it did not look very good. Finally, the Lord saw he on whom he’d bestowed this rash, sent to Busch Gardens, and given Bare Knuckle Stout – had a daughter whose curiosity threatened to overwhelm the goodness of his creation, and said, “let her have a sip of this Bare Knuckle Stout and thou shall see this curiosity vanish!” – and she did, and it most assuredly did vanish, and it was finally good.

There are a slew of unfinished entries in the queue, but this one is begging for the front of the line. This weekend found the Kauffman family spending some holiday cheer in our nation’s (vacation) capital. My in laws are good Catholics, and I try to be a good son-in-law, so we all went to mass. It started out as a nice piece of ecumenical pie.

When I step in a church I don’t typically see a particular religion’s house, I see God’s house. Believe it or not, I try really hard not to look down my nose on other religions… not when religion is used as a mechanism for celebrating our gifts from God, and sharing them in kind. So it was on Sunday… I saw a bunch of other people there, and although I didn’t recognize a single person (save those I came with), I felt a sense of community with them – all of us being there for the same reason. That warm fuzzy feeling of belonging and community came to an abrupt halt when mass started.

First, the priest welcomed the congregants. So far, so good. Then, the priest told the congregants a little of the history of the church, it did not have a regular group of members, it was there solely for tourists such as ourselves. O.K., that’s interesting, no harm no foul. Then the priest advises us that without a regular group of members, his church relies solely on the generosity of vagrant, tourist congregants such as ourselves. Alright, now I’m a little uncomfortable, but every church has the money talk every now and again. Then, the priest launches into an audio tour of the sanctuary, the marble statue imported from Italy, the bronze doors imported from Europe, the fine works of art displayed on the walls, all made possible with generous donations from people like us. He’s painting a picture himself – but it’s not a particularly cash-strapped picture. Finally, he gives us the full spiel on how we can make our donations, for $25 we can have our names engraved on a roof tile, for $50 we can have them engraved on the European bronze doors, either of which will “leave a legacy for our children, and our children’s children, who can come back and say with pride, ‘my parents gave to (censored).’” Ah, but that’s not all, smaller donations will be accepted with our petitions. What is a “petition” you ask? Well, well my poor naive friend; “petition” is the PC, post Protestant Reformation incarnation of the “indulgence.” Don’t know what you should petition the church for? For your convenience, there are petition suggestions on the back of the offering envelope. All you need to do is check one off, enclose your cash, check or money order payable to (censored) – and you may consider your petition received.

In case you hadn’t guessed by now, I was feeling a little cynical. I was reading through the sample “petitions” when one stood out: “advancement.” Advancement? “Dear Lord, I know you’re busy feeding the poor and curing incurable ills, but while you’re up could you throw a promotion my way?” Yeah, remember that chapter of John where Jesus travels to the temple and is rewarded for his troubles with a promotion to Carpentry Specialist 4?

“Come on people, God needs a marble crucifix for the altar – there’ll be two special collections for your giving convenience.”

Alright, enough with the priest bashing. It wasn’t like his little speech took fifteen minutes. Oops, wait a minute, or fifteen… hypothetically speaking, of course.

Then there was the sermon. Don’t get me started on the sermon. He starts with a little Roman Catholic chest thumping, reassuring the Catholic masses that they’re getting what the poor – wretched little protestants will never get, real communion, from a real priest, from the one and only true Church. Next he threw in a few inaccuracies (in my view) concerning, “what protestants believe;” portrayed in a decidedly unflatering light. I didn’t hear the rest of the sermon because I took my daughter’s hand, stood up, and told my wife in the loudest whisper I could manage, “I’m leaving.”

“Are you coming back?”

“No.”

It’s a day later and I’m still fuming. But I wonder to myself, “does someone who has missed more Church in the last five months than the last five years have the moral high ground?” Does someone who would write some of the judgmental, mean spirited stuff that appears on this web site have the right to look down his nose on a priest? Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean I have to sit still and be judged by that guy. So I left. I feel bad for my in-laws, I didn’t mean to insult them with my actions.

Could the guy have turned it around? Is it possible that I walked out before the punch line? Yes, it’s all possible. Judge not, lest ye be judged (and all that). What can I say, I’m human – pissed like an binge drinker on the can – but human.

(Don’t ask, I’m not sure what I meant by the drinking metaphor either… it just kind of happened. Why waste a perfectly good turn of phrase for something as trivial as making sense?)

– Astute readers will note that the drinking reference was a simile, not a metaphor. -JK, 6/1 @ 10:01 pm