There's something either very disturbing, or very bothersome, about how long a "McGriddle" can stay fresh sitting in a backpack without any special wrapping whatsoever.We got some "McGriddles" at O'Hare International Airport at one of the 150 McDonald's we passed going from the gate where we arrived to the gate where we would leave.
When your flight begins in Madison, Wisconsin, you may develop an unrealistic expectation of airports. We made it to the airport in a reasonable amount of time, and unloaded the Babies! and luggage. I then parked in the long-term parking lot, which is cheaper because it's far enough away from the terminal that you can't actually see the terminal. It's so far away that there's wildlife there; as I walked past a tree, something moved and ran away. I hoped it was a cat, but I thought it might be a raccoon-- maybe even one of the ones we'd displaced.
Security at the Madison NonInternational Airport is pretty easy to get through, even when you're carrying Babies! like Sweetie and I were. They made The Boy start the laptop, they made me show them a can of formula, we all had to take off our footwear, and then we were through, with a half-hour until boarding.
"You need to go to Gate 7," the security agent told me. With only a half-hour, I was nervous.
"Where's Gate 7?" I asked. "Is it, like 40 minutes away? Should we run?" The security guard shook her head.
"It's right there," and she pointed, and it was. All the gates were right there. So we sat down and ignored the hostile stares of the other passengers as they contemplated the fact that they were about to get on a plane with two Babies!, and did what all good parents do to get through tough times: we drugged the Babies!
It's okay; we had a doctor's excuse. The pediatrician had told us to load them up with children's cough medicine because it would help them sleep on the plane and then we wouldn't have to worry about being that day's lead story on CNN: Plane forced to land one mile outside of Madison because of terrorist twins.
Just to make it palatable, though, we rationalized the dosage by pointing out to each other that the Babies! had some mosquito bites, and the bites were pretty big, so maybe they were allergic. Maybe they were developing hives right then! Maybe they were about to go into seizure or something and only a dose of hypoallergenic cough syrup could prevent that!
Boy, did it work. They both fell asleep right about as the plane took off. Mr Bunches didn't wake up until we got to Florida; he slept all the way through O'Hare and the subsequent flight from Chicago to Orlando. That made Sweetie's job a little easier, carrying him through O'Hare, where we had to make our way from one terminal to the other, traveling approximately 450 miles on foot carrying two babies and dragging the carry-ons behind us.
We had an hour or so to kill at the gate. Here is how each of us spent that time:
Mr Bunches: Sleeping sprawled out on the bench, oblivious to the world. He didn't even wake up when I changed his diaper.That's actually when we started to worry about whether we'd calculated his medicine dosage correctly. The doctor had said to give him a teaspoon, but the doctor had forgotten that the rest of the medical community pretends that people remember the "Metric System" from when we all spent a week on the Metric Unit in 4th grade, and so the medical community labels everything in units like "ml" and "cm" and "cholesterol" and other meaningless terms. The medicine's syringe had no "teaspoon" marking on it. We'd solved that by googling the question How many milliliters are in a teaspoon, and decided that since most of the websites said it's between 4.8 and 5.0, we'd go with that.
Mr F spent his time at O'Hare pounding on the glass window and trying to escape the little enclosure we'd set up using suitcases and sharing everyone's McDonald's breakfasts, alternating between eating his pieces and throwing them at Mr Bunches, who paid no attention.
The Boy sat and slumped and tried to pick fights with Middle.
Middle sat and slumped and tried to pick fights with The Boy. Their efforts failed because they were both picking fights on different subjects, and not paying any actual attention to what either was saying. It was more reflexive than anything. The Boy would claim that Middle could have caught Mr F before he got away, and Middle would not respond directly; instead, she'd point out that The Boy was making a mess.
Sweetie worried. That was her number one activity for the whole trip.
And I ate two of the three McGriddles we'd bought as part of the breakfast pack, and tried to corral Mr F using makeshift toys because I didn't want to unpack the carry-on and get his 'real' toys out. So we distracted him with straws and napkins and soda lids, all of which he would play with for a second, then throw on the floor and try to climb over the suitcases. I don't know what primal compulsion was telling him to get lost in O'Hare airport, but it was very strong.
On the plane, while Mr Bunches stayed in his coma on Sweetie's lap, Mr F tore up the emergency instruction card, tore two pages out of "Skymall," slammed the window shade down, and stuck his finger in my eye. I was fearing the worst, but then the plane took off and he dropped to sleep like someone had removed the oxygen from the cabin. He stayed asleep the rest of the way, awkwardly perched on my lap.
I spent the flight trying to look out the window and figure out what the things on the ground were. That's hard, because from the air, everything looks like... nothing. Unless you're flying over the Rocky Mountains or the Grand Canyon, ground looks like ground and trees, grass, fields of corn, houses, and factories are all more or less indistinguishable. It would have helped greatly if Illinois or Kentucky had bothered to put up huge diagrams like the Incas did, or crop circles, or maybe just a large sign next to everything they own, saying THIS IS A BARN or THIS IS A CAR DEALERSHIP or ANOTHER BARN.
In the end, based on my reckoning, most of the country between Chicago and Orlando is made up of three things: golf courses, Georgia, and truck stops. That's what everything looks like from a mile or so up in the air. But I've driven through the country, too, so I know that actually is what most of that area is made up of.
We made it to Orlando and got off the plane and the very first thing we noticed was the phenomenal humidity. I've lived through some pretty humid days, days when you sweat just walking around and everything feels damp. I've never felt Florida humidity. Stepping off the plane into the jetway alone it was terrible; it felt like stepping into a hot shower; there was that much moisture in the air.
And it showed. The Orlando Airport is not very welcoming, not least because it's dark and smells like smokers, but also because it's covered in something that appears to have come from the future and is slowly taking over the world. Most of the airport is torn apart and you can see the skeleton of the building, which includes some sort of fuzzy, green substance that I guessed was mold and The Boy thought might be insulation. But why would you need insulation in Orlando? To keep the humidity out? Because it was not working.
The futuristic/decaying impression was only heightened by the monorails we had to take to get from one terminal to the other. In that sense, Florida seemed at first more enlightened than Chicago. O'Hare makes you walk a marathon to get to your plane. Orlando gives you a train ride to move you 100 yards. I thought they were being nice until we walked outside the airport to get our rental van and realized the real reason: nobody wants to go outside in Florida. Breathing Orlando's air is difficult, at best. While it's clean, it tastes like jungle and is wet, and you sweat just breathing. Getting everything into the car left me more soaked with perspiration than many of my workouts.
It was only a short drive to the time-share we were using for the next few days. Sweetie's parents have bought umpteen time shares. A while back, they inherited some money, and began investing in time-share condos, which they've bought one after the other. I think about 75% of all time-shares are now held in my in-laws' names. They travel all the time to them, spending three weeks in Branson or a week in New Jersey. I' m not sure why they do that; Sweetie says that they don't go out and do much when they get there, and if you stay in a time-share, you still have to make your own bed and do your own cleaning and cooking (or go out to eat, as we did), so if they're staying in a time-share in New Jersey and still cleaning and cooking and not going out, their life is pretty much what it would normally be. Except they're in New Jersey, and that seems to me to be trading down.
Along the way to our time-share, we saw the 'sights' of Orlando and Kissimmee, which are: not much. I love tourist spots, and tourist stores, and gift shops, and so I was prepared to love this area of Florida, which to me exists solely as a place to hold theme parks and draw tourists. But I was disappointed in the tourist traps that Orlando/Kissimmee presented me with.
I am a consummate tourist. The off-the-beaten-path, for locals-only, classy, reserved spots in states are not for me. I like the Mystery Spots, the mini-golf courses, the fudge shops. In California, we'd seen the Drive-Through Tree and Pier 39 and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In New York, we'd bought those "I HEART NY" shirts and shopped at the NBC Store. Las Vegas was one big tour of t-shirt shops, photos with Elvis impersonators, and even touring a fake New York at the New York New York casino. If there's anything more touristy than going to Las Vegas to go to New York, I don't know what it is.
Orlando/Kissimmee featured mainly walk-in clinics. We began driving to the time share, and the first strip mall we saw featured prominently a sign for a walk-in clinic. A few miles later, there was another one, this time next to a liquor store. When we saw a third, I began to wonder just how dangerous the area might be.
I had to wonder that because there was one fact I knew about Florida before going there, and that fact was that any body of water larger than my can of Coke Zero had an alligator in it. This was reinforced not just by the yearly story CNN plays about someone who has an alligator in their kitchen, but also by the prevalence of signs warning people not to feed the alligators -- implying, I think, that the "feeding" would be done using one's own body parts.
Florida-ers, I think, take alligators for granted. The sign outside the time-share's own lake warned us not to feed the "Alligators OR Wildlife." The use of "or" seemed to me to make a distinction: Alligators are not wildlife. Or maybe it was to highlight the fact that there were alligators. Warn a tourist against fishing or swimming because there's "wildlife," and we'll all jump in and try to get pictures of it. Say there's alligators, and we'll stand ten feet away and wonder whether the leaf we see is actually an alligator drifting just below the surface waiting to charge up and eat your twins.
We had to walk by the alligator-filled lake to get to the pool, which raised the possibility that an alligator would, actually, leap out and eat the Babies! Sweetie dealt with this by making sure that the Babies! walked on the side of her that was away from the lake. She does the same thing on busy streets, placing herself between danger and the Babies! While admirable parenting, I have trouble believing that Sweetie would be able to stop either a reptile or an SUV.
So maybe, I decided, all the walk-in clinics were for people who hadn't heeded the warning signs.
Other than walk-in clinics, the area offered one prevalent kind of shop: The combination food store/liquor store/electronics store. These were buildings, usually two stories tall, with a generic sign that labeled them to be a "Grocery/Convenience Store." (There were lots of generic stores or restaurants in the area. Some restaurants said, simply, "Pizza." How lazy of an enterpreneur are you that you couldn't even use your own name for your shop? What if that trend catches on? Honey, let's go out to eat tonight. I'll take us all to Chicken.)
Absent a name, we could still gather what the store sold by looking at the giant oversized posters that covered every window and prevented us from seeing into the store itself. On the store nearest our time-share, one poster said "GROCERIES MILK EGGS". Another said "CAMERAS IPODS ELECTRONICS." A third advertised beer. And one whole window said "LAPTOPS $289." It went on like that around the building.
I got a little sad picturing people coming from around the world and flocking into stores to get eggs, beer, and a cheap laptop. Plus, that's not a souvenir. A souvenir has to say the name of a place you visited on it. Unless the laptop said "Busch Gardens," it was not a decent souvenir.
Combination stores seemed to be Orlando/Kissimmee's specialty. The electronics/grocery store was joined by a plethora of Super Walmarts, which were flanked in turn by gas stations where you could get gas, beer, pizza, and a tattoo, if you so desired. I wondered how the consumer need for that type of store had sprung up. I need to stop and get some gas in my car. I'd better pick a spot that also sells beer and pizza or no dinner tonight. But, darn it, I'm running out of time to get that tattoo! Could you get the tattoo while you pumped your gas? That's full service.
Plus, every store-- literally every store, including the World's Largest Orange (which sold fruit and t-shirts) also promised to sell you a time-share and to buy or sell your amusement park tickets at a discount. Florida's shopkeepers leave no stone unturned. Every trip to the store is one-stop shopping.
We made it to the time-share, and checked in and managed, too, to avoid a lecture on how we should buy a time-share of our own by politely declining to attend a "short" seminar that would be "short" and would be "no pressure" to buy a time-share and although it would be "short" and "no pressure" it would be informative and we could get discounts on Disney tickets by attending this "short" "no pressure" seminar. By the end of the spiel, the lady had used the words "short" and "no pressure" so often, I guessed maybe she thought those were our names. When we declined for the fourteenth time, she said, archly, "You mean, you're just going to pay full price?" and gave us a look that seemed to say Do that and you won't be able to afford even the discount laptops at the Tattoo Gas Station.
We held firm and finally made it to our room, where we used the luggage cart carry up the suitcases and the Babies!, unpacked, and then piled back into the minivan to visit our first thrilling Florida destination: The Super Wal-Mart.
You can only bring so many diapers onto the plane, after all, and we'd gone through most of ours.
The Super Wal-Mart would turn out to be our most visited spot over the next four days. I went there four times, and Sweetie went there once, although to be fair Sweetie's trip was made only to get the stuff I had been supposed to buy but had screwed up on.
While going to the Super Wal-Mart, I also called my brother, who lives in Tampa. I'll call him "Matt" (his real name). We were planning on squeezing in a visit to Matt's house, because I hadn't seen him in 8 years and because we were in a closer geographical location than usual.
That's how people think, you know. I've learned it. We have relatives in Milwaukee, California, and Florida, and if I venture into some undefined radius of their homes, I'm expected to stop in. After getting back from an all-day seminar in Milwaukee, I called my dad, who lives there, to talk to him.
"
I was at a seminar in Milwaukee today," I said, when he asked why I was home late from work."You should have stopped in," he said.
"It's my anniversary," I told him, which was true, but it didn't seem to mollify him.
When we went to California to visit Los Angeles, we had to begin our trip to Los Angeles by staying in Oakland with Sweetie's dad for a few days, and then go visit my sister in Northern California for another day, the thinking being that if we're in the state, we should just visit them, but that kind of logic doesn't really hold with California, which takes up about half the landmass of the US and which takes 14 hours to drive through. Still, we did it, and now that we were in Florida and only 87 miles from Matt, we were expected to visit.
So I called him, and told him our plans for the next few days, and he gave me some advice. First, he said, when it starts to rain, wait it out. He claimed the rain (which was going on at that moment) only lasts about an hour. I registered that and stored it away to use on the kids if it kept raining, because it could be useful in forcing them to keep doing something they don't want to do, like walking in the rain. When "Come on, we're on vacation, let's tough it out" stopped working, I could switch to "Matt says it only lasts an hour."
Matt also suggested we visit a beach, and I asked him about sharks. Specifically, I said "Are there sharks at that beach?"
To which he replied: "The sharks aren't going to bite you."
I noticed that he had tried not to answer my question, but had actually answered it quite well. I also thought he seemed a little casual about maneating sharks. But maybe living with alligators surrounding you has that effect.
After Super Wal-Mart, we drove around a little more, looking at the liquor stores, laptop shops, and walk-in clinics, until, exhausted, we went back to the timeshare to fall asleep. The Boy and I spent a little time at the pool, where we were treated to the sounds of karaoke coming from the bar next to the pool. (To the guy who sang Bohemian Rhapsody, which I did not know you could sing at karaoke: I admire your courage. Also: Pick a key and go with it Just one key. If you ever hear anyone, including me, trying to sing a Queen song, especially that Queen song, you come away with a new appreciation for just how talented Freddy Mercury was, and just how talented we are not.)
That night, with the older kids in their room and the Babies! on their air mattresses at the foot of our bed, Sweetie dozed off, but I was too excited at being on vacation, so I distracted myself by eating the third McGriddle which had been in the backpack all day, rationalizing that by telling myself (1) It should not go to waste, (2) It appeared to still be fresh, and (3) I'm on vacation. I can justify anything by telling myself I'm on vacation. It's kind of scary, actually. If someone came up to me and asked me to let them practice some elective surgery, and then pointed out that I was on vacation, I'd be tempted to undergo the procedure.
I also tried to doze off by watching local news with the sound muted. That might sound boring, but in Orlando, it's not.
Our local news, in Wisconsin, is things like property taxes and road construction. Local news in Orlando involves an alarming number of arrests and murders and fires started by lightning and shots of police tape or mug shots, each with heading that probably make sense if you can hear the reporter, but which are like haikus with the sound off. Under a picture of a haggard looking woman that might be a mug shot: Stolen. Was she stolen? Why not show a picture of what she stole, if that's what happened? A live scene of police tape and flashing lights over a reporter's shoulder might have a banner saying Highway 192 Threat. We had driven in on Highway 192; if only I'd known! A family crying, a courtroom scene, and a guy in a suit talking were followed by the anchor's face and the heading "Sex Scandal." With that one, I saw a second reason for the prevalance of walk-in clinics, and fell asleep wondering if the Highway 192 threat was stolen alligators, and how they might fit into the sex scandal.
Tomorrow: Sea World, and Matt's A Liar (But [spoiler alert] Not About The Sharks!)
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1 comment:
Best series of posts ever. I can't wait to read more.
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