I have a love-hate relationship with Florida. On the one hand, the “sunshine state”, as they call it, seems to be in the direct path of the Death Star’s wrath. The climate is at best confusing and at worst hostile to someone like me, who am from the Northwest. On the other, everything about Florida says fun and vacation. (And I don’t just mean the garish touristy attractions or the scores of family vacation tee-shirted groups waddling around as if they were the first ones to come up with the idea.) I don’t need to list all the things that are wrong with Florida. Florida does an excellent job of that on its own, every time Florida Man does something newsworthy or Ron DeSantis opens that colostomy hole he calls a mouth. The first time I vacationed here in 2016, I decided that I loved the Everglades and the alligators and the locals and only really had a problem with the tourists, retired white people, and big cities like Miami. The Kennedy Space Center was also rad, and Universal Studios and Orlando from my current trip are a heap of fun.
But the question remains: How did a bunch of corporate/government types in black suits decide that this sweltering oven was the best location for a space agency or a massive theme park? How did sensible people decide that Phoenix was a place suitable for human habitation, unless they had been wandering through the desert in the winter? It’s baffling that people live anywhere other than the Northwest or Hawaii or a select few other places in the world with blessed weather. I could never live on the Faroe Islands. But that’s just me. Somehow Florida lives up to every red, sunburnt American’s expectations of Eden.
This was a rebooking of a trip we’d planned in 2020, before Covid happened. The original trip was supposed to be to both Disney World and Universal. I decided to do only Universal when I rebooked, because I’d read some not-very-flattering things about Disney on Reddit, like how their prices were higher and their shit wasn’t as well organized since Covid. I figured I’ll be able to do Disney in the future, when I’m closer to their target age than I am now. But Universal was great. Three days, two parks seemed just the right amount of time to do everything we wanted to do at our own pace while not spending too much time in Florida’s horrendous sun. My brother backed out of the trip last minute, because he’s got issues, so it was just my parents and me. We didn’t do any big rollercoasters until the last day, because I had parents to worry about. My dad somehow wanted to prove that he’d still got it, so he insisted in going on the Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit with me. He had his eyes closed the entire time, so not sure how much he got to experience. It was honestly not my favorite rollercoaster. It was insane, to be sure, but I enjoyed the one at Six Flags more. This one felt like trying to deep-throat an impressively large dick. (I don’t get the fascination with those either.) The 3D/4D rides were great, especially Escape from Gringott’s, which we did twice. That one was my parents’ favorite as well.
Also did the Titanic Artifacts Museum on the last day, which was way cool. The company that manages it (RMS Titanic Inc.) apparently has sole salvage rights to artifacts brought up from the wreckage (as opposed to stuff handed down through survirors’ families or flotsam that had been recovered after the sinking). I’ve seen older shit, but for some reason seeing clothes and shoes and personal effects that belonged to passengers on the Titanic felt more surreal than other times I’ve been to a museum. Maybe because it’s easier to see yourself in the shoes of an ordinary person on the Titanic (no pun intended) than as an Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh. My mom thought the exhibit was macabre, especially the way they handed out boarding passes with actual passengers’ names at the start, and made you feel like you were those ill-fated passengers as they took you around the museum. I enjoyed it. Though I’m not superstitious, I am feeling slightly uneasy at the thought of bringing my Titanic boarding pass back with me on my flight home. Perhaps I should have saved this post until after I got back.
I brought my running clothes and shoes with me on this trip, because I am that person. I wanted to add more variety to my Strava profile, which I successfully managed to do. My run started off great. I’ve always liked warmer weather for running, because I feel like my muscles warm up better. I made the mistake of underestimating Florida, however, and by the end of mile 2 I was starting to feel lightheaded and distinctly as though I would pass out from dehydration. I couldn’t find a place to buy Gatorade or Vitamin Water anywhere close by (sucks when it’s just hotels as far as the eye can see), so I hobbled back to our Airbnb, hoping to buy one at the vending machine when I got there, only to discover that there was no vending machine. I’m glad I didn’t face plant on the sidewalk or find some other way to ruin the vacation.
One of our Uber drivers this weekend deserves special mention. We had hardly got into his car when he started talking about how he used to be a Corporate VP and decided that he wanted to travel and do something with his life that he enjoyed, so he sold his house and California and moved his family into an RV and started driving cross-country, and was now in Florida. He brought up being a Corporate VP a second time, in case we’d missed it the first time. My mom said he should write a book, and get this: He says, “I did.” Apparently his worthy opus is called Stuck in Yesterday and comes out a week from (what was then) “yesterday” (which would make it April 22). And that wasn’t even his first book: He had written another book three months before called Life Lessons from a Lyft Driver or some such. This was the natural cumulation of his years of being a superstar Corporate VP in consulting. “Look me up,” he said. “My name is Richard Hughes Finley.” When we got out of the car, we all agreed that was a bunch of bullshit, corroborated by the fact that neither his name nor the names of either of his great publications (in one case, future publication) turned up so much as a whiff on Google. On the off chance his story ends up being true, I am prepared to be pleasantly surprised and take back everything I’ve said.
On an unrelated note, I am officially out on social media and in real life, so might as well be out on my personal blog as well. It seems that years of writing and reading yaoi fan fiction hadn’t tipped anyone off, including myself, that I wasn’t traveling the beaten path the whole time. It was only when I fell in love with Speedy (aka Enrique) at Georgia Tech in 2015 that I was forced to admit to myself what in hindsight I should have known as early as 2008, when I started writing fan fiction and this blog. It’s curious that one as introspective and self-aware as I should have been blind for so long to something so fundamental. I’m not used to writing about extremely private things, so I’m going to end this entry abruptly now.
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