I have often felt that good weather follows me around when I travel — after all, when I visited Dan in Vancouver, I got a whole glorious February week of sunshine and clear skies — nary a raincloud in sight! Eerie, really. Following the pattern, The Boy and I have been spending this week with my parents in Florida and have been rewarded with beautifully sunny weather without the dreaded mugginess, or even those afternoon storms to clear the air. Fortuitous!
I hadn’t dared to hope that we might actually get to watch Endeavour‘s launch while we were here — after all, the original launch date was April 29th! — but then, it happened! The launch was delayed until May 16th, the morning of which we made a sleepy drive out to the coast to watch history. (Ahem, due to us getting on the road a little later than planned, we didn’t actually make it to the coast for the launch. We made it to a boat ramp off the freeway, where a number of folk had parked, cameras at the ready, to watch. It was still pretty amazing!)
The Boy, despite my bumping his elbow, took a video with his shiny new phone (which I’m still trying to figure out how to change the format of), while I stuck to my trusty, heavy-ass camera.
After that, we kept going (east) coastwards, and stopped at a McDonald’s for a snack. Disgusting? Yes. Totally exciting for me? YES! People, I haven’t been inside a McDonald’s before 10:30am in ages. It was so gratifying to finally be able to order a hash brown!
…and yes, I kind of regretted it after I’d eaten it. That’s usually how those things work out.
Anyway, so after that, we drove south a bit to Cocoa Beach, where we splashed around in the (cold!) water, and I chased these cute little birds (terns? pipers? what are they?) around taking pictures.
That was pretty much it for Monday. The following day, The Boy and I decided to play tourist and hit up one of the theme parks. I am proud to report that we did not get sunburnt (ahem, until Wednesday).
Sadly, Wednesday saw us lazing around in the pool and somehow (how?!) I missed slapping sunscreen on my shoulders. So in 2011, after at least 12 years of unbroken pallor and conscientious slathering of sunscreen, yours truly is sporting a (mild) sunburn.
Still, if that’s the worst I’m complaining about, clearly our week is going well! How about you all?
I think they’re sandpipers – but I’m not certain.
Did you eat rock shrimp? Tell me you ate rock shrimp. Or BBQ. Or both. I’m happy that you got to see the launch! I remember the one for Phoenix being really exciting even if it was at 4am and somehow still full of mosquitoes.
Also – I love the shark picture. :)
Yay! When we showed my mom, do you know the first thing she said was “Why is your head *inside* Jaws? Now how are we supposed to know who the picture is of?!” I’m glad someone sees things the way I do : )
So, uh, no. No rock shrimp, no cream gravy ‘n’ biscuits, no baaaaaah-bq. In my defense, however, I was in Orlando two (or three?) weeks ago for work and I had plenty of southern deliciousness then. We’ve stuck with fairly standard fare during our stay here (including some home-grilled steak? does that count?). Also: what is rock shrimp?
We laughed when we saw on the NASA site that they were asking guests for the Endeavour launch to “please arrive 7 hours prior to the scheduled launch time”. Ouch!
Rock shrimp is shrimp that is so delicious that I nearly forswore my religious devotion to pie. It is that good. Really. I first tried it in a dive bar somewhere in Cocoa Beach, I think – the ceiling fan blades were those large hand-fans shaped like spades. They were broiled or maybe grilled. I have never looked back.
No BISCUITS?! *shock*
Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a shuttle launch. We arrived 3-4 hours early each time, but we got thunderstormed out each time.