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This was the main event of this trip – a day at Universal Studios. It went well. Very hot with an afternoon shower, but many of the attractions are indoors so the shower didn’t really affect us.
First let me say that a day at Universal is not cheap. The tickets – even with the “Florida resident” discount, were $145 per person. Then they get you for parking, too – $26. At those prices you damn well better have a great time.
The only pleasant surprise, financially, was the food. The prices at the snack kiosks and restaurants in the park were suprisingly reasonable. We had lunch at an Irish pub.
A scene from the E.T. ride
Our goal was to get to as many of the adult “rides” as possible. There were about 10 in all, if you include “E.T.” (which is listed as a kiddie ride but is enjoyable for adults too).
Tony and Lili went on the “Hollywood Rip Ride Rocket” roller coaster, which they both liked (Lili rated it as the best ride at Universal) while I went on the “Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon”, a 3D virtual ride which nearly made me vomit (I had to close my eyes). I would rate that as the worst ride at Universal. Tony and Lili later went on the “Fast and Furious – Supercharged” ride, another 3D virtual experience (ok, but nothing special) while I endured a 70-minute wait to get on the “Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts” ride, a combo roller coaster and 3D ride that I thought was spectacular. I also loved Diagon Alley with the fire-breathing dragon atop the Gringott’s Bank.
We all went on the “E.T.” ride (fun and gentle), the “Despicable Me Minion Maybem” ride (the best virtual ride in the park) and the “Men in Black Alien Attack” ride, a combo ride and arcade shooting gallery (we didn’t shoot very well). We didn’t make it to “Transformers The Ride 3D” or “Revenge of the Mummy”, both of which are supposed to be quite good but the lines were very long. We walked through Krustyland but didn’t go on “The Simpson’s Ride.”
Hollywood Rip Ride roller coaster
Fire-breathing dragon
Krustyland
We were pretty tired by the time we left at 6pm. A fun day.
On the evening of Day 1, my son and I went around and around about how to best spend Days 2 and 3. He was in favor of going to Busch Gardens in Tampa; I thought that would be too tiring and expensive – I preferred Homasassa Springs Wildlife State Park which I thought would be more low-key. But both were over an hour away so we finally compromised on Silver Springs State Park which was only a 15-minute drive.
Kayaking on the Silver River
I was a bit disappointed. The main attraction of the park is the glass-bottomed boats (and, in fact, the 1966 movie The Glass Bottom Boat was filmed here). The 30-minute tour was interesting but the rest of the park was basically walking trails. You can rent kayaks here and that might have been nice, but we didn’t opt for that as none of us had even kayaked before. Most surprising was that the shops were all closed for renovation and the only food in the park was a lonely food truck.
Well, we wanted low-key.
Crystal clear water
Aboard the glass-bottom boat
Lili on the walk
Tony, alligator and Lili
Tony sniffing a roll
Gopher tortoise sunning
Because we ate little (me) or nothing (Tony and Lili) at the park, we dined out at Texas Roadhouse. The meal was forgettable except for the Bread Incident. One of the reasons we went to Texas Roadhouse was that Lili really likes their bread. But on this occasion she broke a biscuit, smelled it and tossed it back. She said it “smelled like alcohol”. Now you can ask how a 15-year-old can identify the smell of alcohol, but we won’t go there. Both Tony and I smelled the roll and agreed that it did smell like alcohol. I then ate some of it and it tasted fine, but Tony complained to the waitress (who also concurred on the alcohol smell). She went to the kitchen and was told that that is the smell of the yeast.
Plausible since the roll tasted fine.
Day 3 was a do-nothing day. Lili spent the day playing video games with remote friends and, sometimes, with her father. I blogged and read. I did sneak out once to find the resident gopher tortoise sunning himself.
My older son, Anthony, has been begging me for years to bring his daughter, Liliani, to Florida to visit him (she lives in MA with her mother). But timing, finances and the pandemic have made that difficult. As an added problem, Liliani, who is 15 now, had never flown before and was not comfortable with the idea of traveling alone. As long as I was in Florida, accompanying her to Florida would have meant flying to Massachusetts, getting her on a flight back to Florida, then reversing the trip – two round trips for me and one for her.
But I am in Massachusetts this summer. And the thought of sharing a first plane ride with her was pretty appealing. Plus she wanted to have a day at Universal Studios Orlando, which is my favorite theme park. So, with careful planning, I realized that it would be possible to fit a 5-day trip to Florida (3 days there plus 2 travel days) into the end of my stay in Massachusetts, before I headed out on the TS7.
So on Thursday this week I drove my battle-scarred truck (now sporting two new tires on the right rear and driving very smoothly) an hour to Worcester to pick her up, then drove back to Orange, packed up Rusty’s stuff, drove him to Uncle Rays cabin in New Salem, dropped him off, returned to the RV, finished packing then drove to a Motel 6 near Bradley International Airport near Hartford CT for an overnight before our 7:45am United Airlines flight. I was not originally planning on a night in a hotel, but the blowout disaster on Wednesday rattled my faith in the truck. I figured a few bucks spent on a hotel room would buy a lot of peace of mind.
We got up at 5:45am and were out the door by 6:30am. The long-term lot where I had planned to leave the truck was full, so I had to drive to the alternate lot – more expensive but only slightly so ($8 per day instead of $6) and WAY cheaper than the long-term lot at Logan Airport in Boston ($15 per day or more). We had the bag checked and were in the security line by 6:45am.
Ready for her first flight
Where we encountered the world’s slowest TSA employee. We were only about 10th in line, but it took a full 20 minutes to clear security – a flow rate of 1/2 person per minute. We got to the gate just as boarding commenced, with no time to get coffee. But I got a cup of United Airlines coffee on the first flight – Hartford CT to Washington DC (Dulles). Not great coffee but it kept me from ripping someone’s throat out.
We had an hour layover at Dulles and we used the time to grab some pretzels and drinks. Yeah, pretzels for lunch. The second flight was a bit bumpy but got us to Ft Myers safely by 1pm. We then took a taxi to my home base, where the roads were being sealcoated. I had already arranged to have a staff person move my Toyota to a location where I could get it (just my luck – the 5-day sealcoating schedule had my site inaccessible on the one day when I needed to access it). We were in the car and on the road to Ocala by 2:30pm and arrived in Ocala at 5:45pm – exactly 12 hours after our alarm went off in the morning.
A LONG day of travel. Lili slept in the car. I didn’t.
Tony and Lili were very happy to see each other. Their smiles made it all worthwhile.
I used my last full day in Massachusetts to make a pilgrimage to Jett’s grave in Rockport MA. I wanted to see how her engraved headstone looked (pretty good, I think) and to say all the things that, in retrospect, I should have said while she was alive. Like “thank you for a wonderful life together.”
I took Rusty and let him see the grave, against cemetery rules. He was unimpressed.
Clam strip lunch
I was also hoping to get some candy at Tuck’s. But it is peak tourist season in Rockport and my truck is huge, so it quickly became apparent that I would be unable to park anywhere near the store. My consolation prize was a clam strip lunch at Woodman’s of Essex, one of the finest fried seafood places in New England. I did take-out so that Rusty wouldn’t be alone in the truck. I enjoyed the feast very much.
To that point it had been a fine day. However, that all changed as I was about to exit I-95 in Waltham to make a quick stop at Costco (yes, it is possible to make a quick stop at Costco). BLAM! My right rear outer tire exploded. To call is a “blowout” would be understating the event. The tire exploded with such force that it took out most of the truck’s right rear quarter-panel. Serious damage – probably over $2,000. But because the truck has dual rear wheels, I didn’t even have to get a tow – I just drove the truck 30 miles to my local tire dealer and made an appointment to replace the tire the next day.
The blowout damage
I checked with a GMC dealer on how readily available this part would be. I figured that it might be difficult finding such a large part for a 17-year-old truck. And I was right – there is precisely one part available in the US and it is in Nebraska. There are other options to be investigated (e.g., after-market parts or junk parts) but it is pretty clear that this will not be a quick fix.
What caused this catastrophic tire failure? My first thought was that my tire pressure gauge was faulty and I had over-inflated the tire. But after buying a new gauge I found that the pressures in the remaining tires were all exactly what I wanted. Was the tire worn? It had over 40,000 miles but still had plenty of tread – it would have passed inspection. And even worn tires are not supposed to explode.
So my current theory is that it was a bad tire. It was a Goodyear Wrangler which has a sad history of exploding. The good news? I wasn’t standing next to it when it blew up. I wasn’t hauling an 8-ton fifth wheel. I wasn’t trying to make a 7:45am flight (which is what I will be doing tomorrow). And I was in the right-hand lane so the flying shrapnel didn’t damage any other vehicles or people. And I don’t think it will delay the TS7.
I think I have criticized Scottoline before as being too “girly” – spending a lot of time and verbiage on feminine things. That may be a feature for some, but not for a macho man like me. In this book, in which Mary DeNunzio is preparing for a second marriage, an entire chapter is devoted to her dress fitting. Not exactly “must read” prose for those of us with testosterone.
I have another complaint about this particular book: it sometimes reads like a primer on family law. Necessary, perhaps, as this is a mystery involving child abuse and placement, but not the kind of stuff that normally makes me want to not put the book down.
Yet I didn’t want to put the book down. I think that says a lot about Scottoline’s skill as an author. She manages to make even the dry stuff compelling.
Quick synopsis: Mary is engaged by Edward O’Brien, the paternal grandfather of 10-year-old Patrick O’Brien, a dyslexic student who is unable to read and has been sued by a teacher’s aide for allegedly attacking him with a scissors. Mary gets Patrick’s side of the story, which is that the aide has been verbally and physically abusing him and, in fact, struck him in the face (with a bruise to back him up). Patrick denies attacking the aide. Mary quickly gets Patrick interviewed by a child abuse social worker who believes Patrick’s side and also lines up private schooling to address his dyslexia. Everything is going well until…
Edward dies in his sleep that very night. Mary discovers the dead Edward, who has soiled the sheets. She does all the right things – calling the police, finding the will, calling the executor. She even washes the sheets so that Patrick won’t notice the mess. All very sad. Mary, who has quickly bonded with the now-orphaned Patrick, decides to become his legal guardian (without consulting her fiancée!). She goes to the guardianship hearing expecting to get custody of Patrick, but…
It is revealed in the hearing that the police are investigating Patrick for suspicion of murder. And are investigating Mary as a possible accomplice. Edward’s cause of death was an insulin overdose (he was diabetic) and both Patrick’s and Mary’s fingerprints are found on the fatal syringe.
Suddenly the “simple” civil lawsuit has become a criminal case, with Mary in legal jeopardy.
It is a quick read. It kept me interested. That outweighs the heavy “girl” orientation.
Partly due to Jett’s illness and partly due to the pandemic, I had not golfed since the summer of 2019 – 2 years! That golf fast came to an end a couple of days ago with a round that I played with college friend Roger, his wife Nancy and their son Rigel. I was terrible, of course, no surprise there. But I did make a handful of really nice shots – enough to convince me that I could be really good if only I played more.
Such is the seduction of the game of golf.
This turned out to be a physical ordeal. Due to the wet July weather, the course was very soggy (I can blame the conditions for my poor score). So soggy that we decided to walk rather than get a golf cart that would just get bogged down in the mud. So I carried my heavy golf bag over 6,000 yards (more than 3 miles) in temperate (high 70s) but very humid conditions. By the time I got back to the RV I was so exhausted that I sat for an hour and did nothing but drink lemonade.
Those of you who have been paying attention know that David Benjamin is a high-school-buddy-cum-author who has mentioned me by name or included me as a character in several of his books. That flatters me, of course, but doesn’t shade my critical eye. I think I can be objective as a reviewer of literature.
This one is pretty darn good even though I am not in this one. Benjamin penned the perfect one-line summary for Black Dragon in his Chapter 27 title: “Blood and Guts. Tits and Ass.” This story has plenty of all of that, nicely packaged in a whimsical and amusing (it had me laughing out loud at times) narrative that proceeds at a brisk pace. This is a fun read that has “movie script” written all over it. Maybe it is because I just finished watching the Bourne movies, but I could easily see Matt Damon playing the part of Steve Knight, the intrepid reporter for the US Journal in Tokyo who unwittingly finds himself, like Forrest Gump, present at historical events that rock Japan.
I won’t be giving away too much to tell you that the book opens with a terrorist attack – a bombing at a right-wing political rally – that kills his long-time Japanese assistant, Kuniko Nishimura. Blood and guts. His new assistant is Kuniko’s daughter, Mie, a beautiful young recent college grad. Tits and ass.
The culprits behind the bombing – and other violent acts that follow in quick succession – belong to the Black Dragon Society, a nationalist cult determined to restore Japan to what it believes is Japan’s proper place in the world. However, a lot of blood is spilled – both in large-scale mass murder events and quiet assassinations – before the culpability of the Black Dragon Society becomes known, largely due to the investigative skills of Steve and Mie, along with some of their journalist buddies.
There are a lot of characters in this book. The casting director for this movie is going to be employing a lot of American and Japanese actors. Maybe an Australian, too. Benjamin helps out with a list of characters at the beginning. Also a lexicon of Japanese terms at the back. Both are very helpful.
But this is more than an action/adventure/mystery story; it is also a primer on Japanese culture and politics. Only a foreigner who has been immersed in Japanese society and has studied the culture and politics could have written this book. Benjamin is just such a person. He knows whereof he speaks. I felt, after finishing the book, that I know much more about Japan. This book is both educational and entertaining.
My only complaint is that the final terrorist attack is so complex, involves so many characters and is so highly dependent on the layout of the grounds surrounding the Imperial Palace that a map would have been helpful.
But that is a small stain on an otherwise perfect kimono of a book.
If you have been paying attention, you already know that I am cutting my summer in New England short by a month and am using those 30 days to travel to Wisconsin, south along the Mississippi River (more or less), then east and south to Ft Myers. I still plan to arrive in Ft Myers before the middle of October. Because this trip will be 60 days and will take a rather meandering route, it will be the third-longest trip I have made with the RV. And it will be a major test for my 17-year-old GMC truck.
As currently planned (and these plans are still pretty fluid), the trip will be 60 nights over 24 hops and 4,510 tow miles. The major highlights are Madison WI (to visit old friends and family in the town where I was born and raised) and Vicksburg MS (where I can see a Civil War battlefield that has eluded me for so long). The route will go through southern Ohio, which I have barely touched in my prior travels, and south along the Mississippi River (with a detour to Omaha which is, inexplicably, one of my favorite cities in the US). It is a route picked mostly to see parts of the country that I have not seen much, without any particular plan (so far) as to what I will see when I get there. It may be more seat-of-the-pants than some of my previous trips, but that is more acceptable now, as a solo traveler, than when Jett was with me.
So, without a lot of further explanation, here is the TS7 route:
TS7 segment 1TS7 segment 2TS7 segment 3
I guess I should say something about the bizarre, serpentine route of the first segment. That is due to (1) my commitment to attend the Escapees Chapter 3 rally in Bangor ME and (2) my commitment to play as many games of softball as possible. So the TS7 will begin with a trip to Bangor to attend the rally, followed by a few more days in Maine to visit some cemeteries to see if I can track down some of Jett’s ancestors, then 3 days in Swanzey NH, just a few miles north of my starting point in Orange MA. That location allows me to make one last, very long, trip to a softball game – 2 hours each way! Now THAT, my friends, is commitment!
The TS7 will be preceded by a quick, 4-day trip to Florida with my granddaughter to see her father for the first time in over 2 years and to visit Universal Studios. I am looking forward to accompanying her on her first airplane trip ever(!) and seeing Universal through the eyes of a 15-year-old. But that week is going to be simply crazy. More on this trip later.
Yesterday was our first day all month without rain.
Almost.
The day was completely dry until 11pm when the skies opened up and rain fell in torrents. And, of course, the rain continued into the night. So we now have 21 straight days with measurable rain in the first 21 days of July.
Flooding everywhere. Roads are getting washed out. In what should be one of the driest months of the year.
If you have been reading my blog you know that I am not exactly thrilled with my summer home at Quabbin Pines RV Resort in Orange MA. If you follow the link today you will find an “under construction” website, which is totally appropriate because the campground itself is “under construction.” I previously reported that when I arrived on May 11 I was given a “temporary site” with no sewer hookup, electricity provided via an extension cord run from the office (20 amps) and water provided via a splitter off the water supply at the adjacent owner’s RV site. Since May 11 a sewer hookup was installed (after 26 days!) but the electric and water are still very temporary.
The impact of the water supply – other than necessitating the purchase of a 50′ hose that I will not need when I leave – is low water pressure. The main bathroom sink produces barely a dribble. But that is a minor problem as the shower pressure, though low, is adequate. The impact of the 20A electic service is more severe. I can run just one of the following at any point in time:
The A/C (and just one of the two air conditioners that I have).
The hot water heater.
The microwave.
The coffee maker.
Fortunately I don’t need a hair dryer or that would be on the list as well.
Installing electric service last week
Also, as you can see in the photo at the top, the site is very sandy, thanks to the recent work on installing permanent electric service. Yes, he is making progress on that. But I have no expectation that the service will be installed and operational in the next month. In the meantime, a lot of sand is being tracked into my RV.
There is also no cable TV and no over-the-air reception. I have been without TV for over 2 months now. The wifi works and I can stream Netflix using that – or my own router, until the data plan limit is reached – but no network TV. I have been watching a lot of Mission: Impossible and movie DVDs.
So it is a pretty miserable “temporary” existence. Which is why I am leaving a month early. The final negotiated price (because there are no published prices), for 3 months, is $1,550. Less than I would have paid at a real campground, but more than this one is worth in its current state.
I am trying to think of the single adjective that best describes this place. The one that comes to mind most readily is “baffling”. Baffling because the owner could have made a shit-ton (a term I picked up from Jett’s son) of money this summer if he had been ready for business with utilities installed at all sites. He has owned/leased the campground for 2 years and yet is just now, in the middle of the peak RV season, beginning to install electric service. Baffling. The other utilities are not much better: 12 sites have sewer, 10 sites have water, 1 site (the owner’s) has electric – and even that is not permanent. That is out of approximately 100 sites on the property.
The unfinished rec center
He did one thing that I regard as brilliant: he took the logs from the trees that he cut down to make the new sites and milled them into lumber. He claims to have milled over 35,000 board-feet of lumber, probably saving himself over $50,000 in lumber costs. But none of the new structures – the bathhouse, the rec center or the pavilion – are completed. And no work has been done on any of them in the past 2 months. Baffling.
The goats
He did complete, more-or-less, the swimming pool (more-or-less because I don’t believe the fence around it is legal). He also has a completed goat pen with 8 adult goats and 2 newborn kids. But that just saps his time and money. Why was getting goats a priority? Baffling.
Fire truck
The campground has a fire truck, too, presumably to give rides to children. But, again, why was that a priority? Baffling.
But the place does have potential. The sites are large, the roads are wide and most sites have a lot of shade (which would be great if the sun ever came out). There is a pond which could be stocked for catch-and-release fishing. So finish the sites, finish the bathhouse and rec center and add some activities and this campground could do very well. But the owner does not seem to be working with any sense of urgency, so I am not optimistic that the campground will be ready at the start of the 2022 season.
21 and counting
Yesterday was our first day all month without rain.
Almost.
The day was completely dry until 11pm when the skies opened up and rain fell in torrents. And, of course, the rain continued into the night. So we now have 21 straight days with measurable rain in the first 21 days of July.
Flooding everywhere. Roads are getting washed out. In what should be one of the driest months of the year.
Miserable.