Florida Is A Long Damn Way From Alabama.

“At least it is, if you live in Huntsville and vacation in Cape Canaveral.


I'm back.


I survived, and so did everyone else.

Things learned:

1) My sister-in-law is wackier than I thought.

2) The beach can be nice.

3) Crabs can pinch your foot really hard.

4) It is possible to travel for 14 hours in a vehicle with your children and not strangle them.

5) There are far, far too many Cracker Barrels along I75 in Georgia.

6) Whiskey is a lot cheaper in Florida.

7) My wife is better looking than about 95% of all women on the beach in Cape Canaveral.

8) Jack hammers and concrete slab condo buildings do not mix.

9) My son can get a tan.

10) It is fun to sit out in front of a Hampton Inn and watch people be told there's no more room in the inn.


That's enough for now. A more complete report when the fog clears.”

“Glad ya made it back OK and you didn't kill your family.”

“7) My wife is better looking than about 95% of all women on the beach in Cape Canaveral.

Too bad Jan doesn't read this stuff. You could get some extra brownie points with that one... ;-)

Glad y'all had a good time. Welcome back.”

“It is possible to travel for 14 hours in a vehicle with your children and not strangle them.

I'll put that theory to a test next week.”

“I thought about you while traveling back and forth on vacation. I wondered how the Bitpusher Family Vacation was getting on! Glad you had fun & a safe trip. I love to visit Florida but the mountains look too good to my eyes to ever live where I can't see them.”

“Thanks for all the good wishes everyone.

I'm very thankful we had a safe trip. We passed a horrendous accident on I-10 in Florida. Fortunately my kids were too busy playing to notice the gruesome details, but I told them to close their eyes anyway until we passed it. It was a bad one.

Glad you made it back safe too, danababy!”

“At church today I found out that one family from among our membership is at Ft. Walton Beach and their 3 yr old has a life threatening illness. They are dealing with this alone. My prayers are with them for Connors recovery. How frightening it must be for them.”

“"My wife is better looking than about 95% of all women on the beach in Cape Canaveral."

dude, youre supposed to lie and say 100%, just in case shes reading this. of course, even that would get you in trouble....."so, you were checking out all the pretty girls on the beach, were you?"”

“She doesn't read this stuff, but I did tell her what I said. She just thinks I'm buttering her up, which is true. Hopefully it'll work.”

“Glad you had a good time and had a safe trip. I am looking forward to the full trip report. How many shells and pebbles did you have to lug home?”

“lol, tango, just a couple of pounds. I told my daughter she could make a necklace out of shells, and she went berserk.”

“Florida Beach Trip Report

July 26-August 2

Saturday, July 26

My family and I rose early and went over to my brother's in-laws' house to rendezvous with them. We ate breakfast, and loaded up in our vans. My wife and sister-in-law took my son, Walter, and my nephew, Cameron, in my brother's van, and my brother and I took my daughter, Frances, in my van. We left only a little late, at about 9:15AM. Our destination for the evening was Adel, GA, where we would spend the night at a hotel before continuing. After about 9 hours on the road, we pulled into the hotel and checked into our rooms. We rested a bit, then everyone but me went down to the hotel pool for a swim. I struck out in search of beer.

I suppose other people would have driven, but I chose to walk. I walked to the nearest truck stop, and went into the convenience store section. A quick look in the cooler struck fear in my heart.

There was no beer.

Trembling, I walked to the counter and asked the attendant (a gentleman of Middle Eastern or East Indian extraction) if this was a dry county. After repeating my question, he alleviated my fears by answering no, but that they didn't carry beer at this store. He directed me to a BP station a little closer to the Interstate, and also indicated that his family owned that store as well. I thanked him, and left to hike down the road towards my goal.

I entered the BP station and walked to the back. There, in 24 oz. bottles, was my goal: beer. I quickly selected a bottle of Heineken and a bag of Sour Cream and Onion flavored potato chips, purchased them, and walked back to the hotel. My family was still in the pool, so I showed my brother my catch, and indicated that I would be willing to share it with him. I went back up to my room, and iced down the beer so that it would not warm at all.

After waiting a few minutes for my brother, I opened the beer, poured a small cup of it and enjoyed as I watched TV. After a bit, my family came back from swimming, and my brother suggested we go down and enjoy a cigar and the beer. We selected a couple of small Montecristos, and took the beer down to the swimming pool, where we planning to enjoy the cigars.

The pool area was too crowded however, so we had to look around for another place to smoke. There was a small bench in front of the hotel with an ashtray next to it. However, there was, and I'm not kidding, a one-armed grandmother sitting on the bench and smoking a cigarette. There was no other place outside, so we were forced to wait. We went inside and waited.

I tell you, Granny sure stretch a cigarette break. After about twenty minutes waiting, she came in, and we went out front and lit up our stogies. This was when the real fun began. We had already learned that the hotel was completely full. There was no "No Vacancies" sign on this hotel, so people continued to drive up to the hotel and ask for room, only to be turned away if they didn't have a reservation. We were very glad that we had thought to make reservations for this evening. I-75 through Georgia is one of the main north-south corridors, probably the one that people traveling from the Midwest to Florida use the most.

We made a game of it, predicting who did and didn't have reservations. It was pretty simple, older people in more expensive cars tended to have reservations, younger people in less expensive cars (blasting ghetto rap or C&W) tended not to. We finished our cigars and went upstairs to rest for the next day of travel.”

“LOL @ bit!

thanked him, and left to hike down the road towards my goal.
OMG hiking to a road...”

“So your sister-in-law is wackier than you thought, eh? In a good way, I hope. I have a couple of brothers-in-law that are pretty wacky. They make family get togethers slightly bearable. They are not, however, as wacky as my Dad who would definitely beg to differ with you on that Cracker Barrel assertion. He's obsessed. You didn't happen to wander into the CB gift shop and score a Backquackers T-shirt did you? They're a hoot.

Anywho, glad you enjoyed your Bitpusher Family Vacation after all.

Next installment, please!”

“Aha, but this was not the DisneyHell trip!


That little piece of purgatory is still coming.

Since I didn't go into it in the trip report, I'll go over it now: My sister-in-law exhibits almost every feature of bad driving that can be imagined.

She hogs the left lane.

She tailgates.

She speeds.

She is inattentive. (results of that in the next installment)

My brother and I spent nearly the entire trip down commenting on her driving. And the kicker is, she thinks he's a bad driver. lol...”

“A good start, Bit. A trip report that is mostly oriented around beer. How can you not like that? Glad you had a good time and glad to have you back...”

“Thanks treebeard. It was a good time. Spent some time in the ocean, some time in the pool. Sat around and did a lot of nothing.”

“That's the idea, Bit. You don't want to do a lot of work when you are on vacation..”

“Glad I got it right then. I end up doing stuff on my vacations. Someone always ends up putting me to work, lol...”

“I’m just wondering why if your wife is so hot, you ended up with crabs on this trip.”

“"I struck out in search of beer."

This is a prime reason to always spend the night in a city that has a Hooter's.”

“Sunday, July 27

I got up and showered at about 6:00AM. After waiting a little while for my wife and kids to get up, I sheparded my kids down to the free Continental breakfast, where they got a good lesson in how not to behave from the other people in the hotel. We managed to eat breakfast anyway. My wife joined us after a while, and then we went back up to our room to wait for my brother and his wife and son to eat. Finally, we got on the road.

We headed down I-75 towards Florida. About 20 miles into Florida, we had to make a change of interstates to I-10E, so we could get to I-95. We had thought to take along my FRS radios so we could communicate between the two vehicles. We were coming up to the exit to I-10, and my brother picked up the radio and told his wife that we were approaching the exit, and that she needed to get over. As soon as he said that, she moved over into the far left lane, which would make it almost impossible to make the exit. Sure enough, we saw them drive on past the exit as we took it. I picked up the FRS radio and shouted into it, but they never picked up.

Fortunately, my wife had given me her cell phone to charge up in our van. It was still charging, but I had my brother use it to call his wife's cell phone. Of course, she didn't have it on. We left ours on and continued down I-10.

About twenty minutes later, while we're stopped at a rest stop, the phone rings. It's my sister-in-law. She had driven 19 miles past the exit before she realized what she had done. My brother found a good highway map at the rest area, and directed her to a particular exit on I-10 where we would wait. We got back into the van and drove further down I-10.

My brother and I got to the exit where we had instructed his wife to meet us. We found a McDonald's and ate lunch, and waited. After about an hour of waiting (burning daylight) we see the van with our wives and sons pull into the parking lot. We quickly set up the boys with lunch (my daughter was still with my brother and I, and had already been fed) and hit the road again after losing more than an hour to my sister-in-law's inattention. It turned out that the batteries in the FRS radios had gone dead, so we replaced them in both radios before getting back on the road.

Back on I-10, we headed towards Jacksonville and I-95. When we neared the exit for I-295, with which we intended to bypass Jacksonville, my brother radioed his wife to let her know the exit was coming up. They were pretty far ahead of us, but still in FRS range when we did this, so it took us a while to realize that she had missed that exit too, and continued on into Jacksonville. My brother was getting quite exasperated at this point. I think he spends a lot of time in that state.

It ended up turning out okay; my sister-in-law figured out she needed to go south on I-95, and they actually ended up on I-95 ahead of us in the traffic jam created by all the work going on right outside Jacksonville. We stopped at another rest stop to let kids out to pee, and then headed south again.

After another couple of hours, we pulled off I-95 and onto A1A to go into Cape Canaveral. As we went over the bridges, we could see the huge cruise ships docked there, waiting to take on passengers, and we could see another in the channel heading out to sea. It was pretty cool. I like big boats a lot.

We went down A1A and turned off on the road that led to our condo. We were lucky in that my brother was scheduled to work at Kennedy Space Center for two weeks, and that Boeing rents its employees condos when they're going to be there so long. So, the single largest cost for most vacations, lodging, was paid for us by Boeing. We pulled up to the Cape Winds condominium, and my brother went in to get the keys. We began unloading our vans, and taking stuff up to the condo.

After getting everything unloaded, we decided to take the kids down to the beach. My wife and sister-in-law stayed behind to get the condo straightened up, and my brother and I changed the kids into their swimsuits, and off to the beach we went!

My son kept asking me where the land was on the other side. I had to keep telling him it was 4000 miles away, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. I took my kids into the surf and let them play. They both enjoyed it, but my son liked it the most. He actually enjoyed the waves breaking over his head and pushing him down. He couldn't get enough of it.

After a while, we took them back up to the condo, washed the sand off of our feet, and got in the pool. In contrast to our neighborhood pool at home, this pool was warm. Very warm. It was almost like swimming in sweat in comparison to the ocean. But we swam around for a while anyway, then went back up to the condo.

We got the kids dried off and changed, and ordered pizza for dinner. Then, my wife and sister-in-law left to go grocery shopping for the week. My brother and I put the kids on the foldout bed, and he went to bed, because he had to get up early in the morning and go to work, poor bastard. I stayed up for a bit reading, then finally drifted off to sleep.

I was awakened by the sound of my wife and sister-in-law coming back with the groceries. I looked at my watch. It was midnight. They had been out grocery shopping for more than two hours. I helped them get the groceries off the cart, then went back to bed.”

“Keeeping up with your reports making sure you don't work too hard. So far, you are doing a great loafing job!”

“"I like big boats a lot."
bitpusher
08:59:31 AM
08/04/03

Shoulda joined the Navy...”

“lol @ Father Goose”

“Yah I should have, but the Navy recruiter here was such an ass, he turned me off completely. Besides, I had a good job right out of high school, and no intentions of putting myself in harm's way.”

“The Navy....in harm's way?????”

“Hah! The U.S. Navy hasn't put itself in harm's way since WW11...







Come to think of it, just the thought of a Navy recruiter in Huntspatch, Al. is kinda humorous. 'Yessir, boy, I promise you'll be stationed at Lake Guntersville'...”

“lol...

He really was an ass. He called me two years later, demanding to know what I was doing, and when I got short with him, he said "I am with the Navy, you know." I gave him a good piece of my mind (he had woken me up, I was working third shift then) and hung up on him.”

“Before we restructured, I reported to a squid (CPT, USNR).

He left the company two years ago, made flag rank and is now in Turkey with Naval Intelligence. (somewhat of an oxymoron).

He was a former attack sub Commander and was very methodical in his approach to everything. Despite his Naval background, I actually enjoyed working for him. I can't imagine saying that about many Naval Officers.”

“Monday, July 28

We awoke that morning, and fed the kids breakfast. Feeling a little tired from the trip still, I didn't make anything special, but allowed my sister-in-law to toast frozen waffles for them, while I had cereal, yogurt, and coffee.

I guess I should add a little about the condo itself. It was pretty nice, a two-bedroom condo, with two bathrooms as well. It had a large railed patio with a view of the ocean that was accessible from either the living room or the master bedroom. The master had its own bathroom and walk-in closet, with a safe in the closet. The other bedroom had a good closet and twin beds, obviously intended for kids. The kitchen was small but well-equipped. The living room had a couch with a fold-out bed in it, a large comfortable recliner, and two other chairs. There was a large TV with cable and a VCR attached. There was a small dining table with four chairs against one wall, and the kitchen had a small bar with high stools, which is where we tended to feed the kids. It was a pretty nice place, but it had one main drawback: The carpet was laid right on the concrete floor, and after a few days, my heels were hurting from walking on it. A little padding under the carpet would have made it perfect.

My brother had already left early that morning to drive with one of his co-workers to KSC and get started on the testing for that day. My sister-in-law, wife, and I agreed that I would watch the kids that morning while they left to do even more shopping. I had also agreed to take the kids to the beach to do some shell hunting, so we slathered sunblock on the kids, dressed them appropriately, and we all trooped down to the beach to collect seashells.

We spent more than an hour walking down the beach, picking up all manner of seashells, including one or two that still contained their occupants. In the interest of interspecies goodwill, I made the kids toss the live ones back into the surf. My son didn't do a lot of seashell collecting. He was too interested in the ocean, and kept walking out into it up to his knees. He absolutely loved it. I foresee more trips to the beach in my future.

After we had finished collecting shells, I took the kids back to the condo, and we got into the pool to swim. It was a little cooler than it had been before, and we had a good time cooling off in the pool and horsing around a bit.

It was getting a little late now, so I collected the kids and we headed up to the condo for lunch. I fixed us all sandwiches of various types, and we ate, and I let the kids play and rest a little while I watched TV and drank beer.

At 4:00PM, my brother came back from work. He had showed me his schedule for testing the previous day, and he told me they didn't get any of their scheduled testing done that day, but that the second shift would pick it up.

A little after that, my sister-in-law and wife came back from shopping. They had been unable to find some of the food items we needed at the Wal-Mart Superstore (surprise), so they had gone to another grocery store to pick those things up, plus a few other items at other places, mostly beach stuff. They still couldn't find the cuts of meat we required, and I remembered that I had given them the wrong amounts of ingredients for what I was fixing that evening. My brother remembered that there was a Publix supermarket nearby that was likely to have what we needed, so he and I went to Publix and found the necessary meats and bought the extra things I needed.

On the way back, we saw a package store, so of course we pulled in to check it out. They stocked more wine than anything else, and I was mostly interested in whiskey, but they had what I was looking for. I found that the 750mL bottle of 12-year-old Macallan only costs $46 in Florida, while here in Alabama the same bottle runs $65. I also picked up a bottle of Knob Creek small batch bourbon for about $28. There was a small cigar humidor in the place as well, so we checked it out and bought a couple of cigars. When I asked the clerk to get the bottle of Macallan from the shelf behind her, she said she didn't think she had ever sold any of it. Given that there were flats of plastic 1.5L bottles of Jim Beam stacked on the main selling floor, I wasn't too surprised by this revelation. I'm guessing most of their customers are more of the "cheap drunk" type than any other.

We headed back to the condo, and I started fixing my red beans and rice with cornbread for dinner. We had had to get an extra kielbasa and two more cans of beans because I had told them what to buy to make enough to serve just my family, and there wouldn't have been enough otherwise.

The condo's kitchen was fairly well stocked with pots and pans, but the skillet, although large, wasn't big enough for me to cook the whole meal (except the cornbread, of course) in. At home I have one large enough to do this, but beggars can't be choosers, so I improvised. I browned the two kielbasas in the skillet, and put the four cans of beans in the large stock pot that was part of the kitchen's complement of cookware. The cornbread ended up being cooked in a 13x9in pyrex pan in the oven, and the rice in another large pot. After the kielbasa slices were brown, I dumped them into the beans, seasoned the whole lot, and added water so that there would be plenty of gravy, and set the stove to simmer so that the mixture would slowly reduce to a nice, thick gravy.

It turned out to be some of the best red beans and rice I have ever made. We enjoyed them while watching the Braves game on the cable TV in the condo, and I had another beer. A little while after that, it was time for my brother and the kids to hit the sack again, so we all ended up going to bed.”

“Cornbread in pyrex???


They are going to kick you out of Alabama when you disclose that in Huntsville.”

“Shhhhh!

It was the best I could do, there was no cast iron!”

“That last part actually made me salivate.”

“What, the going to bed part?”

“LMAO.”

“Hey! You still haven't told how you got crabs!”

“Patience, grasshopper...”

“I've read 18 gazillion words and you call me impatient?

I can wait. Bring it on!”

“Now I have to go shopping. Damn I have to cook red beans and rice! Good report. I was amazed when I first went over and saw the size of some of those ships. I saw the QE II when it was there.

And the pool could have been described as bath water warm, not 'like swimming in sweat' YUCKY!!!”

“Just saw on the news that part of the Jim Beam Distillery is on FIRE! There was a long bright orange flame swirling several feet op in the air. Don't know if it was a warehouse or a critical part of the distillery. Bit, I just returned from Destin, Fla. last night. We (my wife and I) had a much needed rest. Had good weather down there but ran into a storm thru Birmingham. I sure was glad to see that Tenn. state line! Your trip sounds like you had a pretty good time overall. I think I may have passed your sister-in-law in Ala. Does she tap her brakes, weave, speed-up, slow-down and act like she never even took a drivers test? LOL”

“Didn't another big distillery burn down last year? Seems I remember something like that.

It's just Jim Beam. No great loss, lol...”

“Glad you made it back Bit. I like that area but It ain't nothing like Northern Alabama. Sorry Tango
Buy the way I'm coming to Orlando within the next year for the Disney thing.

BAMA”

“It's a warehouse, and they think lightning started it. I don't know if one burnt down last year, but the Heaven Hill one went up in 1996. I thought it was 2000, but I called a friend that's a firefighter in that area and he said 96. Same town though.
Did all kinds of environmental damage to a nearby creek.”

“Thanks BAMA. It was a nice trip but I was glad to be home. Florida's so flat, it just makes me feel like a bug on a plate.

I heard about the environmental damage, SW. Apparently whiskey that didn't burn along with stuff from what did really messed that place up.”

“Yeah, I don't know why they always seem close to a creek, but everyone I've driven (drove?) by has a creek right next to it.

I'm enjoying the trip report. Don't let me steer ya off course.”

“Tuesday, July 29

We got up and fed the kids breakfast. Nothing special again, just cereal and the like. Today was the day I had been looking forward to. My wife and sister-in-law were planning to take the kids all day a let me have some time to myself. We got them slathered up with sunblock, and they all went down to the beach to have fun. I had fun by opening my book and doing some more reading.

Not much to tell about a day spent reading. I'm not really a big fan of going out and roasting in the sun, so I stayed in most of the day. Had some of the leftover red beans and rice for lunch, watched some trashy TV. Basically just relaxed.

Around 1-2PM, my wife and sister-in-law brought the kids back for lunch. We fed them and made them rest for a while. At 4:00, my brother came back from work, and he and I decided to take the kids down to the pool for a while. We splashed around in the pool with them, then my wife shouted down asking should she go ahead and start dinner, and I told her yes.

We eventually went back up to the room and had dinner. It was about this time that we realized that everyone was pretty badly sunburned (except me, of course). We applied aloe vera gel to all the backs and arms that needed it. My wife's back was pretty bad, and my daughter blamed me for it for not having put the sunblock on her good enough. My son's arms were pretty burned, and his cheeks were pink, so we slathered him as well. My daughter was only mildly burned, but she was already pretty brown from spending time in the sun throughout the whole summer.

After the sun went down, we got the kids together and went down to the beach to go crab-hunting. We walked down the beach shining flashlights into the surf, and trying to surround the crabs. Most them skittered away sideways when the light hit them, but we found one who had obviously lost a battle of some sort and was missing most of the legs on one side, so we surrounded him and took a good look. There were also lots of little crabs that were too small to run very fast. The kids had a lot of fun and I got to walk on the beach when the sun wasn't trying to kill me. After a bit, we took the kids back up to the condo and put them to bed.”

“Ohhh... those kind of crabs...”

“Gotta watch that Florida sun. It's potent!”

“Yah, it's noticeable. Tried to explain that the middle of the day is the worst time to go out, but getting my sister-in-law to do hurry doing anything (except driving) is damn near impossible.

We have actually resorted to lying to them about what time a family gathering will start so that they show up on time.”