M-I-C-K-E-Y...

May 31, 2007
Orlando, FL

OK, so we're just in Orlando to get the coach aligned, not to go see Mickey. So what? We're here anyway. This is the first time we've been here since December of 2004 (or was it 2003?) when we had a big TP confab at Walt Disney World. That was a pretty nice trip, since we had a chance to go to La Nouba (Cirque du Soleil) and Emeril's Tchoup Chop restaurant at Universal. And Geri got to meet Rich Sternhell for the first time. Good stuff.

We left Jacksonville a little before noon today and were just on the north side of Orlando before 3 PM. We hung out for a few hours (it's really nice to be able to flip up the dish and get to the 'Net in 3 minutes from anywhere) and then headed over to the place that'll do the alignment tomorrow. Josam (http://www.josamusa.com/) is actually a Swedish (go, ancestors) company that makes specialized equipment for wheel and axle alignment on heavy vehicles. People on various Internet groups swear by them for precision work. We'll see tomorrow!

We had a slight technical difficulty in getting here since, when you live by technology, you die by technology. I'd mapped out the route with Microsoft's Streets and Trips package, which is usually pretty accurate. Unfortunately, it told us to make a turn off US-17 in Orlando when we should have just gone straight to our destination. Geri will tell you that, over the years, I've taken her on some interesting diversions into "parts of town we shouldn't be in". Tonight wasn't the worst we've ever been in, but we did go through some pretty seedy areas. No issues, though.

Tonight, we're "dry camping" at the alignment shop. That simply means that we're not connected to any electrical, water and/or sewer hookups. This is really a non-issue for us, since we have the on board generator to run the air conditioners and have plenty of "tank capacity". We only had to empty the tanks once while we were in Alabama, for example. In general, we can go for at least a week if we're careful. So, a few days without hookups is NBD (no big deal, as they say in the commercials).

We'll spend most of the day tomorrow here, as the alignment should take until 3 PM or so. Geri made an appointment at the local PetsMart for a "tubbie", and we'll probably head up to Winter Park to the nearest Whole Foods for supplies (you can only get so many things at Wal-Mart while you're on the road. We made a Chicken Fried Rice mix tonight which came out OK. Sometimes we really need to make sure that we have things on board that cook up quickly. Tomorrow, we'll have one of those Bertolli pasta dinners that take ~10 minutes, since we won't pull off the road until close to 7 PM.

We'll stay just north of Jacksonville tomorrow night (same place we stayed Tuesday-Wednesday nights) since we won't leave here until afternoon. We'll stay in Selma NC (not AL) on Saturday, at an RV park right off I-95. We'll roll around DC to Cherry Hill RV Park in College Park, MD by mid-afternoon on Sunday. Hopefully, we'll avoid some traffic by driving mostly on the weekend. Of course, every day is Saturday to us retirees... ;-)