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Entry Ten: a summary of events from August 17 through August 19, 2004

Dearest Tour Diary,

Joe's been busy reading, so he's been completely negligent in regards to his share of the tour diary. I'm taking up the slack. Joe just got started on "His Dark Materials" by Phillip Pullman. Dawn Riddle gave us the books while we were in Portland. They are very good. I just finished reading the trilogy a few days ago. Thanks Dawn!

Anyway, last Tuesday we busted out of the Carolinas and into Georgia. Three days before, we booked a last minute show at a pool in Atlanta. On the way there, we stopped in Athens to pick up our friends Lori and Marty. They fed us some delicious leftover ziti with eggplant and, in turn, we fed them a whole bunch of Every Flavor Beans during the car ride to Atlanta. We ate a lot of jelly beans, and everyone agreed that the soap flavor was pretty good.

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Joe wants more soap jelly beans.

We got to the show and we really wanted to swim, but we had left all our clothes (including swim gear) at Lori and Marty's to make room in the van. The show went down, and a lot of people were there, but most of them were in the pool. I'm not sure if they came to see us or just to swim, but they disappeared as soon as we were done playing, so I think it was a little of both. Joe got so worked up during the Angry Song that he dove into the pool to cool off.

We drove back to Athens and made giant burritos with Lori and Marty. We stay up late partying with them all night, and then I had to get up early the next morning to get a new alternator for the Potter Mobile. Lame. Once morning chores were taken care of, we went into the center of town to do things like drink coffee, replace lost drum parts, buy books, get directions, play chess, and eat. It was an extremely successful trip, as all objectives were achieved.

We had the next day and a half off, so we decided to go to Disney World. We tried to persuade Lori and Marty to go, but they had to do grown-up stuff like pay bills and buy supplies for their house. We considered kidnapping them and forcing them to ride Dumbo until they threw up. They could not be convinced, so we left knowing that the children inside them were dead.

We drove through miles and miles of Georgia, and finally, from about 30 miles away, we could begin to smell Florida. Citizens of Florida, you have our pity. It must be difficult living in a state that smells like a gym locker full of wet cats. We continued driving deep into the heart of Florida. Yes, to get to the promised land of Disney, we had to traverse the hell that is Orlando - every conceivable type of disgusting fast-food restaurant, nightmare buffets, and miles of completely useless gift shops. We would be victorious. We were determined to have fun in this place, no matter how high the odds were stacked against it.

Despite the abundance of "restaurants," eating in Florida is one of the most difficult tasks I've ever undertaken. Last year, Joe and I camped out on this island and we didn't bring any food because we were determined to live off the land. We were hoping to catch fish, and maybe some crabs. Our backup plan was to exploit the abundance of shellfish in the area. We ended up using the backup plan after spending many unproductive hours fishing. That night, we had raw quahogs as an appetizer, then some cooked quahogs (simmered in butter) as the main course. The next morning, we had some more quahogs for breakfast. We fished for a while and with nothing to show for that, we decided to get the hell off the island so we could get some food. Being in Florida is kind of like that, but it's tougher to find food.

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Disney has hilarious giant turkey legs that you can buy for $5. They are not that good.

We ate Subway for dinner, got our crappy hotel room, and then crashed to save energy for the intense day of magical partying that would follow. We got up early and ate a lousy continental breakfast, and then got on the complimentary shuttle to the Magic Kingdom.

I'm having a tough time reconciling this trip. Disney is pretty much the opposite of everything I believe in, and yet, I'm powerless against it. It certainly proves the effectiveness of advertising to children. My parents finally took my sister and I (pre-Joe) to Disney when I was 7 years old. At that time, the trip was certainly the high-point of my existence. Back in those days, we didn't have cable, so my TV time was pretty much limited to Saturday morning cartoons, a few Disney movies that we had dubbed copies of, and the Wonderful World of Disney - which was on during prime-time on Sunday nights. I was constantly reminded of how unbelievably amazing Disney World was. And when we finally went, it didn't let me down. There actually was a Space Mountain, and I got to ride it. I got to meet Mickey. He was like a god.

So for some reason, I've been drawn back to Disney. During college, I used my spring break one year to visit a friend in Tampa and I dragged him to Disney. We had a blast. Just last year, my employer sent me to a workshop in Orlando, and I flew down a few days early with Georg so we could hit the Magic Kingdom. It was great. We only ate hot dogs the whole day, and we took pictures of ourselves partying on pretty much every ride in the park.

So now that the Potters were faced with two days off and only an 8-hour drive to the place where dreams come true, I couldn't resist. This time, my dream was to conquer the Buzz Lightyear ride.

We got to the park just after 9am, and went straight for the Buzz Lightyear's Shoot 'em Up Good. It's definitely the coolest ride in the park. You get in a little space ship and you've got a laser gun. Your ship moves through all these different rooms, and you have to shoot down the enemy, the robot forces of the Evil Emperor Zurg. It's like being inside a video game. We rode that 3 or 4 times and by then I had moved up to the rank of Planetary Pilot. Then we went and rode Space Mountain a few times. We made our way back to Buzz, and then I played the game of the day. I achieved perfection. With a score of 999,999, I quickly ascended to in rank and became a certified GALACTIC HERO. You can thank me later for saving the universe.

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Proof of my heroics.

The rest of the day was less exciting since I had been on all the rides only about a year and a half ago. I'm pretty sure Joe and Andrew had fun though. Oh yeah, Andrew became a Galactic Hero too. We rode a bunch of the usual lame rides and a bunch of the pretty cool ones too. Both "Small World" and "Tom Sawyer Island" were closed, so I was a little disappointed that my day was not as cheesy as it could have been. We did ride the tea cups though.

So in the end, we had a nice time at Disney. Was it worth $58 (per person)? I'm not sure. We'll see if having "Galactic Hero" on my resume will get me anywhere.

Number of Shows: 39
Number of Galactic Heros in our Party: 2

- Paul 08.21.04