There and Back Again

The long awaited story is finally here for your viewing pleasure. Unfortunately I had posted a day pic regarding this several weeks ago, thinking I would relate the story in short order. But obviously that didn’t happen. Hopefully no-one has looked at my day pics (what a sad thought!) and therefore the supprised has been saved.

The story goes thusly. I went down to Florida back at the end of May. Mike Bert had invited me to join his family oh their trip to visit family and amusement parks in good ole’ FL, and I happily agreed. (many thanks to his family for including me) As a brief overview, the time was initially spent at the Magic Kingdom and MGM parks, followed by a last day of park fun at Universal. This is where we join our protagonist. (it has been so long since HS lit, I hope I am not embarrasing myself)

The day started out clear and bright, a perfect day to take in some thrills. First up where some fun new rides and attractions (i had never been to Universal before), such as MiB, where you get to shoot real aliens!, and much walking around. Then we continued on around the park and came across the Fear Factor Live stage, (not to be confused with the tv show, this was a park experience *based* on the tv show) and Mike’s brother Jonathon said “lets wait here, I want to get on this thing!” Ok, so his exact words escape me, this was like a month ago after all! If you went and stood in this line 45 minutes or so before the next show, you got an opportunity to try out to be one of the contestants. Well, I thought this was plain silly, who wanted to wait around for a whole hour just to try to be in a show where you would probably have as much fun simply watching the other fools acting like … fools?

Somewhere along the line Mike’s mom insisted that Mike and I try out to, because “we might regret it since we are here now and won’t ever be again!”. Hm, well I kinda obliged and joined the long line of 3 ppl. Mike somehow managed to get a phone call and snuck out of the line, I am not sure how he managed such fortuitus timing. I on the other hand remained in line, and decided that this might just be worth doing. Well, it seems like they have pretty stringent size and weight restrictions because of their ‘one-size-fits-all’ security gear, So I got bounced by the guy with the ‘you-must-be-this-tall-to-ride’ measuring stick, although in all fairness it was a ‘you-must-not-be-any-taller-than-this’ stick. I was a whole half inch to tall to compete! how lame, I bet i would have won a cool shirt.

No the story doesn’t end there. It seems they try to persuade the suckers they disqualify (me and another dude 10 pounds over the weight restriction) that they can still be part of the fun, they just have to eat some ‘food’. The quotes are quite appropriate. They would not tell us what the food was (has anyone not seen fear factor? this isn’t rice pudding type fare), only that it would be in smoothie form, about 4 or 5 ounces of it. The trick would be to drink it all before the other team of two. Fun. After like 45 minutes of just siting around the time came. The fear factor show was in full swing, and I was siting there wondering if it would be rude to get up and leave.

So, since I am rambling and not moving this story on, I will skip to the ‘thing’ itself. The smoothie was made from the following ingredients.

1. Fish heads, rancid squid, icky oyster (with bits of shell) all marinated in their own juices
2. Mystery meat (???)
3. Something else… I forget
4. Sour milk
5. and the final last minute surprise, wriggling meal worms and grasshoppers!

Pulse to taste!

This yielded a nasty brownish ‘liquid’ that was more lumpy than it was fluid. Drinking it? I must confess that in the excitement of the moment I failed to notice the taste. I did notice the texture, boy was there a lot of texture. I was so engrossed in the experience of drinking this, that I almost forgot that we were in a race to down this noxious concoction, So I quickly downed the last of my drink, to lose to the other team by .000023 seconds. What a rip off!

Heh, so it was fun anyways, and I didn’t puke. Although the wisdom of having nasty stuff in your stomach at the outset of a fun day riding roller coasters could be called into question. The most anoying thing was that I kept belching sour milk burps, and the taste was NOT enjoyable to continually relive.

Thats all for now folks!

I was talking to my sister Kristine a few days ago, and got chided for not posting any updated journal entries (yes, i still won’t call it a blog) or day pics.  “I am getting tired of looking at that picture of the blind!”  It seems that Academics spend all their time online looking at their friends (and families in this case) blogs and web galleries.  Crazy people!

So I am writing an update.  I have several backdated pictures to post to my day pics, but haven’t felt like making the commitment required to decide on the one picture to use for each day.  Sometimes you shoot yourself in the foot by taking way too many pictures of the same thing, and being unwilling to decide between two, three or four of them.

I was in Florida two weeks ago, and may post some pictures from that at some point.  I left my camera at Mel’s the night before I left, so I had to rely on Mike Bert’s camera for the pics from the trip.  That is a mistake I hopefully won’t repeat too many times.  Florida was great, the weather was hot-ish by PA standards, but I think we got down there during a week of low humidity by FL standards, so it was wonderful.  I have a story to share from that, but i think I will wait until I post the day picture from said story.

Now, I was going to go to bed early again tonight, but I have caught a second wind, which is why I posted this, and I think I will also take care of some work things so that I don’t need to get up as early to do them in the morning.