More things from the Florida trip

Received some mail yesterday from the US.  On opening it, I find that I received a traffic violation while in Sunshine Florida.  Apparently I didn't come to a full stop while making a right turn on a red light.  It seems that the intersection was one of those in Sunshine that has "red light violation" cameras, and there were a couple nice photos of our rental car, and a close-up of the licence plate, making a right hand turn.  I didn't feel that it showed much, but I also was able to access a video taken at the time.  Yes, I didn't come to a complete stop, so I guess I was guilty.

I was a little upset at this, but figured I was clearly wrong, and needed to pay the fine (it also was better to pay it early, rather than late, as the next step was to up the fine to $500 and possible court summons).  Well, this is where it began to get interesting.

There were directions for paying online, but when I tried to go online to do it, I only got to the FAQ page, and the bottom showed a balance of $0.  No matter what icon I tried on the homepage, I couldn't get to where I could pay online.  Then, I read that I could also pay over the phone, but by the time I got to that, the offices were closed back east.

So, today, I got back onto the phone and went through the process of phoning in.  After long waits, I finally got through to someone.  After explaining who I was and what had happened (not being able to pay online, etc.), I asked about paying the fine.  The lady told me that the violation had been cancelled.  I wondered why and she said it was because my licence was from out of country.  I clarified again (the last thing I need is to be arrested going over the border into the US because of an outstanding traffic violation in Florida) and she told me that I didn't owe anything.  I guess good things to come to those who wait.

Bottom line for me is that I feel pretty lucky, I need to look at my driving habits and make sure I come to a stop, and that I feel that Florida is maybe trying to keep good relations with tourists.  I think I would go back there for another holiday sometime.

The other mail that came was from Budget Retals saying that I did get the violation, and that they had given my particulars to the City of Sunshine.  That part cost me $25 for their handling fees, but I figured that was better than the large fine.  I did pay Budget the $25.  ;-)

Day 23

Tuesday, Oct. 18
We finally reached home today.  We got up fairly early for Abbotsford, but it was about the usual time if we were in Florida.  I still couldn't find my watch, so the one I bought on the ship was the time we were running on.  Stella wasn't feeling well, and was up part of the night throwing up, so she decided to stay  home from work.  She did look pretty ill, so we thought it better to get going and leave, sooner rather than later.

We were on the road by about 9:00, and after a stop for some breakfast and a trip to the gas station we were on our way.  It was a good drive.  It is nice to be on a highway and know where we were going.  The Coquihalla highway is somewhat different than the freeways we drove on in Florida.  There were hills, corners, only two lanes each way, far less traffic, and so on.  It was beautiful weather while we were driving, and when we got home, it was nice to walk into our house after almost a month away.

We began to unload our bags, and once were finished, we noticed that we were short.  I got thinking about our arrival in Bellingham, and realized I had not picked up my BC Athletics bag.  That was a bummer and we had to think of ways for us to get in touch with Bellingham airport to see if it was there.  Long story short, Dawn did speak with someone who took our information on the bag. Our receipt part of the baggage claim tags had the numbers cut in half, so we had a real problem figuring out which number we were missing.  After a fairly long discussion with the lady in Bellingham, she figured it was one of 2 numbers and wrote a message to the baggage guys.

The next day, we got a call from Bellingham.  They had located our bag, and would fly it to Kamloops on an Air Canada flight.  The following day it was in Kamloops and we picked it up that afternoon.  I guess we could finally say that our holiday was over.

Day 22

Monday, Oct. 18

Our hotel in Orlando

Another day and the weather forecast is deteriorating for Florida.  When we got up, they were predicting severe storms moving in from the South, and also a cold front from the west that would mix with the hot high in Florida.  This would create storms with lots of rain.  It is a good day to be leaving to come home.

We went for breakfast, not the greatest we had on our trip, and asked if we could stay later than the checkout time.  They agreed, and we were able to check out at 1:00.  This was good because we were scheduled to fly out just after 6:00, and we couldn’t check our bags sooner than 4 hours before the flight.

Once we got organized, we took off and drove out to the airport – a short drive but a toll highway.  I wanted to find where we took the car back, and it was fairly easy, but it appeared to be a ways from our terminal.  We had to go find a gas station to fill the car, so we left.  There was a real “rip-off” joint just outside the airport limits, charging over $5 per gallon, so I refused to fill up there.  We headed back on the toll highway and drove around some more, and then filled up just across the road from the hotel at 3.45 per gallon.  We calculate that we paid about $25 - $30 in tolls this week.

Then it was time to head to the airport and return the car.  That is a pretty slick deal.  They had good directions, and we followed the signs to a line up where we were met by a lady with an electronic machine with which she could look us up and figure out the charges.

After unloading the bags, a “sky-cap” stopped by and loaded our bags onto his cart.  We told him which airline and he took us right there.  Then we had to wait a while until the crowd got smaller.  Checking in about 3 hours early means that there really isn’t any waiting in line.  I would recommend that this is the way to do it.

Orlando Airport from the air

Once we got rid or our bags, we were able to walk around a bit, and stopped to have lunch before going through security.  The security process was pretty easy, but I set off the alarm (Dawn had a pretty good laugh) – I had forgotten about my cell phone that was in my pocket.  Once through, we had to take a shuttle train to the terminal and then we waited.

We boarded on time – 6:00 and were taxiing out by 6:20.  The plane was full and hot, and we were in a hurry to get it over with.

All-in-all, it was a good flight, getting us into SeaTac at the right time (9:30pm PDT).  It was a bit of an adventure finding our route to the terminal for the flight to Bellingham, but we made it.  Now it is a wait until 10:40 to board, and then fly off at 11:05.  Stella is going to meet us at that airport and we should be at her place in Abbotsford by 1:30 (I hope).  We are still running on EDT so really it feels like 2:00 am right now.

Day 21

Sunday, Oct. 16

Before leaving the Fort Lauderdale area, we got “Jill” to find us a Wal-Mart so we could purchase another suitcase to spread our load around.  We found one and made our purchase, and then headed for the Turnpike.  We drove for about 3 hours today to get to near the Orlando airport.  We arrived at the Airport Best Western, near the airport and got ourselves moved in.  I spent a fair amount of time trying to find where we returned our car, and then figuring out how we were to get our bags to the terminal.  I didn’t figure out too much, but I have an idea now.

We went out for dinner again, and ate at Red Lobster again.  This was another good meal, and we left full, as usual.  Then we returned to our hotel and brought all of our bags into the room.  We spent the next period of time moving things around, trying to get our bags down to less than 50 pounds.  After borrowing a portable scale from the front desk, we managed to get them all there (actually, only one was overweight, and by moving some things around, we got it down).

Next we figured out all the things we had purchased and were bringing back to Canada.  This was necessary so that we can do our declarations and hopefully get through customs and over the border much easier.

Later, I loaded up Radio NL, and we listened to the Blazers game on the computer.  At this point, it is 2-1 Blazers over Kelowna, in the 2^nd period.

Tomorrow, we have to check out by 11:00, so I guess we will have some time to kill before going to the airport and getting rid of the car.  Our flight is scheduled to leave at 6:20 pm EDT.  We are scheduled to get into Seattle at 9:26 pm PDT.  From there we leave for Bellingham at 11:05pm and get in at 11:45 pm.  If everything goes as expected, we should be in Abbotsford about 1:30 am.  I’m sure we will be very tired as we will be used to eastern time.

Day 20

Saturday, Oct. 15

Not much happening today.  We got up, drove south to Plantation, Florida (just west and south of Fort Lauderdale), which was about a 2 ½ hour drive, and then found the Bank Atlantic Center.  From there, we went looking for a hotel.  GPS “Jill” located a Hampton Inn that seemed fairly close, and we decided to try for it.  Well, long story short, “Jill” gives good directions, but sometimes she is slow (we missed some turns) and sometimes the maps are not up-to-date with the changes that are being made in this area.  A 7 mile trip took us about ¾ of an hour, but we finally made it.

This is the most expensive room of this part of the holiday, but it is clean, about the same as the previous places we have stayed.  The fridge runs very noisily, and sometimes the air conditioner is noisy.  Fortunately, the temperature is not too high outside – in fact, if it were this way most of the time, we would find it quite liveable.  The humidity is a little high, but nothing like what we had while on the ship and when we first arrived in Florida.

About 4:00 we decided to head out looking for a place to eat.  We selected a Red Lobster that was quite close (“Jill” said 0.5 miles).  It took about a half hour to get there due to wrong turns, getting into places that didn’t go where they appeared they would, and so on.  Finally, when we did get there, we went in, had to wait for about 5 minutes, and then were seated.

Our waiter was an interesting fellow.  He had lived in Seattle for a while, so knew of Kamloops, and had been to Vancouver.  We were able to talk about hockey and he knew what we were about.  He was a very pleasant person, and we quite enjoyed our shrimp feast.

From there, it was off to the game.  They had given us directions at the hotel, but they were different than “Jill’s” and after trying to follow them, we just let her get us there.  This was fairly easy this time, and we got to one of the arena parking lots.  We tried to go in, but this lot had reserved parking that I tried to buy online the previous night.  Unfortunately, because I was working through Canadian Ticketmaster, I couldn’t purchase tickets for that lot.  The girl at the entrance was very cheerful, and gave me directions for a U-turn (I’m getting to like these things) and to the free lot (a way better price than the $20 we were going to pay online).  The lot we parked at was almost where the “Will Call” window was located, so this was a much better place for us anyhow.

What a show.  We were there just before the doors opened.  At the entrance there was a rock band playing and singing, lots of vendors selling various things, blow-up toys for kids (like Fun Factor), and a great mood.  When the doors opened, we went in and walked around for a while before looking for our seats.

We went into our seat area and the usher told us where they were.  There was a fellow standing there who we began talking with.  Roberto Luongo is his neighbour, along with a few other players and executives that he named.  We had a fairly lengthy discussion about hockey and how things were looking for his team this year.  We recognized many of the names he mentioned from the team, and Dawn was able to carry on a pretty good discussion with him.

Of course, we didn’t know what to wear, with the temperature warm and humid outside, so we wore our shorts and shirts.  Not such a great move as it was fairly cold inside, and we couldn’t just go home and grab something warmer.  We “toughed” it out.

This was the Panthers opening night, so after the warm up, the big introductions were made.  The first player announced was Keaton Ellerby (ex Blazer).  He wasn’t dressed, but he did walk out at the bench.  Later, Scotty Upshall and Kris Versteeg were announced and they were playing (and played quite well).  It was a great atmosphere during the warm up and the introductions, and then got better when the anthem was sung.

The game was pretty good, too.  It is amazing how good these guys are at the game.  It makes one realize how good our junior players are, and how far most of them have to go.  There were many names on both teams that we knew – Lecavalier, St. Louis, Stamkos, Jovanowski, Weiss, Hedmann, Gudbranson, Downie, Theodore, Rolanson (backup tonight), and more.

Florida scored first in the first period.  It stayed that way until the third period, although they were outshooting and generally outplaying Tampa Bay.  Then about 7 minutes into the 3^rd, Tampa Bay scored.  They appeared to be really putting on a push, and the game was much closer.  Florida scored again with 2:58 left in the game, but Tampa scored again at 2:18.  It was pretty exciting and also pretty deflating for the home crowd. We were sitting beside a group that had come down from Tampa Bay, and they were really excited at this point.

The game ended in a tie, went through overtime, and went into the shoot-out.  This was Dawn’s wish, and it came true.  Florida shot first and missed.  Then St. Louis went and he missed.  The 2^nd Florida shooter (Goc) scored on a nice move; he put the puck up over the goalie’s leg when he tried a poke check.  The crowd got pretty excited, but there are some real snipers on Tampa.  Stamkos went next and tried a spinerama move which Theodore stopped with very little effort.  The 3^rd Panther went and missed, so now it came down to Lecavalier.  He came in, deked, and then the job was to find the puck.  We thought it was in, but then the goalie started jumping up and down and we knew it had missed.  A good win for the home crowd and for the home opener.

Then it was the adventure of finding the car, and getting back to our hotel.  When we walked outside, it felt very warm, but that was because we were so cold from being inside.  It was actually nice to be there.  As Dawn was saying, if we were this cold at a game in Kamloops, we know we would be going outside to extreme cold weather, so this was quite nice.

There had been some rain, and we got a little on the drive to the hotel.  Then just as we were entering the building, it began to rain again.  In all, we have been exceptionally lucky with the weather.  Watching the weather forecast, we will be leaving at the right time.  There is a cold front moving in from the North West, and they are predicting quite serious rains in the next few days.  It is almost time for us to come home.

Day 19

Friday, Oct. 14

Astronaut Hall of Fame

Another fine day in paradise.  We took off after breakfast and filling up with gas, towards the north and The Kennedy Space Center.  It was only about 30 miles and GPS “Jill” got us there quite easily.  There are some pretty big highways here, but they weren’t too crowded.  It may have had something to do with the time we were travelling (left Melbourne after 10).

Booster Rocket at the Entrance

Getting off the freeway, we headed east to the Center.  The road was single lane each way, but again, no too busy.  I wonder what it is like when they are launching a spacecraft.  We passed a War Plane Museum, an Astronaut Hall Of Fame, the Police Hall Of Fame, and other places like that.  Then we came to the turn-off to The Kennedy Space Center.  There is a replica shuttle and booster tank laying at the entrance, and it is very big.

Once parked, we approached the entrance.  We could have gotten tickets to just wander around the facility, or to take a guided tour.  It’s not likely we will return again, so we decided on the guided tour.  It was a 2 hour bus tour that took us to a number of places of interest on the Center – Vehicle Assembly Building, Launch Pads, and some other things that I can’t remember what they were called.  The size of this place is enormous.

Vehicle Assembly Building

Once we had an overview of the site from a stop beside the causeway (there is water of both sides – one can be fished, the other is protected from any craft with motors) and our guide pointed out the various launch pads and places where things happened we took off.  From this location, the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB for those who like acronyms which it appears NASA does) didn’t look overly big.  There is an American Flag painted on the side of the building, and to get an idea of the scale of the flag, he gave us some statistics about that flag.  Each stripe on the flag is the width of the bus (about 8 feet), the stars are each 6 feet across, the blue part is the size of a basketball court; it didn’t look that big from where we were.  The building was 170 feet tall ( 17 stories).

Inside the VAB

It took us about 15 minutes to get there.  As we approached, one of the doors was open (I think he said they were 13 stories tall) and there was a space shuttle inside, sitting on its wheels.  It is the Endeavor, and it is the one they are decommissioning and taking to Los Angeles.  The guide said that we were going to be the first tour allowed into the VAB, but we had to be very careful and follow directions, staying inside the marked boundaries.  We got inside, and the building was “HUGE”.

 I can’t imagine what is must have been like as they were assembling these huge things, but all parts came in lying horizontally and they lifted them to the vertical.  Then they lifted them to the various heights they had to be to fit in their spots on the boosters.  In all, an amazing thing to think about.  We got fairly close to the Endeavor.  They had the nose section pulled apart and covered with plastic, as well as the windows, etc.  This was because they were still removing all the electronics that could be re-used, before the move to LA.

Endeavor

From there, we drove around some more, viewing the launch pad where most of the manned space flights have taken off from.  There are 2 main pads, but one has only been used for 2 flights, and the rest from the other.  We got fairly close to the main launch pad and could see how it worked as he gave us the narration.  Our road followed the road that the “crawler” followed as it moved from the VAB to the launch pad.  That road is 8 lanes wide with a grass strip down the middle and the crawler moves on both sides of the engineered road.  Strangely, the upper layer is a special kind of gravel that doesn’t compact too much and no matter what is done, no sparks come from the rocks (a good thing in this situation).

Next we were off to another viewing site where he explained the workings of a launch.  There is a big water tower fairly close to the launch pad.  They release this water on ignition and apparently it dampens the noise from the rockets.  I don’t know how that works, but he told us that where we were viewing from, the military had some equipment, and it got destroyed from the first lift-off.  They figured it was because of the noise vibrations, and that was the way they reduced it.

3-stage Rocket

Then it was to another location where our tour ended and we could wander around another building where there were a number of exhibits of a Saturn 3 rocket.  This was spectacular because the rocket was life-size horizontally, and we could see up close, what things looked like.  Almost everything was there from each stage of the rocket to the command module, the lunar module, and the vehicle used to transport the astronauts to the launch pad.  We also ate lunch there – paid more than $20 for a couple hamburgers and pops.

We spent a couple hours there, and then jumped on a shuttle bus that took us back to the main center.  Here again, we looked at more exhibits, and went to a 45 minute IMAX show on the Hubble telescope.  We had never seen 3D before and this was really interesting.  The gist of the movie was astronauts making repairs to the Hubble telescope and the things that NASA had to do to ensure the repairs were done properly.  Then, some very interesting views of far away galaxies and the birth and death of stars.  Very spectacular.

By then we were getting tired of all the walking and standing, and were just about ready to leave when we saw another area that we hadn’t been to.  This was one where they had about 10 different rockets standing.  I believe they were life size, so it was quite interesting.  There were a couple space capsules there so people could get an idea of what the astronauts had to go through.  They are very cramped and difficult to get into.  I didn’t try getting in, but we saw some younger folks who squeezed into the seat.

The smallest capsule was the one that the first American astronaut had been in when going into space.  It was only large enough for one, and with all the equipment in it, there was almost no room for him.  They didn’t know if he would be able to get back, or if he would be alive if he did.  It sounds like everyone just held their breath until they were sure he was alright.  This was after they had gone through many tests where the rockets had blown up or been blown up because they weren’t working properly – what a gamble.

Then we were done and headed back to the car.  Because we planned to head back to Fort Lauderdale tomorrow for the hockey game, we decided to go back to Melbourne and stay at the same hotel.  A better rate tonight because they have a Friday/Saturday night special.  We went for a drive and found their beach.  Both of us had a walk in the sand and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Did I mention that it was cooler today?  It was, and although still warm, the walk was quite comfortable.  What a beautiful sunset.

Day 18

Thursday, Oct. 13

We started off today by having a nice complimentary breakfast at our hotel – Best Western – in Homestead.  After that, it was get ready to leave, put the Everglades Alligator Farm into the GPS, and let “Jill” take us there.  It was only about 7 miles away, so it was easy to find.

We got there, paid our admission, and went in.  Part of the admission was an air-boat ride which was scheduled to begin in 15 minutes, so we had planned it well.  There were enough people there for 3 separate boats.  The first one was pretty full, but we were in the second one which only had 12 people in it.  Dawn and I got our own seat so we could each sit on the side.

Our skipper, JJ, started us off slowly and we saw quite a few alligators, some turtles, and a few birds.  After a slow ride at the beginning, we put on our hearing protection and he opened her up.  Those things sound like pretty big engines, and push the boats along pretty fast.  JJ did warn us that he was going to make some 360 degree turns, and that those in the front would get wet.  Also, the rest of us had to lift our feet when he did it, so that our shoes wouldn’t get too wet.  Well, he wasn’t lying.  A lot of water comes into the boat when he does this, but it gathers at the back and is pumped out.

He said that the average depth of the water in the Everglades is about 6 inches (15 cm), but they had some pretty big rains last week, and that had raised the depth about 10 inches.  The alligators we saw here were wild.  They found their own feed, eating mostly snails, small fish, and bugs.  They don’t feed them so that they continue to be afraid of people and don’t cause any trouble.  He said if they fed them (like they do with the captive ones), they wouldn’t be afraid of people and then would become dangerous.

After the trip, which was about 20 minutes, we returned to the dock and then went to where they were going to feed the captive alligators.  These ones were pretty big and fat and looked like they ate pretty well.  The guide had a bucket full of dead rats, and the alligators obviously knew they were for them as most of them gathered around where he was.  While he fed them, he showed how they could jump up, how they grabbed their prey and went underwater but had to come back up to swallow them.  He also told us that the average adult alligator only ate about 6 – 10 pounds of meat a year.  Every once in a while they had a large feed where all the alligators got something.  For this feed, only a few got something to eat.

We wandered around the farm for a while longer, looking at some of the animals.  We weren’t too interested in seeing the snakes being fed, so decided to do some shopping in the gift store and then left.

We wanted to travel along the coast, so we had to program in some fairly close places so that “Jill” wouldn’t take us on the turnpike.  Well, she did guide us over to the beach area, but things were very slow due to traffic and all the stop lights.  We only went a few miles in a long period of time.  Finally, we decided that we had seen enough of the expensive apartments, hotels and homes, and we punched in Cape Canaveral.  “Jill” then took us to the freeway and away we went.

As luck would have it, after travelling on the freeway for about half an hour, we noticed some signs indicating that the right 3 lanes were blocked ahead somewhere.  Not knowing anything about how far away this place was, we kept going in the left HOV lane, until traffic began to congest and things slowed down.  Finally there were periods of start and stop, narrowing of traffic flow, and generally slow movement.  When we got to the place where the accident was, it didn’t look like much.  However, there must have been more when it happened for them to put the warnings up.

Dawn loved this sign

After that, it was clear sailing.  There were a few detours and we didn’t know if that was regular to get to where we were supposed to go, or if it was because the maps in the GPS are so old that these routes were where traffic used to go.

By about 5:00, I was getting pretty tired of driving so we began to think about stopping for the night.  There were about 80 miles to go to Cape Canaveral and I decided to push on.  About 6:00, I had enough.  We were at Melbourne, and when I saw signs for gas stations and hotels, I pulled off.  After a false start registering at one hotel (it was pretty seedy), we finally settled on Hampton Inns.  Another very nice room with all the amenities we have become used to on this trip.

We didn’t even go for supper as we were still full from the lunch that we had about 2:30.  We bought a couple pops and some munchies and decided to stay home, watch the baseball games, and work with the computer.

Tomorrow, we are off to the Kennedy Space Centre, so we will get up fairly early and get going.  We are only about 20 miles away.