Friday, August 13, 2010

I'm back! New York and Florida

The ironic thing about labeling a post 'I'm back!' is that most of you didn't know that I was gone in the first place. For you it was just this long period of blog nothingness and now here I am again. The responsible thing would have to been to inform you of the fact that I'd be taking a month long road trip/vacation in the States, sans blogging, but then that wouldn't be consistent with my reputation. So all I can say is, Here I am again! Admit it, you missed me...
Apologies aside, we just got back from an awesome cross country trip in the States. Let's start with New York and Florida, the first two stops on the agenda...


Ok so if I'm going to be really honest the New York stop was a grand total of 5 hours. I'm sure I'm cheating by calling a layover city our first stop...but hey, how often do you have to change airports and have hours to kill at one of those anyway? And I'm proud to say that all those dead hours were actually spent outside of the airport terminal as well. In fact, much to Matt's delight, it turns out that LaGuardia Airport is actually a next-door neighbor to Flushing Meadows National Tennis Center. Here it is in all its glory:

I appreciated it all the more once Matt actually explained to me that it's kind of important in the world of tennis. Of course, my favorite part was the park it was actually located in. I saw a giant long bench that had my name written all over it and pretty soon Matt and I were alternating between jet-lagged snoozes on the bench. After a refreshing siesta we decided to explore the neighborhood a bit. I'm not quite sure how (although I'm thinking severe thirst and jet-lag had something to do with it), but somehow we ended up in a Mexican bakery, sharing a bottle of coke (aka they didn't take cards and we were too poor to buy two cokes), watching the World Cup in Spanish, and the only two people in the bakery who spoke English. Now before you get all worked up because you think I'm stereotyping Mexicans and their English-speaking abilities, you have to know that no one in the whole place actually understood us when we ordered that coke. If I've ever seen blank stares, that was it. Of course, that's why I take my linguistic dictionary, aka Matt, around everywhere I go. I'm convinced that the only language he doesn't know how to speak is Mandarin Chinese...and even there I wouldn't be surprised if he's not holding something back...


Moving on to Florida... The land of beaches, bikinis, and Flipper the Dolphin right? Well actually we weren't exactly in Miami...in fact it was more like Jacksonville. Which I'll have you know is actually the largest geographical city in the US of A folks. Just thought you should know. It also is home of the bayou. Which, if I'm going to be honest thrilled me to no end and made me imagine myself constantly on the set of Disney movie The Rescuers... This little jewel of a spot was right in Matt's uncle and aunt's neighborhood...


I love looking at pictures after the fact... Unbeknown to Matt, he's about to get an H20 dumping in about 2 minutes... (and no, I didn't dunk him in the bayou! I wasn't so sure how he'd do paired up with a gator so I left mother nature to do the water-dumping and I stayed out of it...)


Really, just enough time to take one last picture before the down-pouring...


A lizard running for cover just before the storm...

Of course, once Matt's wonderful uncles Neil and Ken realized what was happening, they jumped onto their steeds (aka a 4-door pickup) and raced to our rescue. Although soaking wet in the space of 2 minutes, we were at least under cover in just over 5.



Our next adventure began on the Ichetucknee River. Oh yes, the Sanders were goin' inner-tubing...

Can you guess which one's mine?


I'll be honest with you and tell you that yes I did ask Matt and his family if there were alligators in this river that we'd be dipping our bums into. You know the response I got? "Oh, well, I've never seen them that far up north..." For a girl who was looking for a "Heck no!" this answer was not quite as reassuring as I was hoping for... Of course you all know that I survived because I'm now writing this blog entry but I had no such guarantee at the time. Anyways, getting back to inner-tubing.

It turns out the inner-tubing down the Ichetucknee River is such a favorite pastime of the locals that there was actually a little shuttle/train to pick up us and our tubes and take us down to the drop-in site (it was all very official). On the way I even got to witness a real-live Jerry Springer Show à la Redneck on the train. It consisted of a mother and her 5 year-old son, who was embarrassed by his mother's antics with her friends. After discreetly trying to inform her of this fact, his confrontation back fired and it only made her all the louder, now yelling "Am I embarrassing you???" It also led her to make a speech about what a good mom she is and someday he'll understand that you shouldn't be so uptight about life. A real tear-jerker, let me tell you. I kept expecting the bodyguards to come up out of the swamp and separate those two. At least diagnosing the fact that it was a 5 yr old, and not a 15 yr old, who was embarrassed by his mother kept me from mulling over my almost certain and imminent death in the jaws of those gators.




















The Made-For-TV drama was over before we knew it and the real drama began. After an unsteady kerplunk off the dock into my tube I was off and floating down the river. The river, by the way, turned out to actually be an obstacle course of fallen logs, tree branches underneath, and murky shallows. Now I had a new fear to add to the list: getting poked in the you-know-where by one of those lurking tree branches. After navigating by a few fallen logs and resolving to stay only in the middle of the river, I started to relax a bit. This was fun!

As if the fun police heard my thought a big, fat, drop of water fell on my head. Uh, oh. It looked as if we were in for another H2O drenching... And that we were; water started falling on my head harder and faster than I ever thought possible. In the course of 30 seconds we were completely drenched. The dumping lasted something like 15-20 minutes. Good thing this was Florida and not Oregon, or else we would have been swamp bait for the gators. Instead it felt more like a lukewarm summer shower that only leaves you shivering during the last couple of minutes. But we survived, and after all was said and done, it was pretty fun! And the only wildlife that swam with us was a family of turtles...

Next blog entry: Georgia and North Carolina

2 comments:

Tal said...

lol I didn't realize how the title of the post makes it seem like I'm announcing to New York and Florida that I've come back to them or something...

Proud Parents said...

It was great seeing you and I love reading your posts...keep them coming.

L., Pam