Below is the harrowing story of a journey undertaken by two intrepid explorers, women unafraid of tackling the most remote and forbidding locations, even the heart of darkness known only as ... Disney WorldIn all seriousness. Jenine was supposed to organize a conference session for the Life Support and Biosphere Sciences conference, but Mom got sick so that didn't happen. Instead, Winston Huff, the conference organizer, asked Jenine to have a display at Bioventions, an exhibition about life support to be held at Epcot Center. So Jenine did, but she couldn't do it alone, so she brought Mom along to help. And that's what they were doing there.
It's always the same. I'm never ready to travel until 5 minutes before I'm ready to go. Actually, this time was a little better. I was ready a full half hour before time.
We even got to the airport very early and were able to lounge about the airport for a good long while. It also gave us plenty of time to wrestle with checking in our luggage. We had two wheelie carts, a huge heavy box of CSU promotional material, a cardboard box with the posters, the model in its specially constructed wooden case, The Abyss, mom's duffel, the computer case, and my backpack. We added tape to the model box, and tags to pretty much everything. Good thing we weren't in a hurry.
The flight was nice and bumpy; a real e-ticket. Mom was only mildly bratty. She tries her best to make life interesting. As she puts it, "I like being bad!" She's just said it now, as a matter of fact.
In Florida we went and picked up our luggage. The model came out on the conveyor with all the "this way up" arrows pointing authoritatively downward. I was so unsurprised.
We got a shuttle to Epcot. It took forever. There were about 5 stops before ours and I kept worrying the driver would toss out the model or something with someone else's luggage. And every time the bus went over a bump it would bottom out over the back wheels. We kept expecting something to fall off. All the passengers were pretty freaked out. And the more nervous the passengers got, the crazier the driver drove.
The traffic at disney world was obscene. We were so glad that we weren't driving, even if the driver's performance scared the pants off us. The Port Orleans resort hotel was beautiful and impressive. A bellman loaded our metric ton of luggage onto a cart so we could go check in without having to drag it around with us. Then when we got up to the room we called the bell desk and they brought it all up to us. Pretty flash.
Walking through the hotel grounds is supposed to be like walking through New Orleans. I've never been there, so I can't vouch for the authenticity, but I imagine the real New Orleans isn't so clean and quiet. But that's kind of what disney is all about. They take the real world, scrub it up and make it nice, and present it as a clean, safe alternative to reality. That's what fantasies are all about after all, right? It's a condensed world that can only exist in dreams.
The design of the buildings at the hotel is akin to the old garden district mansions. There are big squares and very neat parks between the buildings. The pool is decorated in mardi gras style with a giant sea serpent looping around and over the pool, serving as bridges and waterslides.
The hotel room is beautiful. It's very fancily decorated in american french style. The furniture is exquisite. Mom and I had no trouble settling right in, but we didn't stay long.
We asked the bellhop where we should go for dinner, and he told us there was a boat that would take us from the hotel to disney downtown, where pleasure island is. There are also shops and restaurants and other clubs outside pleasure island. There is a ghirardelli chocolate factory and a GIANT lego store. Outside the lego store are these incredible and fanciful lego structures. Spaceships and dragons and even lego tourists snoring on the benches and taking pictures of lego robots.
Disney downtown was apparently where everyone stuck in the traffic we had seen were headed. It was packed. The first two restaurants we went to had very long waiting lines, and since it was already past 9:00 we didn't want to wait. We ended up going through the wolfgang puck express. We had chicken and fries. They were delicious. But so expensive!
I didn't get to sleep until after midnight.
I had set the alarm for 5:15 because we needed to be at Epcot at 6:45 and we weren't sure how we were getting there. We ended up having to call a cab because the buses weren't running yet, and all the extra drivers at the hotel were busy with the mini marathon fun run.
We got to Epcot right at 6:45 am. It was dark, and there was no one there. We wandered around a bit and found some other exhibitors who were also waiting. Someone from disney showed up (not the person we were expecting) and stood out in the cold with us for about a half hour. Finally, she took us to an auditorium where the people we were expecting to see had been sitting and casually waiting for us along with some other exhibitors. Nice of them to leave us standing in the cold, where we were TOLD to wait for them, for so long.
Ok, I was a little annoyed.
They went through a little orientation spiel and took us to the exhibit hall. Our spot was in a dark little corner (the lights were broken). We had an electrical outlet that wasn't getting power and a phone line which actually worked. There were plenty of easels, so we set up our posters and the rest of our display. Surprisingly, it didn't look so bad, all green and gold and Colorado state-y. I'd have a picture up with this right now, but I blew up the snappy camera by plugging it into the modem's power supply.
Oops.
We finished setting up all we could and then headed back to the hotel. We had worn our "show clothes" and wanted to change into "play clothes" before having some fun at Epcot.
We decided to take a little break at the hotel before heading back out because we were so tired. But it was a lovely day outside, so we had to relax at the pool bar of course. And a couple of margaritas couldn't hurt our relaxing, either. We lounged pool side sipping our drinks, soaking up the heat and the sunshine, watching the kids frolic in the huge pool with the waterfall and waterslide. That's when we decided for certain that we were in paradise.
We finished our drinks and headed down to the boat dock because mom wanted to ride the boat during the day. But we waited and waited and the boat didn't come and I got impatient, so we took the bus back to Epcot.
Our bioventions passes got us in the gate. Whee! We started with the "living seas" exhibit because that is one of my favorites. The sense of being under hundreds of feet of water became oppressive to mom so we didn't stay long. Next we went to "the land" which we both enjoyed much more. We had lunch at the food court there, then went on the ride. The agricultural research being done there is so cool, we want to apply it all to our garden next year.
From there we went and made reservations for dinner at the teppanyaki restaurant in japan. We stopped at spaceship earth while we were there. I had not gone to spaceship earth the first time i was here because someone said it wasn't that cool.
They were wrong.
Spaceship earth ROCKS. It's about 20 minutes long and is similar in style to the haunted house ride, except of course not scary. But it's way FUN. Then we went to horizons, which is THE coolest ride in Epcot. We vowed to go back there every day.
From there we crossed into the world showcase. Mexico's ride was down but there was a great mariachi band playing. The line for the norway ride was too long, so we satisfied our curiosity in the stave church display. Very cool. In china we saw little boy gymnasts and a woman playing a chinese dulcimer inside the temple of heaven. We didn't go to the 360vision movie because mom's feet were hurting her and you have to stand for the movie.
This is why I wear uncomfortable shoes. I'm a deathmarcher and I have pretty much unlimited range on foot. If I wore comfortable shoes, I would grind my travel companions into the ground even more. So hobbling myself with shoes that cause significant pain after a couple hours is a good thing, at least for them. Even though the shoes I'm wearing aren't as bad as they were when we were in Europe, where they kept me from grinding Nat into the ground. I put in some Dr. Scholl's inserts and they don't give me spasms in the spots where my arches should be anymore. But they still give me blisters on my toes and heels.
Italy has a beautiful showcase, designed mostly around Venice. I didn't notice that last time I was here, because I had never been there before but this time it was easy to identify landmarks and buildings of Venice. We stopped in a little shop and I bought some olive oil and vinegar from Italy (something you'd THINK I'd have bought when I was really THERE, huh? Right. We were too busy in Europe to shop).
Disney has a cool little system for people staying in the resorts now. Your room key is also a full-use credit card linked to your own card. You can use it in all the Disney restaurants and shops and what-have-you. And when you shop you can just ask them to send your purchases back to your room so you don't have to carry them. This makes shopping too much fun and encourages more spending. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on your point of view, I guess. *grin*
We continued around world showcase, stopping to see some african drummers at the outpost, and a "honkey tonk" band at the american ampitheatre. We learned that here "honkey tonk" actually means "bluegrass with a drum set." Even still, they were pretty good. We didn't stay long because we wanted to catch the next showing of "the american adventure" animatronic show. That was spectacular. Animatronic technology has gotten so good. Sometimes it was very hard to see that they weren't real people. The show also featured film and music. The show must have been updated within the past couple of years because not only was it really nice, it was also very politically correct. Or corrected. And the ending video/music sequences brought tears to everyone's eyes including ours. Well, every american's, anyways. I don't imagine it would have that same effect on someone from another country. as a matter of fact, it could just piss them off. We loved it.
We headed next door to japan as it was about time for our dinner reservation. We were seated with a family of 6 from new york. They were three generations of genuine long island jews. And as a bonus, the matriarch of the family was half Puerto Rican. The youngest were rachel (about 4) and Matthew (18 months). They were so cute. We had great conversation with them throughout dinner.
Mom ordered the steak and shrimp, I had the steak and scallops. To drink we had fruity mixed drinks with umbrellas, mine strawberry and mom's peach. What a feast and what fun.
It was 8:00 when we left the restaurant and we were pretty tired, but we just couldn't leave. We stopped in morocco and fell in love with everything and everyone. There were dancers and musicians performing in the courtyard. Mom and I shopped and she picked out a gift for Joshua. I flirted shamelessly with the cashier, but only because he started it. And Mom's no help at all I tell you.
After the decadent shopping we went back to the courtyard where there were contortionists and acrobats. Again, one of them was blatantly flirting, and I worried he'd miss a flip or something because he just wasn't paying attention. It's so oddly disconcerting. You have to wonder if disney tells them to do that.
Sex and Liquor. There are two things you don't expect from disney, but they're all over Epcot center. Almost every country in world showcase has some sort of streetside beverage cart serving everything from champagne to margaritas. And many of the street performers are openly suggestive in one way or another, be they 'anatomically correct' robot dancers or flirting moroccan acrobats. It's like disney's answer to las vegas trying to become the next great family vacation destination. When do the roulette tables move in?
Not that I'm complaining. I'm having a great time.
It was after 8:30 and we needed to find a place to watch the illuminations. We ended up at a bench near canada where a band was just setting up to play. On stage were five canadian boys in kilts. Drums, keyboards, bass, lead guitar and ... bagpipes. The band's name was "off kilter" and they rocked hard. It was the funniest and most wonderful thing. And they were so cute, and they worked those skirts, I tell you. The bass player was something else, and he would turn his ass to the crowd and give a little wiggle, eliciting screams of delight from every female in the audience.
Ahem.
It could be that there are too many pictures of "off kilter" on my roll of film, but that's only because when the bass player saw me aiming the camera at them he POSED. Rowr rowr. We're going back to see them again on Tuesday.
And as if that wasn't enough to finish off the day with paroxysms
of decadent joy, that was when illuminations started. Lights,
lasers, music, fireworks, water spouts. Aye caramba, it was a
delight. It went on and on and amazed everyone. After that
it was all we could do to limp to the bus stop and climb on one
of the billion buses waiting to shuttle everyone home to bed.
The alarm was set for 6:15. I ignored it, ending up rising around 10 to 7. We left the hotel at about 7:45 and caught an 8:10 bus. Our bioventions badges got us through the ticket line and into the park about 3 minutes before they opened the floodgates to the anxiously awaiting horde.
There was still no light over our booth. But we did have palms! And it wasn't too long before someone brought in a lightbulb that actually worked in the fixture. This only took 22 hours to accomplish. Apparently disney is not quite as squeakily efficient as they'd have us believe.
Bioventions was being organized by Shawn Bails form Epcot event planning. She was being helped by a guy named Dan. Dan was a real damn character. So bizarre. He was a couple years younger than Mom, and he was completely in love with Mom. He would hang out at our table for hours just talking and talking and talking. And the stories he told are a novel in themselves. Bizarre.
Shawn is a bubbly fading southern debutante. She's been at Epcot for 7 years and desperately wants to leave. She wants to move to Tennessee. Dan is helping her find a good job in Tennessee because he wants her job. It was all very strange.
The doors were open when we got there and there were a few visitors in the hall already. A young asian girl spent a good 15 or 20 minutes carefully reading every poster of ours and all the CSU information. We thought that was a good sign. Otherwise, the exhibition was sparsely attended in the morning because the disney marathon was being run and the course markers effectively blocked off access to the hall. So things started out slow which was ok because it gave everyone time to get into the groove.
The most common question we got was "what is Colorado State doing here?" To which I would reply, "representing ourselves as the premier space exploration research institution in the nation. A lot of people actually bought this. After all, there we were at Epcot, and there weren't any other universities, were there? So it must be true! ha.
We handed out a lot of CSU brochures, even to some people who were actually looking for a university. Some folks whose kids all go to CSU came by and gave us a copy of the bioventions promotion flier epcot has been handing out at the gate. The write-up about the CEISS table was very good and exactly described our exhibit. It should since I wrote it. But until we saw it, I wasn't really sure what they were printing.
An aging hippy came by, he had presented a paper at the ls&bs conference. He says he has made his house a nearly-closed loop ecosystem. He described the whole system and some of his research results to us. He's going to send me a copy of his paper because he didn't have one with him. It sounded very interesting, even if he was crazy. But the best thing was he knew he was a crazy hippy and he just didn't care. He made things work and he got results. What more do you want? He adored our display, oohing and ahhing over the posters. "Wow, you guys did a great job." "Yeah, it's amazing what you can do with a color ink jet printer and a glue stick, huh?" mom and I got a big kick out of that. The posters do NOT look great, they look like they were made by a fifth grader. But hey, it was nice of him to say.
We got a young computer engineering student, a cute young student, I might add, who came over to talk to us because "you all look lonely over here." He was very nice and polite and we chatted about space exploration for a very long time.
A three-generation family came in, one member of which was a frustrated space cadet. We call him the sad man. He had chosen to go into a profession where he could actually make a living, construction. The light in his eyes as he read the posters and asked me questions about our projects was almost painful to see. You could just tell all he wanted was to be a space explorer. It made me feel very lucky to do what I do.
There were a bazillion Brazilians in Epcot today. They were all in tour groups, being led by guides carrying little flags. We gave them all brochures and special information about international student admissions.
So we had a number of very interesting characters come by, and time moved pretty quickly until about 2:30 when things got really slow. The last two and a half hours took forever to pass. But finally it was over and we were free.
We dropped off the computer at a locker and went and rode spaceship earth again. Then we went and saw "the universe of energy," which was kind of weird because it's actually "Ellen meets jurassic park." and yes, we do mean that Ellen, the Ellen, and I don't know about you but she's not the first person i think of when I think disney. It was weird. It was made more and less surreal by the fact that her sidekick was Bill Nye the science guy. The ride through dinosaur country involved getting spit or sneezed on by a variety of prehistoric creatures. Yahoo!
Reading this, you may think I didn't like this attraction. You would be wrong. I thought it was great. Did I mention that Alex Trebeck and Jamie Lee Curtis were in it, too? They were. But it was really Ellen's show. And even though I don't usually find her funny, I liked her here. That's just like disney, they take something from real life that isn't so great and make it perfect. It even works with actors, apparently.
From there we went to the "wonders of life" pavillion and saw cranium commandos and body wars. Whee. Then we rode "horizons" again which was kind of disappointing because the speaker in our car didn't work. By the time we got out of there it was after 7:30. No wonder Epcot takes so long to see, all the attractions last over 20 minutes a piece. Not that I'm complaining, most of the rides I didn't want to ever end. Being here like this, without access to any parks but Epcot, is very freeing. There is no pressure to see it all. We can just take our time and see everything here at this park. We don't have to rush and only see 'the good stuff.' We can choose to idle over the minor exhibits if we choose. It's great. There's so much stuff here I didn't see during my first trip.
We are not Vikings
For dinner we went to Norway. "Forgive me father, for I have sinned. I have had impure thoughts about a 20 year old Norwegian boy." Excuse me while I put a quarter in the can.
The restaurant offered a smorgasbord style buffet. The whole place smelled of fish. The waitrons and hosts all wore norwegian costume, and not one of them were over the age of 25.
A host by the name of Oyvid led us to our table, shortly afterwards our waiter, Odd Rune, came to the table. His name is pronounced "ode rood," but you can't just say the two syllables, you have to take a sharp intake of breath between and after the two words. "Ohhhh-dah Rooooo-dah."
We gave odd rune our drink orders, told him we wanted to go all viking, so he brought us two 20 oz ringnes beers in viking horn-shaped glasses. Then he led us to the buffet where he briefed us on how everything worked.
There was way too much food. A chatty woman behind us in the line to the buffet remarked that this was her fourth trip up. She said she was only going for "a little cheese for dessert" but instead of heading straight to the cheese, she stayed behind us to look over the line one more time, "just in case there was anything i missed." She said the waiters told her that if you finish 7 plates full you were a real Viking. The first thing in the line was salad, and then 7 different varieties of herring. Herring in mustard sauce, herring in brandy sauce, etc. etc. etc. Then mackerel and salmon and stuffed pork and something called meat salad and cold scrambled eggs. It just went on and on. Even taking just tiny bits of everything our plates were full before we made it to the hot dishes.
We took our plates back to the table to eat. Odd Rune came by a couple of times to check on us. The beer was delicious and strong and went straight to our heads. Mom took a dumb picture of me and I took a picture of her with odd rune. We both went back for a plate of hot food: skewered meat with peppers and onions, poached salmon, venison, meatballs, fish soup. It became obvious that we would not be going back four times, or even a third. We are not Vikings.
Mom commented on the fact that children seemed to be running the restaurant. Shortly afterwards an older woman came out to the hosting stand. "Ah, there's the adult." "She looks like a madam." "That's exactly what I thought." "Perhaps this is just a front for a brothel and that's why Odd Rune flirts so." "We can only hope."
And Odd Rune did indeed flirt, even if it was only to sell dessert, which he did. We couldn't resist when he brought out that tray and in slow and lascivious details described each of the sweet delights he had to offer. The tease.
The madam came to our table and asked how we were enjoying ourselves and we told her we were having a wonderful time and that Odd Rune was a fabulous waiter, but sadly she did not offer him to us. We were hoping we could have him sent back to the room just like the packages from our shopping expeditions. Ah, well.
By the time we got out of there it was almost 9:00 and people were lined up for illuminations. We were moving pretty slowly and the show started before we were half out of the park. We didn't stick around to watch though. Last night the bus driver told us EPCOT stood for "every person comes out tired" and we know how true that was. It had been a long enough, hard enough, fun enough day and we just wanted to go back to the hotel and watch x-files. So we did.
EPCOT actually stands for "experimental prototype community of tomorrow."
Picture a dark room. A hint of early morning light can be seen through the blinds.
A voice sings out, "Jeniney. It's 7:35!"
"Oh fuck."
For the next 15 minutes there is nothing but blur. At 8:00 am the room is empty and quiet.
Big deal. It's not like anyone is in a hurry around disney. Though one exhibitor who didn't get in until 9:00 was chastised by the ticket booth person for being late. Hee. We made it in by just a little after 8:30 anyway. Plenty early. Not that it mattered. The morning was dead. We might have not even bothered.
Things picked up a little the later it got, but there were plenty of lulls when there was just nobody in there. I spent about 20 minutes to a half hour talking to an italian family. They had all sorts of questions about space. There were three of them, two older parents and a daughter who I guessed to be about my age. The daughter is a veterinary assistant who is working on the new disney wild animal park. She is the light of her parent's lives for sure. She is also very interested in space exploration and was very interested in the poster about Dr. Fettman. Their questions were pretty neat in that they were easy and they led us down the row of posters one by one from inflatable structures through physiology to food processing to celss. They left before we got to political science.
There are two kinds of question askers. Laymen who ask easy question like "is there gravity on the moon?" And there are the techies who ask hard questions like "where's the door?" "how fast does the air leak out?" I sure like the easy questions.
Today the sad man came back. The sad man came in sunday first with his wife, parents, and little girl. The sad man is in construction, but all he really wants is to be an astronaut. He stares and stares at the model and asks the hard questions. We used the computer to look up the lunar prospector's progress. He came back twice today. He asked some questions, told me a bit about some of the new advances he's using with his construction company, but mostly he just stared at the model. It's enough to break our hearts.
And then there was Lars. Lars has dark auburn hair and deep blue eyes. And he isn't afraid to use them. Not only unafraid, he's unapologetic about it, the bastard. Lars lives in Florence, Italy and was working the international space university booth. He's a space architect. We have so much in common. I wasn't actually at our table when Lars came by, but mom made sure he came and hunted me down where I was looking at someone else's booth. Thanks, mom. Lars wants to go back to grad school. "Where is the best place to pursue space related studies?" he asks. Oh god.
There was jack taub, the Finnish Jew. He's a retired mathematician and was at the lsbs conference with his wife, who is a renowned zoologist. He talked to us for a good long time while his wife walked around all the booths. They are going on a cruise in the carribean next month for the sole purpose of seeing the full solar eclipse. They booked it 2 years ago. They love each other and they love their lives and they're very happy to be at disney world in January.
There was a crazy mexican professor of something or other who seemed convinced he spoke great english because he spoke a lot but we couldn't understand a darn word. He was hilarious though. We knew that because he would punctuate the punch lines with silly gestures. Tongue out, thumbs in ears, fingers wiggling. He seemed to be ranting about the state of collegiate education and saying something about starting his own program and gee, this looks great, let me take all this information here and i think i'll base my program on CSU! Yeah! Okeydoke, professor.
We were visited by a self-assured and quiet man who told us, "I'm a graduate of CSU. I start space companies. I'm on my fourth one now. If I can help the program, let me know. Here's my card." Tom Taylor. Hello!
We did actually luck out and get a couple of bright-eyed high school juniors who were actually thinking about college. One was hot on space exploration, the other was into some fine arts discipline, but she would just love to live in Colorado. We also got the requisite horde of one bazillion brazilian teenagers, and we got brochures and international student information into all of their hands. So some actual outreach did get done between the twiddling of thumbs and networking.
Our plan for the evening was to have dinner in Canada and head back to the hotel to do some laundry, and get an early night in. One of the other exhibitors, a guy a little older than me came over and was discussing evening plans with us. He wanted to go to the boardwalk to check out the clubs and restaurants there. Mom and I noticed that his hints were leaning hard towards us going with him, though he didn't say as much straight out. Discussing it later we both mentioned that he gave the impression of being on the make. He wasn't wearing a ring, but he did mention he had a 5 year old son. And my ring is prominent enough. It gave mom the creeps so she supressed her natural impulse to become everyone's best friend and we escaped alone.
O Canada!
As we walked into world showcase we heard the dulcet tones of bagpipe and electric guitars. Mmmmm, the boys in kilts. everyone in epcot just loves the boys in kilts. We know this because we ask. We were just in time for their last couple of songs, and coincidentally we had just enough time before our dinner reservation for a hand shake and a photo. WooWOO.
The canadian restaurant is a steakhouse. As usual the hosts and waitrons are efficient and friendly. Marianne led us to the table, stopping to help a customer who was irate and rude. Marianne kept her cool, and she was right, we knew it and told her so. Robin was our waitress. She's from Stoney Creek, Ottowa and we probably talked to her for 20 minutes. We almost felt guilty about keeping her from doing her job, but she was just so nice and we were having such a good time talking to her.
We were having a good time full stop. We were blissfully happy. We were decadently satisfied. I had a beer and mom had ice tea. Mom ordered maple baked salmon and I had the prime rib served with fresh ground horseradish. This was so good that the first bite caused my eyes to close and toes to curl.
I'm not sure how, but things just keep getting better.
Mom wants funnel cake. There's only one place to get it and it's half the world showcase away. Between it and us is the gauntlet of England, France, Morocco. We need to get out of epcot and do laundry! We need to get to bed early! It's not going to be easy. First we got sucked into England's carefully trimmed gardens, and from there into a shop. Oh my. At least we got out of there for less than twenty bucks.
Oh no. Forward progress impeded by the sound of Off Kilter launching into their act. Resist! Resist! Move on!
We make it past morocco without being drawn into the shops or the crowd of people around the dancers. Finally, we're at the funnel cake stand. "Two, please."
Quick, get going! But there's a really good REAL honky tonk band playing at the American Pavillion. They're loud and they're launching into Van Morrison and we're never going to get out of here. But look, there's a boat that will whisk us across the lagoon and we can go home.
We made it. I put in a load of laundry then went into the hotel store and bought a pair of mickey shorts. I changed into them at the pool locker room and went and sat with my feet in the hot tub while the clothes dried. Ooh, that felt so good. My poor abused feet needed it badly.
It's a beautiful night. The air is warm and soft, and the sky is clear and bright with the full moon. It's obvious that when disney designed 'Pirates of the Carribean' they based it on the florida sky. This is january? I don't believe it.
Mom and I have eliminated the need to speak to one another. We are now thinking the same thoughts at the same time at all times. It's seriously freaky.
After dinner:
"How is it that..."
"Every dinner is more fun than the night before?"
"Yes, exactly."
Walking back to the room at the end of the day:
"It's amazing what a difference..."
"Tying your shoes a little looser makes."
*thwap* *thwap* *thwap*
It's not that we read each other's minds, it's just that we're thinking the exact same thing all the time. We've decided to just skip talking all together. There's no point anymore.
Today was a slow day. Traffic was very very low, and we didn't even get any interesting people. We did get some prospective student interest, which is the whole point of course, but doesn't keep us occupied for long. the day just dragged by.
The only interesting thing that happened was a presentation by Dr. Bernard Harris, an M.D. and astronaut. He talked about space medicine and physiology. Nothing new to me, but he was really interesting and funny. And there was a big crowd for his talk. For a while there the hall was actually crowded. But our table was quiet as midnight. For some reason, we just weren't pulling people in all of a sudden. It was seriously demoralizing and we just wanted it to end.
Kurt Micheels came by, and later on Marc Cohen. I'm going to attend the afternoon space architecture session tomorrow. This is going to be no fun for mom, and I'm sorry for that, but I still think it's important for me to go to the session. I need to meet with Marc about our ICES session.
We had a reporter for UPI in today. He asked me some questions and I tried to explain in laymen's terms, but it looks like I was still too high level. Mom said she could see my words flying straight over his head. I tried to start easy. "There's no air on the moon. There is gravity." For some people, you just can't start low enough.
Eight and a half hours of boredom. And the music they play in the future world showcase at epcot is starting to get to me. They play the same half hour loop of synth music over and over again. It's permanently embedded in my brane. I keep whistling it and mom hits me.
As hard as it was to believe, 5:00 finally came. We packed up and went to 'journey into the imagination' where we saw 'honey, I shrunk the audience,' a Captain EO style 3D movie experience that was actually pretty cool. I'm not going to tell you any more about it because it has to be a surprise and you're just going to have to see it yourself. Let's just say that we screamed like little girls.
We walked over to the world showcase, slowly past Canada. there wasn't an 'off kilter' show for another hour. Damn. We walked through England, just so we knew what was all there. Not much. Then on to France. Again, not too much, pretty buildings, shops, food.
We stopped in Morocco to shop for rugs. We didn't buy one, but we did see some spectacular art and architecture there. Morocco is really stunning.
The plan was to go to the Boardwalk for dinner and nighttime recreation. We took a boat from epcot to Boardwalk. It was a nice ride past the beach and yacht club resorts, and the dolphin and swan hotels. It's a spectacular view, disney has done a real job on the area. The boardwalk is great. We had dinner at a restaurant called 'the flying fish.' We sat at a bar where you watch the chefs prepare the food. What fun, what fun! The chefs were funny and entertaining.
I ordered a bottle of wine and appetizer sampler to start. The wine came first, a really smooth monterey chardonnay. Our waiter, who was so funny and nice, poured us out glasses, and before I could blink, mom had downed half of hers. Oh no. "Could we have two glasses of water, please?"
Within 10 minutes, mom was hammered beyond recognition. I ordered dinner for us, scallops for me, a 2 inch thick pork chop for mom. Mom was giddy, flushed, flirting with all the cooks. Towards the middle of her second glass she was having to lean on the wall for support.
The food was good, but sparse. Kind of european style, going for finesse rather than quantity. Presentation was a high priority, and they used an artful application of different sauces and garnish (no beak) to make each plate look very pretty. Everything was delicious. The pork chop, aside from being the thickest pork chop I've ever seen, was served with apple sauce, cabbage marinated in apples and cinnamon, and cheese potatoes. The scallops were served in a bowl with two different sauces, mussels, and 'pearl pasta,' aka little pasta balls, about half the size of a beebee.
We finished our meal and our waiter came by. "You know what? i forgot to give you guys bread!" "Yeah, I was wondering what these little plates were for." Mom was giggling out of control, so I negotiated what our waiter would bring us in exchange. My first suggestion was stupid. Another bottle of wine! Thank GOD he said no. he agreed to bring us dessert. I chose their famous "lava cake" which the people next to us (fellow coloradoans) had been talking about.
Again with the lava cake, presentation was everything, quantity was low. But oh...my...god, was it good. It was served with a small scoop of ice cream and a sliced strawberry. These sat on either side of the small, souffle-like chocolate cake. A chocolate glaze was dripped over it. "Why is it called lava cake?" I asked our waiter. "Cut into it." When we did, a thick, viscous chocolate poured out of it. It was magical and spectacularly delicious.
To finish off the dinner, we were allowed back behind the bar to pose for a picture with the cook staff. Woohoo!
We walked around the boardwalk for a while. It's so pretty. There are shops and clubs and carnival games and rental bikes. We tried 'Jellyroll,' the dueling piano bar that employees of disney say is a "must see." They didn't have any good beers, and the two pianos were SO LOUD. It was just out of fucking control. The place was sparsely populated, and we figure that had to be because of the noise. We had been told by another exhibitor that he had to leave the place because it was so loud. Instead, we went to a microbrewery there on the boardwalk. We enjoyed the view across the lagoon while I sampled their red ale. It was ok, good body, great color, nice smell, but too bitter.
We went looking for the bus stop. This led us through the Boardwalk Hotel. You talk about *flash*. This place is beautiful. We had to just sit down in the lobby for a while and soak it in. Then we went out on the veranda and sat out there for a while. Then, as we walked out to the bus stop we stopped in the rotunda because there was the biggest divan we'd ever seen and we just had to sit on it. This thing was over 6 feet tall, it looked like it was built for giants. It was upholstered in three different fabrics, green and orange stripes and one plaid. It was a stunning, fabulous piece. Mom swore that sometime she would stay at that hotel. I'd like to, as well. Aye caramba.
We took the bus to disney downtown, then the boat back to the hotel. Truth is, we weary. We love the luxury, the decadence, the fun, but everything is so expensive, and after a while, that gets kind of tiring. One more day of exhibition, then a half day on our own, then home again home again.
Every night mom falls asleep and then wakes back up again panicked that she hasn't taken her medicine. She has. And I've been having nightmares about someone trying to kill us. I only know this because apparently I've been screaming in my sleep and mom feels obliged to tell me about it in the morning. Whee.
Last day of Bioventions! Started the same as the other days. Traffic was slow again, but there was some good interest. The morning went by pretty quickly, mostly because I was logged in, I think. I was following the lunar prospector data downloads. You can see the spacecraft status, realtime data, and a graphic showing the spacecraft location. Pretty cool, and it got some people to stop and come talk to us. Nifty.
We had met an older couple from Boston on the bus from Port Orleans. They were very friendly and we talked quite a lot while waiting for the bus. Today, they came by our table to say hello. Mom was off getting breakfast. They said, "well, when your firend gets back, make sure to tell them we said goodbye." "You mean my mom?" There was a lengthy pause while they tried to decide whether or not I was kidding. For a moment there I thought they were going to call me a liar. "Your actual mom?" "Yes."
This was pretty much how it was all week. Nobody could believe mom was my mom. "She looks way too young!" I'm not sure how I should take it. But mom spent the entire time giggling with flattered joy.
The weather was getting cloudy, reflecting our moods at this being our last day and having to sit at the table, all alone for all of it.
At 1:00 pm I headed over to Coronado Springs Resort to see the last half of the conference session on space architecture. It was being chaired by Marc Cohen, with whom I am co-chairing a similar session at ICES next year. My friends Kurt Micheels and Alice Eichold were presenting papers and I wanted to see them.
Coronado Springs is one of the new hotel/resort/conference centers on the disney world property. It's an abomination. Everything is built oversized and painted in bright, cartoon colors. The whole thing looks like a badly animated cartoon. large uninterrupted stretches of bright color on forced faux architectural elements give a sense of unreality which might be good for disney, but this was a conference center. Please. I'm glad we weren't staying there.
I wandered around the monstrous front hall for a while before finding the room where the session was being held. Terry Cox was there in the room. He's the crazy hippy from indiana who built his own house on highly renewable, recyclable principles. I thought he had said that he had already presented his paper, but no. So I got to see it. Jun Okushi was there also. He's an architect from japan that I have known for a while.
The session was very interesting. Tom Taylor, the self-assured CSU grad entrepeneur who had visited us, gave a presentation about his newest space business venture, an orbiting tourist facility constructed out of used space shuttle external tanks. Two of the things he expressed need for were structural engineers and interior decorators. Mom and I will have to send him resumes. Whee!
Terry Cox's presentation was a riot. He's not accustomed to speaking to an audience, and he didn't have much prepared. He had some eyechart viewgraphs with tiny text and a bunch of 35 mm slides depicting the construction and outfitting of his house, including pictures of their furniture and decorating. After all that he didn't have nearly enough time to go over the actual life support system aspects. This was a drag, because he really has done some extremely cool work and there were a lot of questions afterwards which made the session run over a little bit.
After Terry there was a crazy Mexican professor, who may or may not have been the same crazy Mexican professor who came to visit our booth. He didn't look like the same person, but maybe he just scrubs up real well. He is an architect of some reknown, he uses truss systems to create extremely lightweight structures. He works with geodesic domes a lot. He was describing the architecture for a new university called "the university of the sun," which is being built right now. But before he got to all that he spent 10 minutes going over a view graph of a poster that was hanging on the wall of the session room depicting the history of humanity and architecture and energy and who knows what else, but it was very funny. The pictures on the poster were very tiny, most of them were indiscernible, but the point of this introductory slide seemed to be that architecture design was leading to enclosing larger spaces in less time. And that was apparently what his structures do. Then he got into the good stuff, showing some truly incredible structures they had built in almost no time that weighed almost nothing but looked beautiful and enclosed huge areas. I wish I had some pictures of the structure he is proposing, and he doesn't have any up on his web page yet.
Kurt's paper was good. He's using our inflatable module to design an exploratory Martian base. He has done a lot of work on it since I last saw him and it's getting pretty cool. He says next time he'll have more pretty pictures, and he should, that's what architects do best!
Alice presented her lunar crater base which has evolved some since the first time I saw it but still needs a lot of work. There are a lot of technical issues that need to be addressed. But it's starting to come together, and it sure is a neat idea.
Alice was going to be staying in our room that night, so I made plans to meet her later. Marc and I talked and we decided to all get together for dinner that night. I got a ride back to epcot with Deborah Snyder and Sally Silverstone. They were two of the people who helped organize bioventions and the ls&bs conference with Winston Huff.
When I got back mom was tearing down the display early and I thought she had gotten the go-ahead so I started tearing down and then I got in trouble and it was all her fault. She is so bad. She is a very bad girl.
At 5:00 we actually got to tear down. It didn't take long, and it was nice how our whole big display fit into such a small space. We hadn't managed to organize a ride back to the hotel so we dragged everything onto the bus. This wasn't as difficult as we had feared.
Shawn Bails, the Epcot events planner who was in charge of Bioventions brought us little gift bags with glass disney world mugs and 1-day complimentary park passes. That was so nice of her.
We were supposed to meet the architects at 6:30 at Coronado. We left at 6:00. Unfortunately, it took an hour to get there. They were plenty impatient when we got there, standing out front waiting. We all piled into too few cars. Five of us went in Alice's tiny toyota. And we're not talking 5 small people.
When Alice met mom she shook her hand slowly, then blinked. Blinked again, "but, she's my age." Apparently it hadn't occured to her that I was young enough to have a mother her age. Mom was again tickled pink.
One of the other vehicles was Terry Cox's van, which he had reportedly been living in instead of shelling out the $115 a night for a hotel room. Lars was also there, along with a girl named Barbara who is from Vienna. Alice was there and Jun and Kurt, and a couple of people I had not met before.
We drove for about an hour, out of Disney World and into Kissimee for dinner at a Cuban restaurant. The place was pretty empty and they just happened to have a table that was almost big enough for all of us. We started out with Cuban beer and fried plantains, which were delicious and rapidly devoured. I sat between two men I had not met before, and across from a young Japanese girl who spoke very little english. The man on my right, Tom Garvey, lives in Japan and spoke Japanese, so he acted as a sort of translater. He had a trouble explaining to her what "Inflatable Structures" meant. Jun translated. In Japanese inflatable structures is kuki maku kozo. The Japanese girl was sent into fits of giggles when I tried to say this.
Lars and Terry were deep in conversation at one corner of the table so I went over there to find out what they were talking about. Terry is far more bizarre than I think I have expressed thus far. Marc told us that he had to talk Terry through the paper writing to make sure it didn't include any "lithium fusion engines like the government obtained from the spacecraft which crashed in Roswell." Terry and Lars had been talking about past lives and aliens, etc. Terry told me that the B-2 bomber has anti-gravity capability. News to me!
Mom was at the far end of the table sitting between Alice and a NASA employee named Loretta. Loretta is quite a trick. She's in her early 20s and very attractive. She was enthralled with pretty much everything mom had to say. Once in a while I could hear her asking mom leading questions. At one point they went into the details of mom's illness last summer, and in my slightly-inebriated-on-Cuban-beer state this made me very depressed.
Someone asked me what I was going to do when/if I graduated. I said, "ask Marc for a job, i guess. And he'll say, "no."" Marc said, "Not necessarily." Cool.
Mom and I both had pork for dinner, served with a Cuban tamale, casava and mixed rice with beans. Faboo. Makes my mouth water just to think of it.
Alice bought our dinner because she was going to stay in our room. Even still I ended up putting $15 into the kitty because when the calculator came out so that everyone could calculate what they owed, I knew that the wait staff was going to get stiffed. As it was, we ended up leaving a pretty good tip. Mom bought a t-shirt.
It took a long time for everyone to say goodbye after dinner because this was the end of the conference. Alice dropped Marc and Kurt off at the Coronado and took us back to Port Orleans. We stayed up and talked for a long time before falling fast asleep.
The plan had been to sleep in. These plans were rudely disgarded when the alarm clock in the empty room next door to ours went off. For the next half hour we got to listen to it blare while I called to housekeeping and then to the hotel manager trying to get someone to shut the fucking thing off. I was furious. So much for a relaxing and happy last day.
We had the passes to Epcot from Shawn which we could have used but we didn't want to use them because we had to leave around 4:00 and we were getting a late start anyway. Alice left at 9:00 to go pick up Marc and go see Celebration, which is Disney's attempt at a perfect community. It sounds pretty cool, but people have said it's kind of scary to see.
We had made an appointment while we were at the Boardwalk to get a tour of Disney's version of timeshare vacation ownership. Mostly this was just an excuse to get inside the rental units. I wasn't fond of the plan at all, because it isn't really ownership, but just leasing. Your $10k plus annual maintenance fees doesn't buy you anything, it leases use of Disney property for 45 years. So after 45 years you've got nothing but memories and photographs, and it isn't much cheaper than just staying at the hotels. The only bonus is that you get to stay at really nice places. And if you were committed to taking annual disney vacations, it would be the way to go. The units were fantastically luxurious and the facilities were spectacular and it made us long to truly be part of the bourgoisie lifestyle we had tasted this past week.
It was interesting, and there was no high-pressure sales pitch, so it wasn't bad. And afterwards they bought us a delicious lunch. We took their materials and went on our way.
We took the bus to Epcot and got on the monorail for a tour of all of Disney World. It was raining. We were tired. Sitting on our asses on the train seemed just right for us. We oohed and ahhed at the fancy hotels we passed, but felt no urge to get off the train and go explore like we had the Boardwalk. I did insist, however, that we go to the Wilderness Lodge. Everyone we had talked to had said that it was beyond fantastic, and being from Colorado we would really like it.
Oh. My. God.
It's indescribable. The hotel itself is sort of like the Grand Canyon North Rim Lodge, only 5 times larger. There are waterfalls and hills and trees out back, and a wooden boardwalk leading to fake geysers that look exactly like they'd been lifted right out of Yellowstone. The stone fireplace in the main lobby had rows of wooden rockers parked in front of it. The stones making the chimney were quarried from the grand canyon and assembled in such a way that as you moved up it, it gave an accurate representation of the geological stratification of the grand canyon. There were interpretive displays on each floor explaining the layer of rock you could see at that level. Comfy chairs and couches abounded and we parked our butts right down and just marveled at the wonder of the place. The lobby looked straight up the 8 or so floors of the lodge, and two totem poles stood on either side of the lobby rising all the way to the roof. All the hanging chandeliers had stretched leather shades. Everything was stupendously well done.
Our airport shuttle was to meet us at 5:30 at the hotel. After the previous nights bus adventures we wanted to make sure we left with plenty of time to catch our plane. We had to take the bus from Wilderness Lodge to Epcot, then transfer to the bus to Port Orleans. We got back to Port Orleans around 4:00. In comparison, the lobby there was sparse and boring. There were only two couches to sit on, and they were not as comfy as at Wilderness Lodge, but even still I managed to fall asleep. We got some drinks and snackies at the food court and then went to retrieve our bags at about 5:00. We were glad we got moving early, because our shuttle was early, and we were underway to the airport by 5:15.
At the airport we checked our bags at the curb. The porters there were trying to remember what a mythlogical creature that is half man, half horse was called, and I helped them out with "centaur," so they insisted on helping us. Very nice of them and it made our life easier.
The plane was full and it wasn't an overly pleasant flight. There were several screaming babies, one of which in the seat behind me. In addition to the occasional scream he also made a game of kicking my seat and playing with my hair. The playing with my hair thing I didn't mind so much, but the kicking was driving me crazy.
Joshua came to pick us up, and that, combined with the sharp blast of cold air that greeted us as we stepped out of the terminal brought us the rest of the way home to reality after a week in what i can only now believe was some sort of hallucinatory fantasy.