A Life On The Road

It was Saturday, but the day was unimportant. More important was that finals were fast approaching, and I needed a break before bearing down on all the projects my sick, sadistic teachers had assigned. So Chris and I got in the car and went for a drive.

Originally, we intended on going to Universal's Islands Of Adventure again. We had just gone on a photo-collecting mission over spring break, but since we didn't know what to do, most of our pictures were of signs. So on our second trip, we planned out an elaborate story involving a villainous me and a righteous-but-oppressed Chris in a battle for the park our deceased father Charles Kuralt left us. When we got there though, it turned out the Fates had told everybody with a winnebago to go that same day. Then they told everyone else. It was packed. So, we got away scott-free and tried to regroup. At this point we were in Orlando with a project going down in flames and a two hour tail-between-our-legs return trip ahead. But we would not be beaten so easily.

We started driving around to try and find something else, anything else, that could take the place of Universal. To our surprise, there wasn't much. The couple of abandoned theme-parks that littered the Orlando landscape were pathetic at best, and at worst looked like Shaggy was going to roll up any second in the Mystery Machine and start solving a crime there. Then, somehow, I got the idea in my head to find Medieval Times(pronounced mid-EE-VEL tOImes, very loud). I remembered it from my childhood, and wanted to find out how lame it was now that I was old enough to go sans a chaperone. I figured it had to be around here somewhere, so, we decided to go on a midieval adventure.

First things first. It was as hot as roadkill on a desert highway, so we needed some liquid refreshment. Since we were driving, I suggested some vodka, but my idea was overruled by Chris' childhood fondness for Coke slurpees. The first 7-11 we hit up was pretty shady, and the guy in front with his shady ticket stand selling shady tickets was not helping matters. Well of course their Coke slurpee machine was busted, but one thing I learned during our trip: Orlando has more 7-11's than any other city on the planet. Soon, we both had Slurpees and everything was cool and the gang.

Now that we were good with the refreshments, we had to find MEDIEVAL TOIMES!! For some reason, driving around aimlessly seemed like the best way to find it, and on our way there we saw a bunch of really touristy places. At one point we stopped in at Ripley's Believe it Or Not, but when the jackass behind the counter told us to ditch our slurpees, we told that son-of-a-ditch what we thought about him and his establishment. Also, when all you remember is that the building looks somewhat stoney, for lack of a better word, you get thrown pretty easily. Orlando is filled with imposter(1 | 2 | 3) medievally themed places. I was starting to get skeptical, despite Chris' premonition that we were going the right way.

After we hit a golfcourse and a couple of retirement developments, I thought it was time to ask for directions. So who would I trust with my direction advice? Who would know Orlando well enough to help me out of this jam? You guessed it, Slim Shady himself, the guy in front of the 7-11 20 minutes back. While he was very helpful, he was also somewhat nervous. "No picture," I remember him saying repeatedly when I asked him for one. Anyways, with nervous creepy guy's directions and a newfound sense of hope, and after a few pit stops, we were on our way back to where we had just come from...

On to the conclusion...