The White Sands, The Seduction, and The Spectre

Carlisle, Pennsylvania

We left our little resort in Fort Lauderdale and began the trek home. This part of the trip is always the most difficult for us as it more about reaching deadlines and planned stops more than it is about the journey. We determined two touristy things to do along the way, bought an audio book version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (there is only so much satellite radio to which one can listen. If I hear Fight Song one more time I will actually vomit), and settled in with determination for the most direct route home.

Then we decided upon our first deviation from this plan.

Seaside, Florida is an unincorporated town nestled along the southern coast of the Florida panhandle. It is very unique because the layout and organisation of the town and its functions were completely planned out before being built. All other additions to the community were decided upon with consensus and were developed within the original plans. It was an attempt to preserve the small town atmosphere of America wherein you could walk to all of your required destinations and that there were plenty of opportunities to meet with your neighbours. This last part is reflected in the central post office with is next to a very large outdoor amphitheatre which is surrounded by all of the shops. Immediately behind this is the school and the streets which spoke out or run parallel to the amphitheatre.  Across the street from the post office are some restaurants and the pristine white sand beach cuddling up to the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

It is a perfect place. So perfect that it was used to film the town scenes in The Truman Show. I was immediately smitten with the community and, after eating fresh shrimp on an outdoor pavilion that overlooked the water and then walking barefoot along the beach with Eric, boldly declared that this would be the place I would spend my retirement years as a snowbird!

Eric then noted that the place felt more like a resort than a town. At this point we looked around us again. The restaurants were great, but pricey for what they served. But that is for the tourists. The shops that surround the amphitheatre were not inhabited by the butcher, the fishmonger or the tailor. Instead we had a book store, a vinyl record store, high end fashions and a furniture store that had a very specialised stock.

I do not remember these kinds of things in the small town America I have seen in documentaries or any Frank Capra movie. Apparently there about few hundred people actually living in the town and then a resort than a home.

We also noticed that the only visible minority we could find were overweight people. If you know what I mean.

It was like the Stepford Wives version of a town. Perfect in almost every detail. Almost. I began to feel less smitten and more seduced. I am not totally convinced I would enjoy actually staying in this place for a long time. Certainly I doubt I could afford it!

Nevertheless, it was a wonderful place to visit and we both felt a few hours later that it all felt a bit like a dream or a Twilight Zone episode.

Our next stop ended up being another deviation from the ‘Get Home’ plan.

One of our most cherished movies is Tim Burton’s Big Fish. I have spoken about this in previous posts when Eric and I took a road trip to New Orleans and back. In this trip we visited some of the filming locations, but we did not get to see Spectre. If you know the movie, Spectre is a place the main character visits more than once. Spectre is a small town that serves as an evolving metaphor that examines the concept of narrative and how we perceive our lives and dreams. Spectre holds a great deal of influence over the narrative of this film. If you have seen this film, you know to what I am referring. If you have not seen this film, I recommend it with great enthusiasm.

The set of Spectre, one road leading to a church with buildings on each side along the way, is simple. It is every main street in any small town in North America. The set is located on a private island that you spend three dollars to cross the bridge. The area is used primarily for fishing (of course!), but there also seems to be camping. Being a set, the place is completely dilapidated and some of the buildings are now gone. The shops are gone and a couple of the houses. The church is still there. The mayor’s house, in which the main character ate pie, is in relatively good shape as it was the only ‘dressed’ set for interior use. But the porch stairs and door are long gone on this house as well.

Walking up and down the road of this place brought the name Spectre into a whole new focus. It truly is a ghost town now. When you consider the themes and ideas that were explored using these building consisting only of plywood and artistic license, it seems both sad and fitting that this place, this unreal place, should be left abandoned to fade away from existence and be swallowed up by the natural order of things.

Eric and I have been on sets before, and we hold no romantic notions of preservation. Indeed, we agree that part of the beauty of theatre is its fleeting nature. We left feeling grateful that we were able to visit this place, and knowing that we would never return.

Fleeting. Such is the nature of any spectre.

The Six-Toed Cats, The Chickens, and The Smuggler (Kind of)

Commerce, Georgia

After we left the company of Andrea, Carlos and the girls, with heavy hearts, we left Walt Disney World. Having recognised that we left very little room to go north and get home with time to see some sights along the way Eric made the decision to extend his holiday by three days. With this decision giving us a lot more wiggle room to explore on our way home north we then turned the car towards the south and headed to Key West.

Yes. South.

Why? Mostly because we are stupid, but also because we were on a road trip and Florida had really not been given its fair spot in the sunlight, so to speak. So off we went.

Extending the holiday brought some stress with it. Certainly there was the financial aspect of it, but both of us had commitments that were waiting for us. We knew that this decision would frustrate some people, but we also knew we spent a great deal of time apart during the year making things work for our jobs, our communities and for our friends. And for us, too. Or we wouldn’t be doing them. But time alone with each other has become a very rare gem these past few years and we wanted just a bit more of it. So we took it.

We spent the next two nights in Fort Lauderdale. Between sleeps we went to Key West…which was farther from Fort Lauderdale than we thought. We also got caught up in some wicked traffic for some reason we could not determine.

But the drive was beautiful. While there were no long stretches of beach and surf like I had hoped (too much development), the views were mostly stunning and the atmosphere was blissfully lazy and carefree.

When we arrived in Key Largo, though, it was raining heavy. I wanted to visit the father and widow of a war vet I once knew so I looked them up at the old, dilapidated hotel they still run. Nora Temple, the widow was a spunky, sultry dame and her father-in-law was a decent man who had a difficult life. He was now confined to a wheelchair. Things were going well until this guy and friends showed up and caused some trouble. Real trouble. Johnny Rocco was his name. And smuggling was his game.

Oh wait. That wasn’t Key Largo. That was Key Largo starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (Dir. John Houston. Warner Brothers, 1948). Nothing like that happened to us. Too bad, though. Edward G. Robinson was awesome!

I had always wanted to see Hemmingway’s Home in Key West. I heard many things about it, especially that it was the home of dozens of cats. Some of these are the descendants of Hemmingway’s six-toed cat.

The tour was mediocre, but being in the space was amazing. Not only did you get a good feel for who the man was…and why…you were also given a glimpse of how life was lived in Key West during Hemmingway’s. Or how the very well off lived anyways. We saw the pool that was so expensive that Hemmingway claimed it took his last penny…which he embedded in the pavement nearby. We also saw the cat graveyard and his writing house.

Before leaving Key West, we stopped off at the marker for the southernmost point in the continental USA.  There were a lot of people lining up for a photo op next to the marker but Eric and I just took it from a bit further away. Also, for some reason I cannot comprehend, there were a lot of chickens walking about. Seriously, in this neighbourhood there were flocks of chickens, hens and roosters, just sauntering up and down the street.

I guess I now know why Hemmingway’s cats decided to stick around.

After our photo we finally began heading north. Not that we had a choice, mind you.

A note about Fort Lauderdale. As two gay men, some of our friends may have expectations about what we did in one of the gay focal points in the USA. There are probably a few of you who are making the assumption that I have chosen not to write about some of the things we did in order to keep it PG rated.

Well, first of all, thank you for your confidence in our ability to be exciting and sexy. But actually, while we did stay at a gay resort and did manage to check out the community a little bit, for the most part we used Fort Lauderdale as a point of reference. As an old married couple our days of spending late nights at the bars and early mornings on the dance floor are long gone. And that is perfectly fine with us. It meant early morning swimming in a pool to ourselves before heading out on to the road.

But I do recommend Fort Lauderdale for all of you more exciting types, gay and straight. It is a very beautiful, friendly place that wants to have fun…and it wants you to join in.

The Mouse, The Evolution, and The Snow

Near Seaside, Florida

I went to Walt Disney World and lived to tell the tale!

Okay, full disclosure time. I walked into this part of the trip firmly ensconced in an anti-Disney perspective. I have had real issues with Disney when it comes to Princesses needing Prince Charming, taking fully textured stories and reducing them to the point of sanitizing anything useful, and basically trying to take over the world. Also, the man himself, complete with helping to blacklist people in the 1950s, has always been a figure of suspicion to me. Now that I have experienced Walt Disney World my perspective has evolved.

I still think they are a part of the Illuminati trying to take claim of the world (The Mouse owns the image of the Mountie and the Star Wars franchise. Star Wars, people!), and I will never forgive taking a beautiful story about a little mermaid and reducing it to a singing crab, but I have to admit I had a great time at Walt Disney World.

Except for the fact that the experience almost killed me.

Eric and I were with our chosen family Andrea and Carlos and our nieces Sophie and Kipi. Together we visited the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom. And we managed to take a big chunk out of each of them. We began each morning waking up in our adjoining rooms at the Port Orleans Riverside Resort. Our rooms were Princess themed and included portraits of some of the Disney princesses (which creeped me out a bit as I felt they were watching me sleep) and fibre optice fireworks on the headboards which you can turn on at your leisure via a button on the side. 

Yes…I often invoked the obvious reference required when finding a fireworks display option on your hotel bed headboard. But not in front of the children.

After the hint of a breakfast we boarded the bus to our theme park of the day and spent the morning enjoying our FastPasses which allowed us to skip the long lines. After lunch or a child meltdown, whichever came first, Andrea and Carlos and the girls would return to the resort for rest and pool time while Eric and I soldiered on. Then we would meet for dinner and maybe take in a few more rides before leaving. Once we returned to our rooms we would crash gratefully into bed and then I would lay in the dark on not sleep because I was w-a-y too overstimulated.These were full days, indeed.

The heat and humidity was unbearable. When you left your air conditioned room at 7:30 you would be in desperate need of water by the time you reached the bus stop ten minutes away. Gallons of water led to hours at the restroom, especially with kids. The heat, often at 35 -38 degrees, and an eight and ten year old, required a very slow pace which made our feet ache in despair. By the end of our four days at Disney I must have squeezed out enough fluids to fill a tanker truck. And my feet and legs were completely destroyed! Carlos and I looked like slow release fountains, Eric and Andrea always had that glow, and the girls were excited. Really excited. It was really cute…but damn that fleeting youth!

Thank God the fifteen million souvenir shops nearby were air conditioned! Surely this is unrelated to our discomfort.

Highlights for me included:

-         The Haunted Mansion: waiting area had a headstone that played the instrument you touched on the stone surface; the holograms were magnificent and included one that entered into the car with you at the end. If Disney wanted to make a Haunted House that could scare the crap out of you…they have the budget and technology to do it.

-          Kali Rapids: One of those bouncy raft down the rapids where you and your family ride in a circle and try, in vain, to stay dry. I love these kinds of rides. It was too short, but it was blast from start to finish.

-          Peter Pan: I forget its actual name, but you fly in a sailboat over the narrative of the story. It is really magical.

-          Toy Story 4D Arcade: You are in a car that spins and rolls around to different arcade style games where you use your toy shooter (not a gun) to win a match. Andrea and I played and she kicked my butt

-          Splash Mountain: Medium scary roller coaster with water. It tells the tale of Brier Rabbit and all of the characters found in The Song of the South without Uncle Remus or any reference to the title of what even Disney considers a movie that is too racist to re-release.

-          Mission: Space: Gary Sinise is our captain to helps us get to Mars for a training flight in this simulation. We manage to miss our target, crash land and go past the landing area risking our lives and the multimillion dollar space craft we have been given but we are congratulated for our success and welcomed as astronauts. Hmm.

Eric, Carlos, and Sofie enjoyed the scarier roller coasters while Andrea and I enjoyed the softer rides. We did manage to experience a great deal together as a family, though.

I will admit to loving the Frozen sing-a-long show, though. I have to because it was actually awesome. Watching the girls sing along to every note, spying the boys in the next row look sour and work hard to hate everything, and the campy actors on stage made for a fun time.

Also, Christoff was freaking hot.

At the end, when Elsa finally comes out and we all sing the signature song…again…snow falls from the ceiling. Okay…it was soap suds…but, dammit, for a few moments you are in your late forties and believing it was snowing in the auditorium. I admit I may have had something in my eye and had to wipe a tear or two away.

Such is the magic of Disney.

Which brings me back to evolution. I believe that Disney is beginning to realise that the Prince and Princess story cannot be the only model from which to draw upon. Frozen is about two sisters who look out for each other and the older, the one with more power, must come to terms with her real self in order to fulfill her destiny. And, in this story, the princess is crowned without a prince. In fact, there is no Prince Charming in this story.

And when I think of Pixar and its partnership with Disney, and shows like Up and Inside Out, there is still plenty of magic to be had.

In the meantime, I will try to catch up on my sleep and seek out feelings in my feet and legs.

The Flight, The Southern Belle, and The Haunting

Fort Lauderdale

It has been a long time since my last blog entry. A series of dubious wifi connections and late night check-ins conspired against me, I suppose. I had this fantasy that once I got to Disney World I would be staying in the same place for a few days so I could catch up then. More on that folly in a later blog.

I wanted to mention some time we spent at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. This little place is along the coast and quite small. You often drive along with the sea on both sides of you. Kitty Hawk, of course, is famous for the first successful flight of the Orville brothers. Actually, this event occurred in what is now Kill Devils Hill, but with the closest town at the time being Kitty Hawk it became the famous name attached to the famous event. I suppose when Kill Devils Hill was incorporated there was a determined decision to not associate the famous event with a place called Kill Devils Hill. I have no idea what the origin of this name is, and I am okay with that.

The First Flight National Monument has an information with a full scale replica of the successful aeroplane and there are talks every half hour by Rangers that are clearly enthusiastic as well as educated in this field. There is the pre-requisite walk through display and the required gift shop, but it is when you leave the centre and go out into the field when you feel the magic of the place.

Beyond the replicas of the Wright Brothers’ hangar and workshop (in which they lived), beyond the marker that stands to commemorate the founding of the National Park, beyond the stones that indicate the length of each attempt to fly that day lies the obelisk-inspired monument on top of a fill that makes it clear where lift off took place.

Eric and I walked the length of the flight to the monument and then back again. It is easy to recognise the enormity of the accomplishment even in this day of five hours to Europe. All this because of two guys who fixed bicycles.

As we walked back to the centre to get respite from the heat before returning to our car we heard another sound among the birds and people talking: an airplane. Just beyond the trees next to the path of the first flight there is a small airport. This seemed fitting to us.

Savannah was like a grand old dame who was a little more tired than her sister Charleston, but she was far from worn. Like any good southern hostess she was charming, welcoming and still very much full of life. I loved Savannah from the moment we drove up to the Foley House where we stayed.  The cacophony of cicada hidden among the Spanish moss was constant as was the humidity and heat. Nobody walked quickly or ran. I tend to walk fast but the weather here makes that impossible.

As you make your way through the historic district your path down the street is interrupted every other block or so by a grand old park. These provide respite from the sun. One of these parks, Oglethorpe Park, was a block from our guest house and was where they filmed the ‘box of chocolates’ scenes in Forest Gump. As I made my way slowly through these streets at night I was reminded of Florence, where so many people just walk through the streets quietly as they enjoy simply being in such wonderful place.

Savannah considers itself to be one of the most haunted cities in the country, so we had to take a ghost tour. Actually, what we took was advertised as a ghost walk and a ghost hunt. Some of you may know that I was once a part of a paranormal investigation group back in the day. I was the true sceptic. I was the annoying guy who kept debunking things and not getting excited by orbs. But I always hoped we would find something that I could not explain. Our tour of the Sorrel-Weed House started off interestingly enough. Apparently it was in the library of this house that General Lee began his leadership of the Civil War. We learned of the affair of the house owner with one of the servants and how his wife caught them in the act. The wife threw herself out a second floor window head first into the flagstones below and the servant hanged herself. I think the husband remarried. Hmph.

So, we looked for contact with the two ghosts of the Sorrel-Weed House. Our guide handed out EMF detectors and did not explain their use or why they are used and here we were, about twenty people, waving EMF detectors in various parts of the building.

Meh. With this crowd, I would not have come out to play either.

There was one moment where Eric and I got a little excited about a particular corner in the old carriage house where the servant hanged herself.  I tried to find electrical sockets and other evidence of a manmade electromagnetic field in the room but to no avail. However, after the tour I checked outside the building and found some transponders near the site. Oh well. So much for ghost hunting.

We also heard some ghost stories involving our guest house. Apparently the Foley House was built on a very large Jewish graveyard. I am not sure this explains misplaced dishes and table cloths, but there you have it.

We left the tranquil and elegant Savannah for what we knew would be a very different experience at Disney World.

The Bed, The Fort, and The Forgiveness

The Foley House, Savannah, Georgia

We have been continuing our exploration down the east coast of the U.S.A. and finding it very different from the west coast. The long, seemingly slow moving waves of the Pacific are replaced by the crashing vibrancy of the Atlantic, but the relationship with the water seems different. While there are places of surf and sun worship out west, it is not nearly on the scale as it is here. Atlantic City and its ilk are only the beginning. While there have been times when we are left mostly to ourselves to enjoy the scenery and the occasional glimpse of the ocean over the protective barriers, natural and otherwise, but we are rarely alone. We are often in very affluent neigbourhoods admiring the houses on stilts which are built very tall so as to afford some view of the ocean. People are constantly crossing the street on their way to the beach; chair, towel, and brood of children in tow.

Crossing the Chesapeake Bridge Tunnel was an engineering treat. Instead of a long bridge which a very high centre, of which there are plenty in this area, we go under the water into a tunnel…twice. It was very cool.

Eric and I are not beach people, but we did take some to walk along the surf.

We spent Wednesday night in Greenville. We wanted to get away from the coast in order to bring the cost of accommodations down. Eric was thrilled with our motel as it was so cheap he could give them ready cash. Not sure what the hourly rate was. Our air conditioning consisted of two settings: Baffin Island January and off. The bed was the worst. It was soft and bouncy and a double.

A double.

Eric and I on a double bed.

I made a joke about accidental sex and then tried to sleep. Every time I move Eric almost flew off the bed and hit the wall. Every time Eric moved I found a foot up my nose. I think I slept three hours at the most.

We moved on and made our way to Charleston, South Carolina. We visited the Fort Sumter National Historic Monument. It was here that the opening volleys of the Civil War was fought. There was a nice little display and many tales were told, but my favourite actually took place years after the end of the American Civil War.

When Fort Sumter fell to Confederate forces, the union took the US flag down and retreated. When the war was over there was a ceremony that raised the American flag over the fort once again. It was called a ReUnion Ceremony and signified the end of internal strife within The United States. In one of those moments where history seems to have a twisted sense of humour, this event occurred on the day that Lincoln was shot.

But the best bit happens fifty years later when there is a celebration and, as always seems to occur when the Civil War is concerned, a re-enactment. The surviving Confederate soldiers line up outside the fort and take on the battlements again. Inside, the surviving Union soldiers wait as they once did years before. When they could wait no more, they surprised everyone and rushed out of the fort and crashed into the approaching Confederates. Instead of fighting, the two sides tearfully embraced as brothers.

We left the fort memorial and found out that mere blocks away from this historic site is the AME church that made tragic headlines recently as the Charleston church that had been the victim of a mass shooting.

As we drove by we saw the many cards and letters and flowers left by those who, like us, wished to express their respects. But there was one large poster that took primary focus. This was not left by a well-wisher but by the congregation. A message to us all.

“Forgive Others As We Have Been Forgiven.”

A Dive, A Drive, and A Diving Horse

Chesapeake, Virginia

So, you may have noticed that there were no travel entries for the month of July. Since 2010 I have recorded my adventures taking kids to Europe either by blog or by email or by both followed by further travels by Eric and I in August. This did not happen this year for the simple reason that I finally made good on my promise to take a year off from Europe.

I missed the travel, but it was a good decision. Not only was I exhausted from my first year as a VP, I also managed to get kidney stones. This would have made for an interesting time in a foreign land! I almost took a complete rest from blogging this summer, but Eric and I are once again on the road and the muses call!

Eric and I are on our way to Disneyworld to join up with our chosen family on August 9^th. As per usual, we made it into an excuse for a road trip, this time to trace the eastern coast of the United States.

Our first day,  mostly spent with Eric pushing the pedal until we made it to Newark in the early evening. Using one of his apps, Eric chose the Hotel Riviera Divine in downtown Newark. This hotel was one of the most grandest of hotels in the area…in the 1920s. It never recovered from The Great Depression. And while Eric and I waited for our turn to speak to the woman working in the lobby behind the protective plexi glass, boy were we both experience a great depression!

We found no comfort in the bulletin advising long term guests that fumigation happens every first Wednesday of the month whether it was needed or not. Nor did we find joy in the fact that the security guard had to open our door for us as well as the gate to the secure parking lot.  We found our room clean, but clearly the old dame had seen better days. Long ago.

Anyways, once we pushed the big suitcase up against the door we went to bed and prayed to God that the joint wasn’t haunted.

We began our seaside journey the next day. The Jersey Shore is glitzy in places and authentic in others. We had a very late breakfast at Alice’s Kitchen in Seabright, New Jersey. A great breakfast in a beautiful little town that was basically one side of street that straddled the shore for a few miles. While there were touristy stores, the place has yet to fall into the overly touristy trap.

Atlantic City is everything you expect it to be. It was loud, busy, hell bent on consumerism, extravagant, ostentatious, desperate, weird and wonderful. We were offered 20 minute massages every fifty steps along with our fortunes. The place was packed solid and all of the major vendors were there.

We checked out the midway and was actually a little insulted. Or at least I was. The fact that those working there looked as though their souls had been sucked out them by their nasal passages was sad, but the whole place had an air of the approach commonly known as “Whatever…good enough.”

Here is a place where a bunch of adults have come just begging to spend money. An arcade in Atlantic City calls out to the decades of arcade activities. You know, the penny arcade machines, the pinball machines, Pac-Man and the crap that came out afterwards. Right? Wrong. We had a role of those claw pickers. The ones with stuffed animals in it. Like fifty of them. On each side of the aisle.

And a sad looking teenager without a soul.

What happened to that horse that jumped from a high platform and dived into a small pool of water? You know, the one in those old postcards?

We continued on our way south and eventually made our way to Ocean City. Which also had a boardwalk and an amusement park. Who knew?

Today we crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. This was very cool. A true engineering feat. Eric won the toss and got to drive, but I took a series of brief videos for the good old Facebook!

We are currently staying at a fairly cheap Motel in which we managed to somehow snag the handicap access room. This is what happens when you wait too late to find a place to stay. The big problem really is the fact that our allotted parking is also designated a handicap spot. So…we are not legally able to park in our paid for spot. Just a tad awkward. We thought about parking there anyways…for about three and half seconds. Then we moved our truck to another part of the 756 acre parking lot.

It should still be there in the morning…