WARNING CONTENT LENGTH! PRINT OUT AND READ WHILE DOING NUMBER 2 IN THE BATHROOM OR SOMETHING!
Hahaha… kk… so getting back into the office and I’ve been a tad busy! But before I forget what all happened on the weekend!!!
Something we noticed tho before getting back into the story… as we drove through bumblefuckegypt… we would see RV/Trailer parks… then storage places… RV/Trailer park… storage place… RV/Trailer park… storage place… I came up with the idea that so many people wanna go live in Florida… like me… that they move down there to find the places that they think they’re going to live is way too expensive and they like don’t get the job that they want so they realize their situation is rapidly declining… so then they try to salvage their life at that point and by an RV or Trailer to live in… but then they have ALL their stuff that they thought was going to fit into some house… Well the trailer can’t fit it all… so now they need all these Storage places to store the crap that doesn’t fit into their new trailer home. …I think I’m going to buy a lot of land and have a Trailer Park and put it next to Hernando’s Bank… Spook’s Trailer Park… and right next to it… Spook’s Storage Park… 10% discount if you own a trailer in Spook’s Trailer Park. BING!
Onto the much anticipated Part II!
So after getting preached to by the crazy man and the bull horn, we headed West across the state. Little did we know that we were in Florida’s version of God’s Country and Hernando owned like everything… Hernando had banks, hospitals and some other little establishments. But what really clued us in… not only did we have a man screaming at us about purging our sins away… these people were even scared to READ the word “sin”… in any shape or form… Here’s my evidence… Go drive around in your city and chances are you’ll drive passed streets with the names of our fellow states… Well in this backwater town we found Wisconsin’s street… BUT!!!!!!! THEY DROPPED THE SIN!!!! hahaha… Sure enough there we were stuck at a stop light of HWY20 and Wiscon! These people are nuts…
So… originally before the trip we were talking about the idea of heading to Weekii Wachi Springs to go diving with mermaids. And as I sit here and write this I have a revelation… Side note… these places to go SCUBA diving in Florida have an awesome marketing stratedgy going on since we drove 4 hours to go dive in a cave that afterwards we felt a little robbed… lol… First off, both of us thougth that our Blue Grotto Dive was only going to be a $10.00 entry fee into the spring… Turned out to be $40.00… And after the gear that both of us needed it turned out to be more like $70.00 for the each of us. Could have saved like two hours of drive time and spent a few bucks more and dove with Mermaids… but oh well… since when we drove by Weekii Wachi’s lil town… (and I do mean lil) we were greated by a giant statue which looked like two naked women… one being held up by the other like two figure skaters… clickie here for da pic… and The Stim was putting his money on the fact that both of them were completely naked… I mean these things had nipples even…
As the light turned green and we got to get a closer look at the statue, I realized that they had a really skimpy one piece on… But now… And in a quarter mile we drove by 3 of the same statues… that’s how small this place was. What I should have realized is that the pseudo nekkid ladies statue was a different type of “doorway”. It was a “doorway” to Florida’s pr0n land.
On this freeway for like 30-40 miles… about every mile or so was either a XXX Pr0n shop or a strip bar. It was crazy… they even have XXX store chains down there… I think we saw XXXtacy stores like 4 different times in like 3 different cities from Weeki Wachee to Venice. But they were seriously all over the place. I’d say it would be crazy but then again the pr0n industry is a multi billion dollar a year industry… Spook’s Trailer Park… Spook’s Storage Park… Spook’s Gentleman’s Club… Spook’s Adult DVD’s. I can see it now… Going to be one big comlpex… I’m going to be able to buy that home on Venice Beach.
As we continue south we pass through St. Petersburg and over the Tampa Bay. We made it to the Gulf… and were greated by a stench that had us both wrinkling our noses and not looking forward to tomorrow’s dive. It was getting late when we finally got into Sarasota and The Stim was starving. I was okay but had room to put some food down so we look for a restaurant. I had not realized how drained I was from taking all what I had in that day. We pull up to a Ribs joint named Sonny’s. We walk in and are waiting by the hostess station so that we can be seated at a table. As we wait we notice a sign of Sonny’s 10 promises. Out of the 10 I think they broke like 6 right off the bat. Well finally after like 8 minutes of waiting with only us 2 waiting for a table, we finally get seated and are greeted by a guy from Poland as our waiter. I think my brain was already off at this point.
Waiter: Can I get you guys anything to drink?
The Stim: I’ll have a coke.
Waiter: Okay… And for you sir?
Spook: huh? (looking at The Stim) No beer for you?
The Stim: Naah.. kinda tired and I’m not sure a beer will work out for me right now…
Spook: (Back at the waiter…) K… can I get a Bud Light?
Waiter: Of course, would you like a draft or fkldjfasoerhjasdgh?
Spook: What?? A draft or huh??
Waiter: A kosdfjwoa;ijerfksldj
Spook: …draft… what no Bud Light?
Meanwhile The Stim is wondering what the hell is wrong with me and kinda laughing to himself cuz he’s looking at a table tent which on the side that is facing him clearly shows a picture of Bud Light. I had no idea what this guy was saying and finally after the waiter slowly explained to me what he meant… he was asking if I wanted my Bud Light in a bottle or if I wanted my Bud Light from the tapper.
Spook: oh… bottle please.
Waiter walks away… The Stim starts laughing…
Spook: What?!?! I’m tired… and btw you just witnessed a Classic Spook Moment.
The Stim turns the table tent around.
Spook: …meh…
A couple minutes later our waiter comes back to take our order. The ribs we had were okay… the nice thing about them is that the meat did peel nicely off the bone. Always a good sign of good ribs… now if they could only have gotten them to taste a bit more rich.
That night we stayed in at a Hojo! Good ‘old Howard Johnson. With the sun rising and a good night’s sleep we were ready to tackle Sunday’s diving events. The Stim checking online for local dive shops finds one in Venice that we’ve now targetted to get our needed equipment and head off for a day of diving. When we get to the dive shop in Venice it’s shortly after 11 in the morning. Two guys are playing with SCUBA gear on the back of a pick up truck. Looking at the dive shop not a single light is on… and the two guys in front are going out today to get their open water certification and have no affiliation with the store. alsdk;fja;lsfjd When their instructor gets there, it turns out he’s from a sister store that’s like an hour or so south of where we are. No help to us. On our way down The Stim noticed a Surf Shop that was open so we head on out there to find out if there might be any other Dive Shops in the area. After a brief conversation with the shop owner, she gets us on the right path. A 20 minute drive back north and we find ourselves in a complete watersports store… today’s dive was going to cost us $20-$30. Much nicer to the pockets and we drive back down to Venice Beach in hopes to find a place to go diving and hunt for sharks’ teeth. We park the car and head down the beach. A lot of swimmers… no divers. As we continue our walk The Stim spots dive flags off the shore and we start walking. A bit further down the beach I see two guys in wetsuits and a SCUBA system set up and sitting on the beach. The guy we met was really nice and really informative. He had gotten certified last year and was going to go diving for teeth as well. The Stim goes to get the car and drives around to bring our gear closer to where we were. In the mean time I have this converastion with our new “friend”.
Spook: So how many teeth do you find a dive?
Diver: About 100-200. I’m down there for like an hour or two.
Spook: Wow… awesome weather and diving conditions.
Diver: Yeah… visibility will be like 6′ but you’re not here for reef diving.
Spook: Yeah… I need to find a job down here so I don’t have to go back.
Diver: You want a job?
Spook: I’d love it down here.
Diver: I’ll give you a job.
Spook: um… excuse me?
Diver: I’m a store manager for Sears. You can come work for me.
Spook: Umm… you serious?
Diver: Yeah. Come tomorrow and I’ll give you a job.
He tells me the store he works out of and that I could sell appliances and that on the average his sales team makes $20-$26 an hour. Sign me up. But I have no clothes for sales and no way to get to work… so I think I’ll leave it on the back burner and keep in touch with The Boss and see what happens here in Meal-ee-walk-ee first. The Boss and his son enter the water and a few minutes after The Stim shows up and we suit up and head out ourselves. Bet of the day: The person who finds the biggest shark’s tooth gets a free round on the other diver. We swim out to the The Boss’ dive flag and decend close to him. The Stim had some equalization issues so it takes a bit for him to get down. I surfaced once in between to see if things were okay. Just going to take a lil bit for him to get down. So I go back down and wait. Still no Stim. Go back up and he’s sitting on the surface. Turns out he was down for a bit and that the both of us were finding Sand Dollars everywhere. So we descend together this time keeping each other in visual range. After a bottom time of 48 minutes, we come up with nothing. Both of us a tad discouraged since everyone made it sound like you could find these things everywhere. The Boss surfaces like a minute after we do and The Stim and I head over to check out the findings. Sure enough he had a huge dive bag filled with rocks, teeth and shells. On the surface The Stim gets the 411 as I’m swapping tanks out at the car. The Boss and his family head on out and The Stim and I wait and discuss the plan. We’re to dive out by 3 palm trees and head out west until we find a kelp bed. The kelp bed is sitting on what we would be looking for. I have two hours before I have to be out of the water for Residual Nitrogen to be comlpetely out of my system and that I can safely fly home the next day and we have an hour before the dive shop closes and us not being able to return our gear. With our directions we head out a second time. At a point what we think should be our destination we drop down and will swim under water to where we need to get to. At a depth of 12′ we start swimming west. Sure enough not even 50′ we find the kelp bed and black gravel all over the place. I look around and sure enough without even having to wave my hand to disipate water and surface clutter… I’m staring at a shark’s tooth. I pick it up and show The Stim. Both of us have a new found hope of returning home with souveniers of a dive to remember. After 30 minutes we have have to surface in order to make it back to the dive shop. As we’re at the surface… big smiles on our faces we swim back to shore. Treasures in hand we’ve succeeded on our dive. As we’re walking in the surf totally ecstatic with our findings I look down at our feet and notice a school of tiny fish darting around us as they swam through the warm gulf current. Us laughing at our adventure… it was one great day to remember.
We get our gear off and head back to the dive shop and start heading out to Orlando. But before we head on out we stop off at a local bar to see what Florida has to offer. The Bar? The Red Barn. Seriously was a little biker bar it seemed and here sat two divers looking at teeth that dated 3 - 5 million years old happily drinking beer after beer. Our bartender handed us coasters as we got our first beers… I tipped mine as I went to reach for it spilling beer on the bar… >< recovering it quickly but got to clean it up before anyone was the wiser. After picking up the tab and a T-Shirt we headed out to Orlando. Again getting in rather later in the evening we had a late supper. This time at a buffet style place that wasn’t all that great. But it was a lot of food for cheap pennies. After 3 plates of food each we headed to the hotel to call it a night.
As we settled in for the night, The Stim’s roommate for the week comes in just before we fall asleep. The Stim and his roomate chat about rental cars, golfing and what not before finally heading to sleep. Just after I fall asleep… in that light daze… I’m abruptly awoken by what sounds like a lion. Roommate’s snoring is atroscious… seriously sounded like a freaking lion was in bed eatting a gazelle that it had just caught and roaring at other lions. Took me forever to fall asleep that night. Finally either I fell asleep or dude rolled over. I feel sorry for that man’s wife. Cuz if snoring’s called cutting logs… this dude was cutting fucking forests down at once.
Waking up on Monday morning, I knew my weekend was coming to a close soon. But not after one more day of adventure. We headed that morning over to Universal Studios and Island of Adventures. Armed with our door keys to our hotel room, we got to go into the Express line of every ride we jumped on that day. Did the Hulk two times in a row right off the bat. And was a good thing cuz when we left Island of Adventures to head over to Universal… it looked as if they closed the ride for the rest of the day. Good to get it out of the way that morning. Then we went into the Virtual Spiderman ride… after getting flames shot at us and what seemed like a super fast fall off a building… The Stim decided it was time for us to get drenched on some water rides. We did the Dudley Doo Ranch Log run which ended up soaking the crap out of me. But turned out that The Stim got just as drenched. Then we headed over to some Popeye Raging River thing that ended up soaking the shit out of my ass… yay for that… Then… we headed down the fateful steps that would lose The Stim’s favorite hat. We passed a hot dog stand… after getting two dogs and some sodas we headed into Jurassic Park to be greeted by this huge building. Curiosity engulfed us and we went to check it out. It was another water ride. They were testing boats on it… but looking up at the ride’s line we saw people getting on it. Looks like the tests were over. So we headed to the express line and after 5 minutes found us in a boat. As our boat headed out, two boats were already ahead of us. And in Jurassic Park style, had these large robot dinosaurs doing their thing. But… just like the movie… like 45 seconds into the ride… the crap breaks down and we find the two boats stuck in front of us. Well… we were sitting in the first row… and had this family sitting next to us and behind us. Their little daughter was crying her eyes out in fear and terror. Seemed like mom did a good job cuz when the ride started the little girl stopped. But when the little girl realized our plight… the crying started up again. After like 5-10 minutes of waiting the ride started up again and now we were a caravan of three boats heading through around the river getting to see cool robot effects of velociraptors doing their thing just like in the movie. As we got to the building the little girl is in hysterics now as our ears are flooded with the sounds of raptors shreading things and shrieking all over the place… then we got to the boat escalator pushing us upwards into a dark building now with more dinosaur screams and robots lunging at us… I don’t think this girl could take it anymore… the boat plunges down 10′ and turns a corner. There… lurking above us was a HUGE t-rex roaring it’s frenzy at us… girl in hysterics… us laughing… t-rex looming closer… roaring more… girl crying louder… us laughing… seeing the waterfall getting closer and closer. roaring louder… girl freaking the hell out… boat plunges!! WOOOOOOSH we’re all laughing and enjoying… we hit the bottom… smiles across our faces… girl all of a sudden stops crying… I look over at The Stim and realize his hat is missing. LOL He tells me it flew off in the ride… LMAO… after we get out of the boat we run to the end to see if maybe the cameras of the ride caught it on film… Sure enough… on the monitor you see a boat of people… 97% of the people on the boat laughing and enjoying the rush of the moment… and then you have one mother clutching her freaking out child… one freaking out child… and The Stim and his hand flying for his head as his hat is now floating above row three of the boat… ROFL The signature move of the day. We then headed over to Universal Studios to enjoy what was to be offered over there.
Most exciting ride of Universal Studios was The Revenge of the Mummy. Once again we found a ride so exciting we rode it twice in row. We did the San Fran Earthquake ride… and headed over to Men In Black. Once again we had a bet going on… see who could score the most points. And after a minute and a half of getting spun around, The Stim beat me out by like 10 to 20 points. Next rounds on me.
Getting in the airport I had two more adventures that I had to get through myself. First after checking in was the line to wait for getting through the security check in Orlando international airport. I only had an hour before my flight took off. I had a boarding pass that didn’t have a seat assignment and had to get to the gate terminal to see where I was going to be sitting. Destiny paid me back tho for getting the Express Line for the whole day as now I had what seemed like a two hour line to get through security. But… Orlando’s TSA seems to be spot on… 30 minutes later I’m on my way to my terminal. I get to the Gate Counter and now there’s another line. I wait paitently there knowing that I’m here… my bags are checked and I see that boarding hasn’t started yet. After waiting like another 15 minutes I sit paitnently waiting for the lady to do her thing and get their printer working again and finally she’s ready to assign me my seat. I was supposed to have a window seat. She asks if I’d like some leg room since I was what she said a really tall cute drink of water. I said that it didn’t matter and that my flight out had me crammed inbetween a bible school girl and some slightly oversized dude on my left and the person infront of me fully reclined into my seat. Talk about cramped… She then seated me in Economy Plus which was this flight’s version of first class. Not really realizing yet that I was in first class the woman thanks me for my gentle attitude towards what most other people would have seen as an inconvienince and I thank her for her time and wish her well for the rest of the evening… The plane starts boarding a little while after and as I get to my seat I notice a passed out blonde and a bald russian guy… I gently wake up the lady and scoot by her so that I can sit in my seat… turn on my iPod and wait to be told to turn it off for take off. Into the flight, I start to watch Tedvision and just tune out reflecting on my awesome weekend. As I land in Chicago, I get my luggage and head out to Economy Parking. Only to wander around for 45 minutes trying to find D7 and wonder if my car had been stolen only finding sections A and G and if I had forgotten where I parked my car. Sure of being in the right place by remembering how I walked up to the tram station… I then do a little bit more of land investigation noticing a slight difference in the way you get into Section A and that it wasn’t how I parked there Friday morning. I walk back to the exact opposite side of the tram station realizing my error in being turned around since it was already 9:45 and me being super tired. I find my car and start the long drive home.
Sorry for lenght but that was the end of my trip and didn’t want to forget a thing. Thank you once again Stim for an awesome weekend and I look forward to our next trip!
But y’all knew that already…
that’s if I come back… a part of me I think is going to be trying to figure out a way to stay down there. I’ll get someone to pack the Bimmer with my stereo and some clothes… so if I’m not back next week… no need to call the police… just stay tuned here for future mailing info… hahah…