Belated Summary of the Florida Trip

Since I haven't uploaded pictures to this journal in a few months and my brother is in Florida right now, I thought I'd give a little brief summary of the Spring Break Florida Trip for those who did not have the pleasure of being on it. To my cohorts who did have the pleasure, feel free, feel encouraged to correct anything I may have remembered falsely and add things I will invariably forget.

We left on the morning of Friday, April 14. Our first destination after leaving Rochester (with only a few minor setbacks and complications) was my Aunt's town house in Springfield, VA -- only a quick train ride from Washington, D.C. We got some dinner and headed into the city.


I don't remember this picture that well. In fact, the only reason I can place it in the correct order at all is because of the clothes everyone is wearing. It's somewhere in Washington, D.C.

This is at the base of the Washington Monument. By this point in the trip I was getting kind of bored and frustrated because I've been to Washington a million times and I don't care much for monuments. My frustration was so great that when I was dubbed "Camera Boy" I started to get a little touchy. I'm not in the picture because, obviously, I was being Camera Boy.


This is at our campsite in Myrtle Beach. We spent two days there, Saturday and Sunday. We had a few logistic-related arguments, but nothing major. By this point I figured one of us would have been killed by another one of us, but nothing along that vein occured.


That's all of us, still in Myrtle Beach State Park. Baglio, Dan, Kevin, Eric, Tony, and Me.


This is the actual beach. There was a beach up by our campsite that wasn't Myrtle Beach. It was just, you know, Myrtle Beach. However, this is not that beach. This is actual Myrtle Beach. Nevermind.


Kevin. I don't know when it happened. I assume sometime in the Everglades, but since I've got this nice close up of Kevin to talk about it I'll indulge myself in a little anecdote. One of the days we were driving it was so hot that Kevin decided it was no longer practical to wear clothing. While the rest of us in the back seat slept he disrobed and covered his manhood with a pillow. I woke up to screaming and Tony averting his eyes, while taking pictures. Although it would be particularly fun to post said pictures, I'll do Kevin the justice of refraining.


Baglio. Without Baglio we would've been lost about thirty minutes into the trip. He wasn't one of the original people who planned the trip, but thank God he decided to come. He was extremely helpful and he has some type of magical magnetic sense of direction that can't be explained by modern science.


To be honset, I'm not sure if this really fits here in chronological order, but it's pretty much characteristic of most of the day trips. We watched movies in the car on one of the laptops, died from the heat, and slept. I think that in this picture we're watching Sin City, but I coul easily be wrong.


We decided to leave Myrtle Beach at night as to not waste the daylight hours driving to Florida anymore. We headed off. Dan and I had the first leg. Somewhere between Myrtle Beach and the Georgia border we ran into this place called Hickory Hills. The roads were perfectly, eerily straight to the point where one wondered if they were real roads at all. It looked exactly like one of those Tiger electronic racing games where the background never moved, just the little black pixels that represented cars. It was also ridiculously foggy. We began to discuss scary subject matter as is often the way while driving at odd hours of the night. Essentially, the main subject of discussion was what one would do if they fell asleep and woke up to find the car stopped, the doors ripped open, and everyone else missing. We developed numerous variations of this same scenario, but the result was usually the same: "Dude, I'm not a coward, but I'd freakin' off myself. That's scary shit." We refused to switch drivers (and therefore stop) until we reached a Texco station. A few miles before we were about to stop when we passed by a seedy-looking motel with, I kid you not, a giant billboard with nothing but a butcher's knife on it. What the hell is that?


Since we drove through the night we were a day ahead of schedule and without a place to stay. I slept through Georgia (both ways actually), but I woke up to find us in West Palm Beach, the home of Baglio's grandparents. Now we were all geared up for a nice lunch with a generous Italian family, but a pparently there was some type of picnic his grandparents were off to and that plan was nixed. We briefly discussed scaling the wall of their community and breaking in to the picnic, but instead we spent some time at the beach and drove the rest of the way to Miami. When we stopped for gas in downtown Miami we observed a total of four fights (two of which were fist fights) in the span of ten minutes. Needless to say we moved on to other parts. We happened upon the really high class part of Miami, Coral Gables, and wandered into what we assumed was a book store. It turned out, in truth, to be a church of Scientologoy.


Eric, of course, had the camera out and was flashing pictures. Here is the office of L. Ron Hubbard (or at least the office for when he returns from the dead). The cultist-like receptionist asked us very politely about the camera, but refused to directly tell us to put it away. Dan, after scanning the contents of Dianetics, their primary text, engaged in an argument about psychology and other things, but the cultist refused to engage back. We decided we would try to infiltrate Scientology and make a documentary out of it and as we were walking away we found a store, very near by, devoted to spy equipment: hidden cameras, concealed weapons, etc. We figured it was a sign. The next part of the journey involved finding a place to say the night in Miami. We called information about a thousand times (by this point Kevin had become close friends with the people at 411 and hypothesized that they all lived together on a giant blimp that circled the country) and eventually found a place to say halfway between Miami and the Everglades (our destination for the next day).


We decided that we would splurge a little bit and go on an airboat tour of the Everglades. We saw a very convincing sign claiming that an upcoming tour was the "orignial" airboat tour. Well, of course we couldn't pass that up. It was actually a very good time. The guide was extremely charasmatic and the scenery was very exotic. After we left, driving through the Everglades, we saw about a hundred more signs for airboat tours claiming to be the "original."


The next stop was Joe's parent's place on Sanibel Island. It was a really fun time. Joe's dad took us to play pool and darts, and we got a cake. Two, actually. We went swimming in the pool and spent the night at Joe's afterwards. The next day we hung out at the family picnic-like thing, and played one of the scariest games of Ultimate Frisbee I've ever encountered. We also played a lot of tennis and shuffle board because we're lame like that.


We took some bikes and explored the island a little bit. We all climbed up some palm trees in some guys front yard to steal some coconuts. We made sure he wasn't home by knocking on the door beforehand. The plan was to pretend we were at the wrong house if someone was home and politely excuse ourselves. Kevin got hit in the head with a coconut.

This has nothing to do with the picutre, but I'm reminded of the time when Kevin was talking to Drazen on his cell phone and he cried out "I killed a hook, but dont' worry. The bitch had it coming." Ironically enough, Drazen was at a meeting for Project Graduation and was sitting right next to Kevin's mom, who heard the whole thing. For the rest of the trip Kevin would randomly blurt out "I told my mom I killed a hooker..."


The next stop was Tony's grandparent's house in Clearwater. We got there relatively late from Joe's house (because we left relatively late) and essentially got food and watched a movie Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. I fell asleep about two minutes into it because I was beat from the travelling, but everyone else seemed to think it was really awesome in that really bad kind of way. I don't know why we don't have a lot of pictures of Clearwater, but we went to the beach again and Kevin and I got into a relatively serious argument. He was convinced that this little girl was at least "sixteen or seventeen." I swear to God she looked twelve. She had a freakin' pal and shovel. And a scrunchy! Kevin was convinced otherwise, stating "With a body like that, who cares how old she is?" I shuddered and walked away. Okay, so it wasn't that serious of an argument. We also went to a pawn shop. Tony's grandparents took us out to dinner and we left after that heading back into Georgia (which I slept through again). It was another eerie night. Dan and I, again, had the first leg. We drove listening to some classical music, the Planets and Enigma Variants specifically, and almost got into several accidents. Somewhere along the way we drove by this car dealership with the creepiest looking mascot on the roof. Needless to say we stopped to take pictures.


This is the cabin in North Carolina that we stayed the last night in. It was almost impossible to find and as soon as we did we realized we were hungry again and headed right back out of the mountains to find some food. I bought a Bob Dyland CD and we listened to that on the way back to the cabin.


At night we went up on the roof and set off some fireworks. The guy across the street (who flew a Confederate flag) also set off some fireworks. It turned into a sort of battle back back and forth, which, we believed, personified the Civil War. The Union won again when he ran out of fireworks and we still had a mountain to go through.


The next morning we drove the entire way from North Carolina, through West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania back home. In Pennsylvania, about five minutes before it closed, we hit up a Phantom Fireworks and literally filled the car with fireworks. Kevin was the primary purchaser, but Baglio and Tony bought a lot too. I was almost hoping that we got into an accident because it would've been the most amazing display if there was a fire. We got home late Saturday night and I slept practically straight through to Monday morning.

Obviously that is only a fraction of the pictures. Many more of them are on my Facebook, but only those with Facebook can see those. Many more still are on my computer. 2600 hundred in all.