Vacation

Contrary to popular opinion, I do go on vacation. This is a narrative of what happened and what I liked and didn’t like. Introduction: Universal Orlando & TLDR I haven’t had a family vacation since June 2019. We haven’t taken a Florida vacation since 2016, two weeks before I joined Amazon. It’s telling I have blog entires about neither. Both were PM (Pre-meds) and I went kicking-and-screaming. With my wife and I finally on the same page about finances, we agreed to take a trip to Orlando before Maria was out of our house. ...

travelogue i’ve gotten ahead of myself, as usual, delving into the specific without giving my reader the outline. Our trip’s framework: Wednesday the 25th We left Louisville in my MINI for our non-stop flight out of Indianapolis. Whitney’s a bad flyer even under the best of circumstances, but her months of nightmares about our doom on our flight to Denver had her on a razor’s edge the whole day. Two hops to Tampa earlier in the year had nearly undone her, so I found a non-stop flight to Denver on upstart Frontier airlines. A discount carrier like Southwest or JetBlue, Frontier has new Airbus A318/319 planes with only coach-class seats. I was only impressed with their service, professionalism, and price. ...

Imagine a place with the best water you’ve ever tasted, not bottled, but flowing from every tap. Imagine air, crisp and devoid of humditity. Imagine the most scenic vistas imaginable, of mountains and wildlife surrounding you in 360 degrees of God’s creation. Imagine all this, and you’ll have Estes Park, Colorado, the place I’ve shared with elk, gray jay’s, fat chipmunks, and my darling for the past few days. Yes, folks, I’ve been on VACATION! Having done the sea-level thing just a few months ago, we decided to try the opposite: Where St. Petersburg is developed, hot, and sea-level, the Rockies are wild, chilly, and relatively untouched. If you like nature at ALL, then go there. ...

The next trip has been (re)scheduled: Whitney and I will be heading to Rocky Mountain Nat’l Park via a non-stop Frontier Airlines flight from Indianapolis to Denver on August 25th, returning August 29th. I’m looking forward to it greatly…getting to be Out West again, if only for a few days, at altitude, enjoying nature. I really liked Colorado on my abbreviated trip through in 2000, and I think I’ll enjoy spending more time there, visiting some sights, my lady Love in tow :-)

It’s said the bloggers are so compulsive that they’ll blog in the middle of the night, at people’s houses during dinner parties, and on their vacation. Well, count me in. This is Day 1 in Tampa, and here’s my report. We awoke yesterday at 6 to make it to SDF by our 9:45 flight. We found ourselves on a “Delta Connection” flight on a Canadair regional jet from Louisville to Cincy. Total flight time: 22 minutes. Seems kinda wasteful, really, when there’s a Southwest Airlines flight from Louisville direct to Tampa twice a day. But oh well. :-) ...