There's always one good part of a visit.....

....arriving or leaving. That's something a friend of mine in Michigan told me.

Which brings me to my visit to Orlando. We went down to Orlando for Dawn's family reunion. A good time was had by all and here are some assorted observations.

1) Dawn's family is a high energy molotov-cocktail of a social scene. One evening I swear 3 or 4 conversations were happening among 6 people. I was getting a headache. Nobody is introverted. It's like stepping in to a cage with puppies and two-year olds. They're real cute, but you'll be exhausted before you know it.

2) You still gotta give it up for Disney World. I'm a roller coaster freak and love any ride that threatens to throw my lower intestines through my nose. Disney has none of this, but remains the most amazing place to drop 75 dollars to stand in line all day. We were in a line at 11PM, everyone was tired, but the entire tired, slow line was dancing to the music pumping through the park. The only place on earth you are going to see sober people do that.

3) Fan allegiance is overrated. After getting to Orlando, I remembered that Michigan State was playing Georgia in the Citrus Bowl. I scored three tickets on Stubhub and we had a GREAT time at the game. What was most intriguing is that I was completely neutral during the game. Landon was for Georgia, since they've been sending him recruiting letters, so I was in their corner a bit. However, there was good ole Michigan State. The same Michigan State that paid my salary for 7 years. I used to follow them, go to their games, read about them in the paper and follow their recruiting in the offseason. Now I'm iffy because the other team MIGHT want to give my kid a scholarship. Allegiances die easier than I thought.

4) We don't know everyone in East Lansing. We were looking around for people we thought we might know at the game. Sounds a little silly, but we were somewhat surprised that we didn't know any of the estimated 30,000 people wearing green.

5) My heart almost exploded, but we made it. Right after the bowl game, I pointed the SUV towards Harrisonburg, VA and set out knowing that we were going to drive straight through the night or stop at a cheap hotel. I also figured that we could meet our goal of driving straight through if Dawn took a 2 hour shift so that I could have a power-nap. Didn't happen. I felt great until 3AM when my sleep-deprived brain got me closer to an LSD trip than I'll ever get in my life. At that point, it was a little pointless to get a hotel for 4 hours and Dawn was so out of it, I would never have been able to nap knowing that she was manning the wheel. I then proceeded to jack myself up on every legal stimulant possible. First, I took a "Rockstar" shot, which claims to have 200mg of caffeine plus some other legal uppers. I chased this immediately with a diet Mountain Dew and then dipped enough tobacco to melt my gums away. We got home around 6AM, just in time for said stimulants to begin to wear away and the natural LSD trips to begin again. After stumbling upstairs to my bed, I began to feel heart palpitations. I get these if I have too much caffeine. I nodded off, not so much worried about a heart attack, but whether the heart attack would prevent the sleep I so desperately needed.

Now I'm back, mostly recovered and ready to get back in to a routine. Overall a good trip and I'm especially thankful that we got to catch up with Dawn's family. That's something that doesn't happen near enough. A lot of other stuff happened which may or may not make it's way in to future posts.