Oh dear, I am finally getting caught up on your latest TR. Of course I'm enjoying it and there's plenty I could comment on, but they aren't going to pay me to sit here and read the boards
all day so I'll have to get back to work eventually. But there's a few things I had to quote.
I gave up. It was evident this trip was NOT going to start out with me rested at all; it was starting to feel like one of my marathon travel gigs from a former life- cross Atlantic, then cross Asia 36-hour deals. I was tired.
I, perhaps better than most of your readers, know exactly what that feels like! My usual travel time over to work is about 34 hours door to door, of which very few are spent sleeping because I just can't sleep much on planes (I have even on occasion had business class with the fold down beds, still no sleep, I just can't do it). Even worse is when I arrive overseas to work, try to sleep that night but my body clock is so messed up I still can't sleep, so then have to pull a 12 hour shift. I stop counting when I haven't slept in over 50 hours, but it's rough. That's one thing I definitely will not miss about commuting.
I grew up riding my bike all over town without the fear of foulplay, we rollerskated on Friday nights, and watched the boys play league ball on Saturdays. We had TPing-Each-Other’s-Houses Wars every weekend, and swam in our friends’ pools until midnight all summer long. I could not have asked or wished for a better place to grow up.
Sadly, Hemet has turned into a cesspool of filth, gangs, urban sprawl, and crime. And yet….
That sounds like a wonderful place to grow up. I grew up in a fairly small place myself (by most standards) and remember always going off on our own on bicycles, messing around in the woods (boys will be boys, you know), sleeping out in the backyard in a tent by ourselves in the summer. It's sad that I won't let my daughter do any of that now. It's only in the last year or so that we let her walk to a friends house or to the park by herself, and always in the day time. I still live in the same city I grew up in and it's not overrun with crime or anything, but it's just not the same as it was 30 or 40 years ago. There's no chance to be "free" as kids anymore and just wander the streets with friends in the summer. Makes me sad, but it's mostly my own doing I guess.
I found these to share with you, thinking that those of you who “wanna know” can dig a little deeper into the ultimate depths Disney goes to provide you with a believable, authentic story. I am thrilled that this particular one has a personal connection to me.
I love reading about stuff like this. I have the links opened and when I have time I'll definitely take a look. I don't know if you've ever gotten into podcasts, but the DIS Unplugged does the Connecting with Walt series and it has so much history of how WDW came to be and the inspiration for much of it.