the real robp
Trip Reporter Extraordinaire
- Joined
- May 13, 2003
- Messages
- 22
Hi!
I'm Rob and I just moved to Vancouver, Canada, from Ottawa (also in Canada, but not in the "close" way) to start a new job. I have a best friend named Aimee, a pretty southern redhead who lives in North Carolina. We've travelled together before, but never as a "couple". Recently things have changed for the better (i.e. she's finally given in to my amorous overtures), and we decided "hey, lets take our first 'romantic' trip together." And what's more romantic than a trip to Disney World, baby? OK, lots of things, really... Venice, maybe Paris in the springtime, the Kohala Coast in Hawaii... but just forget about those, we totally decided on the Disney thing instead.
Anyway we decided on 8 nights at the Animal Kingdom Lodge on the grounds that it seemed like the most romantic option. OK, mostly it seemed like the darkest option (our research showed that everyone seems to complain about the dim lighting) and "darkness" makes a pretty good approximation of "romantic ambience" in a pinch. The truth is we'd actually picked the Port Orleans resort because it seemed potentially kind of romantic and it wasn't stupidly overpriced. Sadly it turns out that I called the CRO like the day after they closed Port Orleans. Sigh. (Yes I now know you're supposed to plan your Disney vacation 2 years in advance but we totally never thought of it for the first 23 months or so). Anyway the friendly CRO girl offered me a comparable room at Caribbean Beach for the same price but I was horrified... "Caribbean Beach??" I cried in dismay. "There's no ambience there! I can't seduce anyone at Caribbean Beach!" To her credit, and to my great amusement, the CRO girl actually replied "Sure you can!!" Bless her heart... I mean I could have been a one-eyed, hairy-backed 700 pound cave troll for all she knew. After a lot of discussion she was happy to give me a savannah-view room at the AKL for a lot more money, so I made the reservations and we were good to go. Woo.
Anyway I think that's enough preamble to set the stage for my big trip report. I'm actually going to start one day in advance, because my own cross-country trip to meet Aimee at her place in NC is part of the whole adventure... anyone who's sitting there screaming "GET TO THE DISNEY YOU FOOL!" at their monitor can just skip to "Day Two".
Day One -- In Which Rob Is Detained By the INS and Meets Aimee's Dad
So I left for Seattle after work on a Thursday afternoon, to catch a redeye flight to Pittsburgh at 11:30pm. You'd think that sort of thing would be pretty straightforward... after all, it's just a matter of driving 150 or 160 miles, right? I left Vancouver around 7:00, figuring that'd have me checked in at the airport by around 10:00 with lots of time to spare. Unfortunately I forgot to take into consideration the time it would take for the US Immigration bozos to hassle me at the border -- apparently the guy in the booth thought there was something odd about me driving across the Washington border in a bright yellow Toyota adorned with Ontario license plates, spouting some story about having just moved to BC to start a new job. So instead of welcoming me to the US and cheerfully ushering me through, he directs me to pull over, shut off the car, and head inside the building to have a little chat with the INS. Gah. I spent over half an hour trying to convince a humorless little US immigration official about the fundamental truthfulness of my admittedly implausible story, while answering a bunch of questions about all my recent trips to the US. "See, there's this girl," I explained several times. He seemed unimpressed. "She's very pretty," I offered. He just shrugged kind of boredly... apparently in America pretty girls are a dime a dozen. Sigh. "See, I keep visiting the US to see her," I said. "It's not like I'm trying to emigrate there or work or anything, I mean I keep coming back, right? I'm just visiting, I do it whenever I get the opportunity." By now I'm starting to sweat and check my watch a lot and generally act like some kind of drug dealer or something, wondering exactly how long this guy's going to hold me up. I mean, we've already paid a small fortune and sacrificed part of our souls for our big Disney plan at this point, and I'll be damned if some pencil-necked INS geek is going to rain on our parade. "This girl is an American citizen?" he asks me. "Oh, absolutely," I replied. "She's your girlfriend?" he asks. "Umm... well that's a whole long, complicated story," I said, evasively. "Complicated?" he asks. "Uh, we're more what I'd call 'ambiguous internet pals'," I replied, just as evasively. I mean up till now I've gone to great, amusing lengths to leave the exact nature of our relationship carefully undefined on the internet at large, so it's not like I'm going to just roll over and give the big scoop to some minor government bureaucrat working the night shift. "But listen, I love her dearly and I'm supposed to meet her father for the first time tomorrow... he's coming into town just for that and it's probably going to make a really bad impression if I'm, you know, stuck back in Canada or locked up in some INS jail or whatever instead of at dinner." Anyway the guy types all this stuff into his computer (surely denying me any future entry into the US -- sigh) and after around 10 more minutes of hard grilling and questions and typing the guy hands me back my passport and my flight itinerary and my business card and says "OK." Not "welcome to the United States," or "fine, you may enter the country," or "we'll be watching you, canada-boy" just "OK." Whatever. I literally ran to my car, barely pausing to wonder how many terrorists, SARS patients and illegal aliens managed to cross the border in the time it took the INS to hassle one harmless lovestruck canadian.
Anyway, I exceeded the speed limit to get back on schedule, found the Seattle-Tacoma airport, checked in and boarded my flight. It was totally packed, and I didn't manage to get much sleep. I also didn't manage to get a freaking drink, since they apparently don't serve those on the redeye. In Pittsburgh I boarded another 737 to Charlotte, on which I once again didn't manage to get much sleep -- just enough, apparently, to once again miss getting my token airline beverage. Sigh. In Charlotte the little twin-prop to Wilmington was overbooked and they were looking for volunteers to take a later flight instead, but by now I was tired, unshaven, disheveled, thirsty, and undoubtedly smelling kind of funky... I could have taken the later flight but that would have totally eliminated any opportunity to shave and shower before dinner and like the deodorant commercial says, "you never get a second chance to make a first impression." Luckily I didn't get unceremoniously bumped off the flight when nobody actually volunteered to fly later, and I even managed to sleep for about half of the hour-long flight (the half where they served the drinks, apparently). Finally I made it to Wilmington and Aimee was there to pick me up -- we drove back to her place where I quickly did a bunch of pre-vacation laundry, shaved and took a shower before we went off to have dinner with her parents. We had a nice time, although the restaurant served these really freakish amounts of pasta that nobody normal would actually eat. Somehow I managed to get around 300lbs of bacon-infested mashed potatoes with my chicken marsala instead of a pasta accompaniment like everyone else, and that inspired a lot of collective shock and awe around our table. I managed to force myself to eat pretty much all of it even though a) I don't especially like potatoes, and b) everyone else was content to just take their excess pasta home. Mostly I figured that totally stuffing myself like a freaking pig would be a really great way to win over Aimee's folks. Anyway we eventually made it back to her house, where we turned in at around 10:00pm (or 7:00, my time) so that we could get up at the very crack of dawn for the 10-hour drive to Disney World. Whew!
Part Two is on the way!
expositorially,
robp
I'm Rob and I just moved to Vancouver, Canada, from Ottawa (also in Canada, but not in the "close" way) to start a new job. I have a best friend named Aimee, a pretty southern redhead who lives in North Carolina. We've travelled together before, but never as a "couple". Recently things have changed for the better (i.e. she's finally given in to my amorous overtures), and we decided "hey, lets take our first 'romantic' trip together." And what's more romantic than a trip to Disney World, baby? OK, lots of things, really... Venice, maybe Paris in the springtime, the Kohala Coast in Hawaii... but just forget about those, we totally decided on the Disney thing instead.
Anyway we decided on 8 nights at the Animal Kingdom Lodge on the grounds that it seemed like the most romantic option. OK, mostly it seemed like the darkest option (our research showed that everyone seems to complain about the dim lighting) and "darkness" makes a pretty good approximation of "romantic ambience" in a pinch. The truth is we'd actually picked the Port Orleans resort because it seemed potentially kind of romantic and it wasn't stupidly overpriced. Sadly it turns out that I called the CRO like the day after they closed Port Orleans. Sigh. (Yes I now know you're supposed to plan your Disney vacation 2 years in advance but we totally never thought of it for the first 23 months or so). Anyway the friendly CRO girl offered me a comparable room at Caribbean Beach for the same price but I was horrified... "Caribbean Beach??" I cried in dismay. "There's no ambience there! I can't seduce anyone at Caribbean Beach!" To her credit, and to my great amusement, the CRO girl actually replied "Sure you can!!" Bless her heart... I mean I could have been a one-eyed, hairy-backed 700 pound cave troll for all she knew. After a lot of discussion she was happy to give me a savannah-view room at the AKL for a lot more money, so I made the reservations and we were good to go. Woo.
Anyway I think that's enough preamble to set the stage for my big trip report. I'm actually going to start one day in advance, because my own cross-country trip to meet Aimee at her place in NC is part of the whole adventure... anyone who's sitting there screaming "GET TO THE DISNEY YOU FOOL!" at their monitor can just skip to "Day Two".
Day One -- In Which Rob Is Detained By the INS and Meets Aimee's Dad
So I left for Seattle after work on a Thursday afternoon, to catch a redeye flight to Pittsburgh at 11:30pm. You'd think that sort of thing would be pretty straightforward... after all, it's just a matter of driving 150 or 160 miles, right? I left Vancouver around 7:00, figuring that'd have me checked in at the airport by around 10:00 with lots of time to spare. Unfortunately I forgot to take into consideration the time it would take for the US Immigration bozos to hassle me at the border -- apparently the guy in the booth thought there was something odd about me driving across the Washington border in a bright yellow Toyota adorned with Ontario license plates, spouting some story about having just moved to BC to start a new job. So instead of welcoming me to the US and cheerfully ushering me through, he directs me to pull over, shut off the car, and head inside the building to have a little chat with the INS. Gah. I spent over half an hour trying to convince a humorless little US immigration official about the fundamental truthfulness of my admittedly implausible story, while answering a bunch of questions about all my recent trips to the US. "See, there's this girl," I explained several times. He seemed unimpressed. "She's very pretty," I offered. He just shrugged kind of boredly... apparently in America pretty girls are a dime a dozen. Sigh. "See, I keep visiting the US to see her," I said. "It's not like I'm trying to emigrate there or work or anything, I mean I keep coming back, right? I'm just visiting, I do it whenever I get the opportunity." By now I'm starting to sweat and check my watch a lot and generally act like some kind of drug dealer or something, wondering exactly how long this guy's going to hold me up. I mean, we've already paid a small fortune and sacrificed part of our souls for our big Disney plan at this point, and I'll be damned if some pencil-necked INS geek is going to rain on our parade. "This girl is an American citizen?" he asks me. "Oh, absolutely," I replied. "She's your girlfriend?" he asks. "Umm... well that's a whole long, complicated story," I said, evasively. "Complicated?" he asks. "Uh, we're more what I'd call 'ambiguous internet pals'," I replied, just as evasively. I mean up till now I've gone to great, amusing lengths to leave the exact nature of our relationship carefully undefined on the internet at large, so it's not like I'm going to just roll over and give the big scoop to some minor government bureaucrat working the night shift. "But listen, I love her dearly and I'm supposed to meet her father for the first time tomorrow... he's coming into town just for that and it's probably going to make a really bad impression if I'm, you know, stuck back in Canada or locked up in some INS jail or whatever instead of at dinner." Anyway the guy types all this stuff into his computer (surely denying me any future entry into the US -- sigh) and after around 10 more minutes of hard grilling and questions and typing the guy hands me back my passport and my flight itinerary and my business card and says "OK." Not "welcome to the United States," or "fine, you may enter the country," or "we'll be watching you, canada-boy" just "OK." Whatever. I literally ran to my car, barely pausing to wonder how many terrorists, SARS patients and illegal aliens managed to cross the border in the time it took the INS to hassle one harmless lovestruck canadian.
Anyway, I exceeded the speed limit to get back on schedule, found the Seattle-Tacoma airport, checked in and boarded my flight. It was totally packed, and I didn't manage to get much sleep. I also didn't manage to get a freaking drink, since they apparently don't serve those on the redeye. In Pittsburgh I boarded another 737 to Charlotte, on which I once again didn't manage to get much sleep -- just enough, apparently, to once again miss getting my token airline beverage. Sigh. In Charlotte the little twin-prop to Wilmington was overbooked and they were looking for volunteers to take a later flight instead, but by now I was tired, unshaven, disheveled, thirsty, and undoubtedly smelling kind of funky... I could have taken the later flight but that would have totally eliminated any opportunity to shave and shower before dinner and like the deodorant commercial says, "you never get a second chance to make a first impression." Luckily I didn't get unceremoniously bumped off the flight when nobody actually volunteered to fly later, and I even managed to sleep for about half of the hour-long flight (the half where they served the drinks, apparently). Finally I made it to Wilmington and Aimee was there to pick me up -- we drove back to her place where I quickly did a bunch of pre-vacation laundry, shaved and took a shower before we went off to have dinner with her parents. We had a nice time, although the restaurant served these really freakish amounts of pasta that nobody normal would actually eat. Somehow I managed to get around 300lbs of bacon-infested mashed potatoes with my chicken marsala instead of a pasta accompaniment like everyone else, and that inspired a lot of collective shock and awe around our table. I managed to force myself to eat pretty much all of it even though a) I don't especially like potatoes, and b) everyone else was content to just take their excess pasta home. Mostly I figured that totally stuffing myself like a freaking pig would be a really great way to win over Aimee's folks. Anyway we eventually made it back to her house, where we turned in at around 10:00pm (or 7:00, my time) so that we could get up at the very crack of dawn for the 10-hour drive to Disney World. Whew!
Part Two is on the way!
expositorially,
robp
"Boyfriend" and "terrorist" both have the same number of letters in them, you know. Travel days are never fun, but it sounds like yours was worse than most.
Can't wait to read more!
