Wednesday, January 5
The sun was rising outside my window seat as I headed for Orlando
Julie collected me from the airport and after she was done with work that evening, we headed for Disney's Wide World of Sports complex to pick up our race bibs and shirts.
Selfies in front of the Pluto 5K art for the medal
Our course starts at the back of the Epcot parking lot, winds around the backstage area until we enter the World Showcase near Mexico and then pop in and out from the park areas to the backstage areas around to the front of the park and back out to the front of the parking lot.
Photo ops inside the Expo Center
Thursday, January 6
Up at 2 and out by 3 a.m.!
photo op before getting into our corral to wait our turn at the start line
waiting on our turn, I checked the weather back home compared to Orlando.
A couple of outfits I couldn't resist snapping photos of:
Colbie's very favorite show is Bluey
I found both Bluey and Bingo ahead of us
and there was this pair who reminded me of Emperor's New Groove
the first group left the starting line at 5:00. Our group didn't get the go until 5:45
Some snaps from inside World Showcase. They had the fountains running as well as the geosphere
and completely empty country pavilions!
plus some photo ops with really rare characters. Those lines to snap a photo with them were way too long to wait in, though.
Mickey was at the finish line right around sunrise an hour later!
they also had PhotoPass photographers along the route and those photos showed up in our accounts after Julie linked them later that morning
We were back to Julie's house by 8:00 a.m. so after a bite of breakfast, we napped to catch up on the half a night of sleep we missed before heading back to the Magic Kingdom at noon.
Christmas decorations, including the tree, are still in place.
the tradition is to wear the morning's medal to the parks. Tomorrow, it'll be all the people who did the 10k on Friday morning. Saturday it'll be all the people who finished the half marathon. And Sunday will be the marathoners.
I wish they'd make a big booty Orange Bird to buy like the one here
After Pirates and Haunted Mansion and dinner we were ready to go hold down a piece of pavement for an hour to watch the fireworks. We usually don't do this since Sam never gets a good view with everyone standing but since Sam and Jason both had to miss the whole weekend due to COVID and this was the only night we could stay out to park close (Julie volunteered for both the 3:00 am wake up calls for Saturday and Sunday morning half and marathon), this was the plan.
after the show, we made our way to the back of the park to ride Big Thunder Mountain, my favorite in the dark.
you know what else is my favorite now that they finally returned? The parking lot tram. Especially after we'd logged about 15 miles all told that day!
Friday
We got up and back out to Magic Kingdom by day time this morning.
It's been so warm the trees are already blooming again in Florida. One good freeze comes through and the real springtime will be lacking a lot of color.
our company while we had our morning Starbucks and people watched at the castle
Riding the PeopleMover
I still don't know what this spaceship is from. It's completely unseen from anywhere but here, on top of the Buzz Lightyear ride.
You also get the best views of the endless construction progress of the Tron Lightcycle Coaster. I first started taking photographs of this thing 4 years ago!
Riding Peter Pan!
We cut out in the afternoon so we could get dinner with Bill and Julie could get to bed for her 2:00 a.m. wake up call the next morning.
Saturday afternoon, once Julie had gotten a nap, we went to Epcot for the afternoon, although our feet were, at this point, complaining loudly about yet another set of 8-10 miles of walking.
I was able to finally experience the Remy / Ratatouille ride after 4 prior visits of failed attempts.
you "shrink" to the size of a mouse on your way to the ride vehicles
it's a 3-d ride so it's tough to get any non blurry pictures
the wallpaper in the queue
playing around with the phone filters in the Moroccan pavilion
more ill-timed blooms coming out
this appears to be the birds' favorite spot in Epcot
With Julie needing to get up again the next morning super early, that was it for the parks this time.
Sunday morning Bill got me to the airport for my flight to Houston and the changes Southwest had made to my flight to avoid the ice storms around my connection meant I was now going through New Orleans and for some reason I couldn't check in normally.
The line to get bags checked was the longest I'd ever seen, stretching across the entire airport and took an hour. Disney recently ended their 15 year offering of free bag handling and transportation for Disney resort guests (now you have to pay a third party company for the ride and no baggage handling). What a mess.
Flight took off right on time and the layover in NOLA was simple one, with the connecting gate right next door from the other and I landed in Houston, got my bags, and made my way to Hertz to pick up my car.
The guy pointed to a white SUV for me to take. We're both wearing masks and it's noisy, but I pointed to it and confirmed, "the white one?" He nodded. There was also literally no other white mid-sized SUV nearby, although there were ones way on the far side of the lot which wasn't where he gestured.
But when I walked up, there was a nice Indian man sitting in the driver's seat already. I waved and asked if we'd been given the same vehicle by mistake. He apologized, saying, "oh, are you President's Circle as well? I just assumed this was mine." I shrugged and said, "I was just pointed to this one."
He was pulling his bags out of the car and left me with the vehicle, trunk open. I tossed my bags in, got in the seat and headed for the exit.
However, as I stopped for the Hertz lady to note the mileage and connect the license plate with my reservation at the exit, it occurred to me, as I now glanced around the all leather interior and totally computerized everything, this was way more vehicle than I think I'd paid for. Also, I had no clue what President's Circle was, but if it gave you this kind of car and let you skip the line to get a car, perhaps I'd just taken that nice man's luxury vehicle out from under him.
By this time, the woman had waved me through. Hopefully they bestowed an even nicer one to the Indian man.
I made it to Steph's before 5:00 and we took her houseful of grown kids with us to have Tex Mex for dinner before I called it a night.
I'd made the detour specifically to meet with Marie and see if she was ready to sign over the hard copies of the newspapers to a library to both house in perpetuity and digitize in the coming years for future historians and nostalgic South Beltians to peruse. We'd texted Sunday from the airport and she said she'd call me Monday once she got to the office.
Since I was working from Steph's house all week (no vacation days left not already spoken for on other trips this year) Monday was super busy as usual and it wasn't until late afternoon I realized she'd never called.
Tuesday morning I texted again. No response. Tried again Wednesday morning. Nada.
Wednesday afternoon she called me. She'd been in the hospital since Monday morning at 5:00 a.m. and ended up having her gallbladder removed. She was just getting out and would be at the office the next day, could I come then? Goodness, what a workhorse!
Thursday on my lunch break I was able to see her and get the papers signed and things in order.
With Steph also working from home, we got to catch up and watch all the Harry Potter movies in order as well.
A few photos from the work week before flying home Saturday morning.
Daisy
Lucy
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