Steven Harper Piziks

Against all odds (with Darwin working out of town at a job that doesn't give him vacation time), Darwin and I discovered we actually had a week off together. We could take . . . a vacation!

Trouble was, there's a rush on vacations right now. No one got to take trips last year, and this year (post-vaccine, with the Delta variant not making anyone nervous yet) EVERYONE wants to go.  So there was a run on cottages and other places to stay.  But lo and behold, I found a place to stay on a Grand Lake in northern Michigan.  Grand Lake is separated from Lake Huron by only a few miles of forest land up by Presque Isle, and the cottage looked very nice.  It was also pretty big, so on a whim, we invited my mother and her husband to come up and stay for a couple days, too.

The cottage was part of a group of several cottages and a renovated 1930s motel that cluster around a small beach and boat launch on Grand Lake.

The day before we were supposed to head on up, I got an email from the cottage owner.  The previous tenants had done Something Awful that had backed up the toilet and sewer system in "our" cottage, and it didn't look like it would be habitable for several days.  However, she =did= have a house in the same resort complex. It used to be the office for the complex and, although her renovations weren't completely finished, it was habitable, though just barely.  She was willing to give us a partial refund if we still wanted to come up, or a full one if we didn't.

Darwin and I searched around for other places to stay, but finding a week-long rental in high season with 24 hours' notice?  No.  So we took the partial refund and went up anyway.

(Side note: I'd heard of rental scams that operate this way. Just before or just as you arrive, the landlord says there's a sewer problem, but no worries--there's another place to stay, and it turns out the other place is a crap hole, but you've already paid through the rental web site and it's almost impossible to get a refund.  I was leery of our situation, but Darwin and I decided that if the new place was super bad, we could just go home. It wasn't like we'd flown in from Kukamonga or something and would be stranded if we turned the new place down.)

Grand Lake was lovely.  A big lake with some islands to explore and warm enough to swim in.  The bottom is rocks, though, so you need sandals or pool shoes.

The cottage . . . wasn't lovely.  Like the landlady said, the renovations weren't quite done.  Really, they were barely started. 

Judging by the fireplace and other structural bits, Darwin and I figured the place had been put up in the late 40s or early 50s as a two-room cabin with knotty pine paneling. Later (60s?), someone added another section with three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a utility room, turning it from a cabin into a house. 

The newer section was, frankly, run-down and shabby.  The bathroom was dingy and dimly-lit, and there was no wall mirror. The landlady had propped a mirror behind the faucets, but it was so low, you could only see your stomach.  (I had to kneel to shave.)  The tub and toilet were placed in such a way that you had to do a little dance to use either one.  The kitchen had been redone recently, but some sections of the walls weren't finished, and showed bare plywood. 

Only one bedroom--the smallest--was open. The other two were locked.  The landlady said she was storing stuff in them. She offered to clear out one of the bedrooms so our visitors could stay, but my mother and her husband have some mobility issues, and this cottage was definitely not set up for them (the original was, which was why we had issued the invitation).  I didn't see how either of them could use the bathroom, for example.  I called my mother and told her not to come up unless she didn't mind me helping her in the bathroom. :)

To be fair, none of this was the landlady's fault.  We later learned a child of the previous tenant in the original house had flushed a washcloth and a toy car down the toilet, causing the sewer problem. The landlady worked hard to make the new place as habitable as possible while also refunding us a big chunk of our rent, and the place was decent enough at the new price.

So Darwin and I did our best to have a good vacation.

The weather didn't help.  The first two days were chilly and dreary.  We explored the area and visited some of the towns, where we tried to unravel some of the local history, which we enjoy. 

Wednesday, we went up to Mackinac Island, something we usually do every year but couldn't last summer.  Wednesdays are best, we've learned, because the crowds are lighter.  Not this time!  Mackinac was packed!  The downtown area is almost all souvenir and fudge shops (Mackinac =invented= the idea of selling fudge to tourists), and Darwin and I aren't interested in either one these days--we go to Mackinac for the view and the lake and the cool breezes and the no-cars rule and to people-watch.  We rode our bikes around and enjoyed ourselves very much.

Thursday, we hung around Grand Lake. I swam and read a book from cover to cover.  We kayaked out to one of the islands on Grand Lake and I saved a caterpillar that had fallen into the water.  A large family had taken over the rest of the cottages in the complex for a family reunion, and we talked to some of them around the common area campfire. They were Very Nice People. 

Thursday night was both chilly and stormy, and Friday was seriously windy and also chilly.  The lake wasn't safe--choppy whitecaps--so we went exploring elsewhere.  We checked out two historic lighthouses on Lake Huron, though vertigo got the better of Darwin and he couldn't bring himself to climb either one. I did, and the view from both was spectacular.  I could see lakes and Great Lakes and forests for miles and miles and miles, and I knew that this was the reason the Huron lighthouse keepers stayed at their jobs.

We also hiked over to Besser Bell because there's a sort-of ghost town in the nature preserve over there.  Bell, Michigan was founded in 1870 as a logging town and peaked in 1900 with 100 residents.  It had a bank and a post office.  But the lumbering time in Michigan was ending--all the trees had been cut down, you see--and the town started to dry up.  It tried to transition into a mining town, but that didn't work out.  By 1910 or so, the place had evaporated.

Now you can find the town by hiking through the Besser Bell nature preserve on Lake Huron.  The hiking trail threads through thick woods that give you occasional peeks of Lake Huron, including a lagoon that has a 100-year-old shipwreck at the bottom. Eventually in these woods, you find a few boards nailed together in a way that makes you think, "Oh--someone had a deer blind here several years ago," until you realize you're looking at the remains of a house and the trail is actually what's left of Bell's main street.  You can also find bits of rusted metal and a four-foot-tall safe lying on its back with the door missing.  If you look closely, you can see mounds and depressions that mark out where building foundations used to be.  A bit father down the trail is a big stone chimney and fireplace standing among some trees.  There's no obvious sign of the house that must have been there.  And that's all there is left of Bell, Michigan.

Well, that's not entirely true.  There's also the cemetery.

The Bell Cemetery is hidden fairly deep in the woods, and not where you expect.  Darwin and I hunted for it in the Besser Bell preserve and couldn't find it anywhere.  Then we ran into an old man walking his dog on the trails and we asked him about it.  He knew the place and gave us directions.

If you want to find the cemetery, park you car in the little lot at the Besser Bell preserve, then turn your back to the main trail and its signs.  Cross the parking lot.  You'll see a rough two-track road cutting through the trees ahead of you.  Turn right and follow that road. It's a bit of a walk.  Just at the point when you think you must have missed something, you'll see a trail split off the road to the left.  Follow that trail.  Again, you'll start to wonder if you've gone the wrong way, and then you'll see an arched wooden gateway and a wooden fence.  That's the cemetery.

I'm writing this here because none of the other web sites that mention the cemetery actually give directions about finding it. They just say it's in the Besser Bell nature preserve, and it really isn't.

Anyway, the Bell cemetery is the definition of a Midwest frontier cemetery.  It's hidden away in the forest, and would be seriously creepy at dusk.  Most of the graves are marked with simple concrete crosses with RIP written on them.  Still more graves are marked with rough wooden crosses.  Darwin and I thought maybe the wooden crosses were new(ish), but we looked at them more closely and saw that the fastener that held the two pieces together was clearly hand forged.  So the wooden crosses are all 100 years old or more, too.  Only a couple-three graves have tombstones with names on them, and they're carved roughly, the work of someone who doesn't do it professionally. ("Well, I suppose I could try doing a tombstone for you. I mean, I usually just cut stones for walls and foundations.")  Bell wasn't big enough to have a full-time gravestone carver.  One stone was a step above the rest, and we suspect the family had some money and had a stone shipped in from Alpena or farther south.  Everyone else made do with wooden crosses.

Darwin and I always wonder who the people were.  Why did they come to Bell?  Do any of their descendants still live in the area?  (We later learned that yes--several do.  Bell itself dried up, but a bunch of the people stayed in the area and just spread out instead of leaving entirely.)  How did they die?  What was the funeral like?  We found a spot outside the graveyard that seemed to be a parking area for the hearse wagon, and we tried to imagine a group of 80 or so people in their frontier Sunday best gathered among the other graves for a burial.

There was also a much newer monument put up in the 1990s that listed the names of several people in the cemetery.  We assume it was put up by the same group that did the new fence and gateway, and we thought this was a very nice thing for these people to do.  Darwin, especially, finds anonymous or badly-marked graves sad, and it was good to see this effort.

Later, the weather turned yuckier.  The wind was replaced with clouds, cold air, and finally the kind of rain that digs in for a few days.  And so we called it quits.  We packed up and left for home early.

We had some fun and saw some interesting sights, but on balance, I have to put this trip into the category "Oh well--we tried."

Yes, Darwin and I are Those People.

When we get home from a trip, no matter what, we unpack everything.  Suitcases are emptied.  Clean clothes go back into the closet.  The bag of dirty clothes goes into the washer.  The toiletries are returned to their places.  The car is emptied of all trash.  Souvenirs are sorted and put away.

We collapse into bed, but in the morning we get up and the house is already completely in order.  We like it that way!

I had to visit Salem.  It's a Witch thing.

We drove into the town, and I wasn't sure how to react.  Salem, as we all know, was the site of one of the most awful and idiotic and frightening eras in American history.  On the other hand, "only" 19 people were murdered at Salem, against the uncounted thousands of Native Americans who were murdered.  On the other hand . . .

Anyway, I've always been angry about the Salem trials. The dichotomies and hypocrisy and utter idiocy are just too much for me.  None of the victims were Witches as I think of them today, but they've been adopted post-mortem by the Pagan community and are the biggest symbol of fear, oppression, and mob rule in America.  Note that Donald Trump (incorrectly) invokes the Salem Witches at every turn these days.

I maintain that if I were ever accused of Witchcraft in Salem, I would have told the judge to drop the whole thing, or I'd confess to Witchcraft and tell everyone that the judge signed the Devil's book along with me.  Then I'd howl and scream and writhe on the floor while begging the judge to stop sending his soul out to get me.  That would end the trials right quick.

At any rate, the outskirts of Salem are dumpy and ugly.  I threaded our way to a parking lot in the downtown area and we set out to explore.

Salem has a love-hate relationship with the trials.  When you walk around the place, you see lots and lots of signs and plaques that point out all sorts of historical events (none of which are recorded in any notable history books or taught in schools), and they rarely mention the trials at all.  "Hey, guys," the signs plead. "Salem isn't just about hanging Witches!  Really!  Lots of other stuff has happened here, too.  Guys?  Hello?"

But everyone knows the only reason anyone visits Salem is because of the trials.  And so they grudgingly set up a couple museums and a little Witch-themed shopping area that sells candles and psychic readings and statues of Witches and cheap stuff inscribed with pentacles.  The place manages to be both tawdy and pitiful, to tell the truth.

We found the old cemetery.  It was tiny, the size of a good-sized suburban yard, and like the one in Groton, it was crammed with the dead, even though not all of them had markers.  None of the accused Witches had markers.  The bodies of most of them were spirited away by their families and buried in secret, and the others were buried unmarked in the cemetery.  The city did put in a memorial, though.  It's a set of stone benches, each inscribed with the name of the accused Witch and the year in which he or she was hanged (or, in the case of Giles Corey, slowly crushed to death under a pile of stones).  People often put cut flowers on the benches.  A hefty crowd of visitors sifted through the grave markers.

One person related to the trials DOES have a stone: John Hathorne, the main judge in the cases.  He kept the trials going, sentenced innocent people to hang, and refused to listen even when the Witches' "victims" admitted they had lied about being attacked by magic.  When you were hanged for Witchcraft, your property was auctioned off by the town, and Hathorne bought property freed up by the executions he himself had ordered.

I hawked up and spat on his grave.

A huge, ancient oak tree that must have witnessed the trials and the hangings dominates one side of the graveyard.  It's so big that its lower branches have drooped down to rest on the ground.  It was covered in green acorns.  I picked three of them to take home for my altar--life out of death.

Yesterday Boston was in the 90s, but we intrepidly trepped out like we'd never trepped before!

We wanted to visit the Boston library because they might have genealogy stuff for Darwin and because . . . library!  This required working out the mass transit system, but fortunately I'm well-versed in subways after living in Europe.  Boston's was easier to figure out than most.  Darwin had never used a subway in his life, so I taught him the basics.  We bought passes for the week and hopped aboard the blue line, which dropped us right in front of our goal.

Darwin rooted around in the local history and family history room while I explored the library.  The Boston library was built back in the early 1800s, when libraries were built to resemble Greek temples.  Big, echoing vaults, long reading rooms, statues and paintings everywhere. It's half museum, really.  We found a 300-year-old table built of oak and marble that must have weighed 1000 pounds.  I surreptitiously tried to lift one side, and it was like lifting a house.  My . . . favorite work of art was the series of paintings in one gallery titled "The Triumph of Religion."  The series started with a bunch of Pagan gods (who looked vaguely Egyptian) doing awful things to hapless humans or their souls.  Then Christianity arrived, and everything turned lovely.  (No mention of the Inquisition or the Salem trials or . . . ) It was painted between 1895 and 1905 or so, but the artists left one panel blank for the Sermon on the Mount.  In the room were a pair of ceiling-high, glass-fronted cabinets--locked--with old books in them.  I told Darwin that the books were clearly magic, and the library had commissioned the paintings to keep the books under control, but without the final panel, the books could easily escape.  He wasn't as fascinated with the idea as I was.

After the library, we took the train over to the Italian section of town because that's where Old North Church and the statue of Paul Revere are (but of course).  By now it was getting on 5:00, when everything closes, and the ticket-taker just waved us through.

Ticket-taker? You mean all these important national monuments cost money to see?  Yes, they do.  You didn't think the actual US government gave them money for upkeep, did you?

Anyway, we were able to zip through the church quickly.  It was the same inside as all the other churches: a giant whitewashed room filled with boxed-in pews with a minster's stand at the front atop a short spiral stair.  This church also displayed the window through which, according to legend, the minister who hung the famous lanterns jumped in order to escape British soldiers.

We also examined the famous Paul Revere statue to our heart's content.  I pointed out to Darwin that the horse was plainly a stallion, a fact he was . . . disconcerted to learn.

It was truly hot and severely muggy, and we were more than a mile from the subway station that would take us to the flat.  So we sprang for a taxi.  Worth it!

We got back from whale watching and tower climbing very tired.  But after resting a while, I felt restless, so I went out for a walk.  I had no idea how strangely a simple stroll would go.

The night was beautiful--warm and breezy with a full moon and the smell of the ocean.  I wandered down the road and came around a curve.  There I saw ahead of me a dead end that had a little parking area in it lit by a mercury lamp.  A staircase led downward, and the ocean spread out in the distance.  How lovely!  This needed exploring!

However, a car was parked under the mercury lamp.  This meant that someone was down there already.  This kind of thing gets tricky at night.  This struck me as the kind of place teenagers went for . . . romance, and a strange adult male wandering by in the dark would make for all kinds of awkward for everyone involved.

As I drew closer, adolescent voices wafted up the staircase, meaning I was right.  The voices were getting louder, too, which meant they were coming up.  I didn't feel like interacting with these kids, so I ducked into the yard of a house near the staircase.  The yard was separated from the road by a high fence and some bushes, and I stuck to the shadows in there.  The teens reached the top of the stairs, and I heard a boy and a girl.

"I know I heard someone up here," the girl said.  (My footsteps were indeed loud on the gravel.)

"He must have gone that way," the boy said.  "Get in and start the car."

This sparked a minor argument between them.  I waited quietly.  In the end, the girl said, "It's like being in a horror movie."  The car started.  Judging from the sounds I heard, the boy walked around some more, then also got in.  The car drove away.

But wait . . .

Once they were completely gone, I emerged from hiding and strolled down the steps.  At the bottom, I found a beach and a quiet cove.  Perhaps two dozen boats of varying sizes and quality floated at anchor on the softly lapping water.  Even more kayaks and rowboats were scattered all over the shore.  A bit farther up the beach sat a giant boulder the size of a small house.  It was striking both for its size and unusual placement.  I wondered how it got there.  A trick of the ice age?  Or had humans actually hauled it in?  I couldn't see any reason for the latter and decided it had to be the former.

I wandered around the beach for a while, enjoying the water and the moon.

Eventually it was time to leave.  I went back up the staircase and had just left the circle of mercury light when headlights came around the curve in the road and stopped.  It was the teenager car.  I was caught out now.  No way for me to duck into hiding--the light behind me illuminated my shadow.  So I just kept walking.  I had no reason not to be on a public road, after all, so the awkward would just have to be awkward.

A car door opened and shut.  Abruptly, the car turned around and zoomed away.  The girl I'd heard earlier was left on the road.  She walked toward me, and I heard her crying.  Full, gut-wrenching tears.  She continued walking toward me, and I crossed the road to be opposite her.  She passed me by, still weeping, and I could see that she was drenched.  Soaked from head to foot.  Her long hair was an unruly, wet mess down her back and her clothes were sticking to her body.

She walked past me, crying her eyes out, either ignoring me or not noticing me.  I kept on walking, too.  There was nothing I could do.  A strange man in the dark wouldn't be a source of help to a crying teenage girl!

The girl reached the staircase and glided down the steps.  The darkness swallowed her up, and she was gone.  I never learned a thing about her.

I walked back to the flat.

Orleans turned out to be . . . rather dull.  It has the requisite shops and restaurants you expect in a tourist area, but they're all spread out, and the town isn't very walkable.  We did like examining one of the local cemeteries, and I bought a book at the local bookstore, but that was really it.  So we drove out to Provincetown.

It's a long, long drive up the Cape to P-Town, and on a Saturday afternoon, the traffic was hellish.  But we arrived at last, found a lot that "only" charged us $20 for the day, and ditched the car.

Provincetown started out as the first stop for the Pilgrims before Plymouth, then evolved into a whaling town, and finally turned into the vacation spot it is now.  It was settled by Europeans in the late 1600s, and you can tell--the streets are NARROW, and they twist and wind and make odd dead-ends.  And it's filled with summer visitors.  The entire downtown area is shops, bars, and restaurants.  The docks are lined with sailors hawking whale watching tours, seal watching tours, fishing excursions, pirate trips, and more. It reminds me very much of Mackinaw Island, but with cars and lots and lots of gay people.  Nearly every business flies a Pride flag.  So many, in fact, that we began wonder exactly what the flag's presence means.  Gay-owned?  Gay-friendly?  Gay-supportive?  Trying to blend in?  However, we found it nice to be in a place where our presence was both requested and welcomed (even if it's mostly because we have money to spend).

We explored and shopped and people-watched.  I found a stylish backpack that I really, really wanted, and Darwin enabled me into buying it.  And we got t-shirts.  And food. 

For supper, in fact, we hit up a second-floor restaurant that was really one big covered balcony.  It was crowded, and Darwin and I managed to snag seats at a bar-like section that overlooked the main street and let us watch the people over dinner.  They had a raw bar, so I got a raw crab claw just for fun.  It was messy to break open and eat, but delicious.  Their clam chowder disappointingly came out of a can, but their sushi was delish.

The restaurant is across from a leather clothing shop, and I noticed a hetero couple out front of it.  The Handsome Husband (and boy, was he!) was waiting impatiently for his wife.  She came out the door wearing a black leather jacket, which she modeled for him.  They had an intense discussion which Darwin and I couldn't hear, but for which we made up our own dialogue. ("If you let me buy this, I'll spank you as many times as you want.")  She went back inside, leaving him on the steps, and emerged a few minutes later wearing another jacket.  This sparked an even more intense conversation.

By now, Darwin and I were getting interested.  We were dying to know exactly what the conversation was about.  It was clear that she wanted the jacket but he didn't want her to buy it, but the fine details of the situation eluded us.  ("Oh, darling," we cooed on behalf of the wife, "I have to have it!  It makes my butt look absolutely tiny!"  "Honey, we have to make the yacht payment this month.")  Their gestures and expressions got bigger and bigger.  Finally, she swept back into the shop, clearly intent on buying the coat.  The husband waited a few seconds, then stomped away.  Oh no!  This was bigger than we imagined!  She chose the coat over her husband!  Or he chose money over her!

The wife emerged again--without the coat!  She'd decided not to buy it after all.  But when she got to the steps, she looked around in confusion and dismay.  Her husband was gone!  She looked uncertainly about, then wandered sadly down the street.  We never did find out what happened in the end.

We consoled ourselves by admiring our extremely handsome waiter.

By now we were shopped and restauranted out, so we headed back to the flat--or tried to.  We couldn't find the parking lot.  And worse, the Ford app that usually finds the car had undergone an update that wiped out its ability to find the car.  Darwin and I wandered P-Town like lost puppies for more than an hour until we ran into a very nice native lady who, based on our description of the lot, kindly guided us to the place. Whew!

We spent the evening back at the flat, recovering from the adventure.  But then I decided to go for a walk, and things got decidedly strange...

For our second trip of the summer season, Darwin and I decided to go to Cape Cod and Boston.

Actually, =he= decided to go to Boston.  I said we should also visit Cape Cod/Provincetown while we're out there, since P-Town is a Big Gay Mecca.  He agreed.

We drove it, and decided rather than do a single 15-hour drive, we'd break it in half.  I pushed to stop at Niagara Falls, since neither of us has been there.  Darwin wasn't enthusiastic, but finally went along with it.  Our plan was to stop there for a few hours, then continue a little farther west and overnight in Rochester, New York.

After many hours of driving, we hit the town of Niagara Falls, and we were both startled and disappointed.  The town was seedy, run-down, and just . . . crappy.  Abandoned houses, boarded-up businesses, long lines of dull strip malls.  This was the city in charge of a world-famous natural wonder?

It took some finagling, but we got to the national park with the falls in it.  In this section things were rather better kept up.  We stopped at a visitor's center to get basic information, then drove across the river to the island.  The river splits around the island, you see, and creates two sets of falls on either side of it.  It cost only $10 to park, a pleasant surprise.  We were expecting either a stiff parking fee or orders to park far away and take an annoying shuttle bus.

The island itself was an unexpected wonder.  Photos of the falls always concentrate on the waterfalls, but never on the surroundings.  The island is resplendent with trails that take you past stunning little rapids and delightful tiny waterfalls that ring the island.  I was surprised at how shallow the river is--between knee and ankle deep in most places.  But make no mistake--if you set foot in that river, it would sweep you away in an instant.  Flocks of water birds sit in the river paddling like mad to stay in place.  A big bunch of them sat on warily a shelf of rocks just upstream from the main event as if saying, "Nope nope nope! We saw what happened to Fred, and this is as close as we're getting."  We spent considerable time wandering the island, holding hands and enjoying the loveliness.

And, of course, we saw the Falls.  Both sets.  Incredible and thunderous and amazing.  I took lots of photos, but everyone has seen similar ones, so I won't put them here.  (This blog's format makes photos a pain to post anyway.)  Far, far, far below we could see tour boats filled with raincoated tourists edging close to the falls, but we didn't indulge.  Darwin said he was very glad we stopped.

Oh--and there was History.  You can see the old power plants and the site of the cabin built by the first white inhabitant of the area.  He became a hermit and spent his days painting in the early 1800s.

We decided to get a late supper at the park's restaurant.  The service was lackluster, but the food was wonderful.  And the view was spectacular.

At last, we climbed back into the car and wound our way to Rochester, where we checked into a motel for the night, pleased with our trip so far.

It's been a weird spring break.  It's budget season for Darwin at his job, so he's been horrifyingly busy at his office.  The tax monster took an unexpected big bite from us.  I have a freakishly tight deadline.  And the weather, which through March was delightfully warm and pleasant, has turned cold, snowy, and awful.  So we haven't gone anywhere or done anything.

I've spent the week chained to my keyboard.  The aforementioned deadline is keeping my busy, and I also got the page proofs for another project at the same time, so it's a working break.  Darwin has been getting home late thanks to the budget.  =He= is taking next week off for vacation.

My vacation activities have been limited to sleeping late, watching THE FORCE AWAKENS, keeping up with my running, and playing TALISMAN with Maksim.

A bit of web surfing turned up directions to the Daytona Speedway. There are no races in April, but they give tours if the racetrack, and Aran is a NASCAR fan. Mackie isn't, but I told him that he could choose the afternoon activity if he went along without complaining.

The racetrack is only fifteen minutes away from the condo and it was easy to find.  An attached building outside it has a NASCAR museum in it.  I bought tickets for the racetrack tour and then we examined the museum while we waited for the tour to start.  The museum had a racecar in it and other memorabilia, which Aran liked.

The tour was outside on trams pulled by a truck, and the 12:00 one filled up, much to our annoyance.  We had to wait another half hour in the outdoor queue while they scrounged up another tram and tour guide.  The other tourists, the boys, and I stood in line and fumed. However, this ultimately turned out to be a good thing--people were crushed into the 12:00 tram, and when the scared-up 12:30 tram showed up, there were only enough people to fill it by a third. So we had more leg room and we didn't have to wait around as long for people to do things like take pictures later on the tour.  Cool!

The tram took us all over.  We trundled down the racetrack ("The cars rush down this pavement at 200 miles per hour.  We're topping 15 right now," said the guide) and saw the turn bank and the pit stops and the garage area (complete with awesome racecars in it).  We got to visit the press box and look down at the track from six stories and learn something about the history of racing at Daytona Beach.

I don't remember why or in what context, but I had done a bunch of reading about racing at Daytona Beach several months ago.  NASCAR evolved out of a bunch of guys who raced their cars down the sands of the beach in 1903 or so at terrifying speeds of 50 miles per hour.  The eventually carved an oval track in the sand dunes, and more and more people came to watch.  The crowds and the speeds eventually made it too unwieldy to keep down at the beach, and in the 50s, a racetrack was constructed and NASCAR was born.  However, to this day, you can still drive on Daytona Beach, though much more slowly.

Anyway, the tour was pretty interesting.  Mackie, who has no interest in NASCAR whatsoever, behaved very well all throughout, and at the end, as I promised, I told him we could do whatever he wanted to do.  I was expecting to hear he wanted to go to a water park or mini golf or an arcade, but he wanted everyone to go swimming in the ocean at the hotel.

And that's what we did.  The waves were still high, and they bashed everyone around quite a lot.  Eventually, the boys got tired--ocean swimming is draining--and they finished up in the hotel pool.  Supper was at Uno's Pizza (which I love but has disappeared from Michigan) and then quiet time at the condo.

We conquered Disney World today. Oddly, the boys slept late-ish. I let them--I know from experience at Cedar Point that arriving at the park when it opens doesn't really get you any advantage on wait time for rides.  Everyone else thinks the same thing and arrives early, too.

The last time I visited Disney was in the third grade, so my information was out of date. I was a little nervous about getting there--would it be tricky, and so on. I told myself that Disney has created an entire industry out of getting people into the park to spend money, and that they would ensure we won't get turned around.

This was totally true. Once the GPS got us to Orlando, the signs for Disney World were clear and numerous. You're sucked in like a whirlpool.  Parking wasn't as costly as I'd feared, either. The boys were fascinated with the process of riding a tram, then boarding a monorail to the park proper.  We bought our tickets and went into the fabled magic kingdom.

What followed was a mixed bag, really. Here’s why: Disney World seems to be stuboornly set in 1964, with Mickey and Donald and Goofy and Cinderella and Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.  But the boys have only seen a few cartoons with Mickey and friends.  They’ve never seen Cinderella or Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. To them, Disney is The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid and Buzz Lightyear.  They were a little mystified about who all these unfamiliar cartoon characters were.

A new Fantasyland to house more modern characters is under construction, but for now, they're all conspicuously absent.  It seems a strange choice, given their current demographic.

There was other stuff that grabbed their attention.  The characters and the rides associated with them, however, didn't.

Aran and Maksim waffled between charmed and bored, fascinated and yawning. Mackie doesn't much like big swoopy rides, but he adored the people mover and the Carousel of Progress. (That was a surprise--I thought he'd be bored, but he sang along with the songs and found the animatronic family entrancing.)  Aran did some street dancing with some other kids to a DJ--he was pretty good--and was embarrassed to discover I was taping him. He made me promise never to show or post it.

Mackie had a temper tantrum around lunchtime. He complained that thee had nothing to do, but then refused to say what he wanted to do, even when I offered him a number of choices.  I think he was a little overwhelmed, to tell the truth.

I finally sent Aran off on his own, armed with his new cell phone.  He happily hurried off to try the rides Mackie had refused. (Look, everyone--normal teen behavior!  How cool is that?)

I dragged Mackie around to a few different places, and finally got him on the train. He liked this very much, and we rode it twice all the way around the park. He adored the animatronic people on display along the track.

Small aside--yesterday, Mackie saw a newspaper article about a boy with a rare genetic disorder that makes the hunger centers in his brain misfire. He never feels full and will eat himself to death if allowed. The boy is terribly overweight and his mother has to lock all the food in the house up.

On the train, a couple and their young daughter boarded and took seats next to us. All three were morbidly obese and were digging into ice cream.  When we got off, Mackie said to me, "Did that family have the eating disease?"

"No," I said. "That's very rare."

"They need to be healthier then," Mackie said. "They could die."

"Yes. But I’m glad you didn't say anything on the train."

"No.  That would be mean," he said.

We next went to Tom Sawyer’s Island.  Mackie had never heard of Tom Sawyer, but there's a rustic fort on that island, and Mackie just about died and went to heaven. He rushed around defending the place from invaders and shooting the toy guns they have there in the towers. We spent more than two hours there, and he was still going strong when it was time to go meet Aran.  I had to pry him away!

We found Aran at the castle, our meeting place. He was perfectly fine and had gone on Space Mountain and other rides, which he loved.

We tried a couple other attractions. Mackie freaked at the Haunted Mansion, so Aran did that alone. We also watched part of the show at Cinderella’s Castle. Once again, it was all old characters, none of the new ones. Weird.

I was willing to stay much later, but the boys ran out of energy at about nine, so we retraced our steps, tough we took the ferry back instead of the monorail. I told the boys the story of Tom Sawyer and whitewashing the fence.

On the drive back to Daytona Beach, Mackie leaned back in his seat and said, "This was nice," which about summed it all up.