Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (minus the Trains and all of the plurals)

What is all this talk about "Wow, you actually blogged again," and "stop blogging so much, you're making me look bad," all about? Well...maybe we left you all some reason to be concerned with our past habits, but don't you know Christianity is all about repentance, forgiveness, and absolution? Cut us some slack people! (Or, as Cristy is fond of saying, "Bust up off my cheetos fool! Don't waste my flava'.")

OK, so now we are in June, specifically June 1. Cristy dropped me off at the airport and had another long day at work. Purportedly, she stayed up late all week, didn't do any chores and was a wreck without her dear hubby. I don't believe it, but that's what she says. No pictures (I had the camera) and no drama.

I, on the other handm was on a business trip to Palm Springs, FLorida, headed for the FAA Center for Management and Executive Leadership (CMEL) to attend an engineering conference on airport planning safety. Trust me, it was a lot less riveting than it sounds, and that' s saying something.

The way the Government works with travel is you get two "travel days" no matter where you are headed, and you don't really have to do any work those days. If you go to Russia and your flight is 18 hours, tough luck, that counts as one day without comp. time. If you go to Florida on a four hour trip, you get the rest of the day to party. And that's what I did.

SPOILER ALERT: There aren't any pictures of humans in this blog, or for the next couple of blogs. Sorry. I will try and add some if I think of something clever.

Right across the street from Daytona Beach International Airport is Daytona 500 Speedway. Here are some past winners of the event's hand and footprints. Dale Earnheardt Jr.

Jeff Gordon.

An IMAX theatre, musuem, and statue of Dale Earnheardt Sr.

A view of the massively confusing parking lot. I am pretty sure they shot scenes from the movie "Labryinth" here.

My sweet ride for the day. XM radio is to die for.

To give you an idea of the dimensions of the building...

Yay, Welcome to the blistering heat.

Did you know Daytona is home to the LPGA? Who knew?

I took a drive down to Washington Oaks Park, near Orlando, and walked around intent on finding the rare Southern Oak Trees, often compared to California Redwoods.

Only to find out these look nothing like California Redwoods. They do grow laterally very well, but thick they are not.

Often in the park you could see the Oak growing beside (and betwixt) palm trees. I thought that was neat.

The mopnster fish in this pond are literally outgrowing parts of it. Here this fish is swimming around, all fat and looking like a grown man' s forearm.

And this is the biggest fish I have seen in my life (wait...Dolphins are fish, right?) He was up to maybe my lower thigh from the ground. This might have been the fish from the movie "Big Fish," but I can't verify that.

You can't stop this Palm Tree. Mother Nature = 1, Groundsmen = 0.

A conglomerate of little shells that make a rock.

Above ground roots? Crazy. This tree must live and die with the tides.

What is up with me and my ability to find cold-blooded animals. It's like they are attracted to me.

Another Southern Oak/Palm Tree mix.

The same shot from a distance.

Next I took a drive down the road to discover that Marineland had in store for me. This place is famous, right?

Not. You have to pay to see some dolphins in a pool-sized aquarium. Worth it if you have kids I suppose. Otherwise, there's always the pictures of fake shark jaws.

Sorry it's so little, this is one of my many shots form the car while driving (more on that next blog!) and I had to crop it really tight. It's just a beautiful pastel hotel in the background.

Did you read in the news about all the record rain and flooding in Florida in May? Well, right after that, I came here, and this shot from my hotel room shows just how saturated the Earth was. It had been raining for maybe 20 minutes at this point. Apparently some rooms down the hall from mine had flooded just the week before!