Notes from my trip to Orlando and other places in Florida, November 1998. The reason for the trip was Supercomputing'98, which was held in Orlando. A few of us stayed through the next weekend in Venice. Here are some photos from the trip. A few of the pictures are linked in from relevant text on this page, but there are a bunch more on that page. It's worth a separate look.
Throughout this article, unless specified otherwise, "we" refers to me and Pat and Joshi, my coworkers on Symera.
Our first impression of Orlando on the cab ride from the airport was that it should be called "The Land of the 3D Billboard". By the end of the week, having seen scores of themed restaurants and other attractions with grandiose names like "This World", "That Land", and "World of The Other Thing" and, we decided "Theme World" might be a better choice. Then on the Interstate between Orlando and Tampa we saw a campground named -- I kid you not -- "Theme World".
After checking in at our hotel we walked down to the convention center (in defiance of the desk clerk's assertion that we couldn't). Turned out it was maybe a mile away. Sadly, we were too late to register and thus missed the social event that night (an evening at the House of Blues at Pleasure Island, a Disney party area). So we wandered around this outdoor mall called Pointe Orlando, ate dinner and had frou-frou drinks at the Adobe Grill (a yummy banana pina colada drink), watched a movie (The Siege), and explored the "mojo store" -- a shop selling all sorts of imported stuff like voodoo masks, talismans, objets d'art, etc. The actual name of the store was Moondance.
Had breakfast at the hotel, and defied the desk clerk again by walking to the conference center. Registered and then spent the morning installing our stuff on the machines we were to use. Had lunch at Johnny Rockets, a diner at Pointe Orlando, with Steve and Chris. Snapped a picture with most of Raggedy Ann.
Spent the afternoon making really crummy posters to set up by our demo table. Our first demos were scheduled from 6-7pm, the very first hour the exhibition hall was open. We found out near the end of that hour that the only attendees allowed in during that first hour were press, who numbered perhaps a couple of dozen. By comparison, there were dozens of exhibitors, including all major hardware companies such as Sun, SGI, etc., and research institutions galore). Hence we spent an hour sitting at our table visiting among our software and playing with ourselves. Uh, I mean, playing with our software and visiting among ourselves.
Hung around the exhibit hall until later after Steve and Chris's demo, and then went out to the Crab House restaurant with them and Larry. Didn't eat their green key lime pie.
Breakfast at the hotel again, then went out to Hertz and picked up our rental car, beginning six days of top-down driving. Most excellent. Had demos at the conference center over lunchtime (2 hours), then headed down to Kissimmee, where we visited my elementary school and childhood home. It so happened that my neighbor down the street, Earl Thompson, was outside his house at the time, so I stood and visited with him for a while. I almost didn't stop, but Pat insisted. I'm glad I did.
Went back to Orlando, headed downtown to the Church Street district, had a frou-frou drink at Chillers and dinner at Pebbles. Their key lime pie was yellow, but we were too stuffed to have any. Went back to the hotel for some reason (probably so Pat could make phone calls to various cousins), then later came back downtown and spent the evening at Chillers drinking frou-frou drinks and watching people dance. Actually I didn't have any frou-frou drinks because I was driving. This made watching people dance somewhat less interesting from my point of view, but it was all right.
Picked up some McDonalds "food" on the way home, and watched the last hour or so of Patton on TV.
Managed to get up in time to meet Pat's cousins Brad and Wanda for lunch. Our waiter was named Brian, the third waiter so named we had encountered in three days. (1. Crab House; 2. Pebbles.) Found a laundromat and did some laundry. We had been wearing the same, matching shirts every day at our demos, so washing mid-week was definitely in order. Played a Ms. Pacman game there, and scored what might have been my highest score ever, but it's a record with an asterisk because the little Ms. Pacman was in turbo mode.
Got to the conference center barely in time for our next demos, after which we went over to Pointe Orlando again, had a banana colada at Adobe, then went to Wonder Works. It was pretty fun, and a pretty good workout.
Went back to the hotel and headed out for Pleasure Island, a manufactured party district somewhere out near Disney (I think). It's conjoined with a manufactured shopping district called Downtown Disney. Pleasure Island is basically a little downtowny-like neighborhood with a few outdoor stages featuring live music, lots of little booths selling frou-frou drinks, several bars featuring live music (and frou-frou drinks), some carnival games, sidewalk artists, and lots and lots of people. As with everything else within a 37-mile radius of Orlando, everything is theme-related.
We took a cab to Pleasure Island so we wouldn't need a designated driver. This turned out to be even a better idea than we thought. After the first hour or so the night became in my memory just a collection of brief moments, without any real continuity. Rather than try to assemble them in chronological (or any other logical) order, I'll just present them in the order I remembered them when, at around 10am the next day, I became coherent enough to record some of them...
Checked out of the hotel, packed the car (but left it at the hotel), and had lunch at Hooters at Pointe Orlando. We chose it not for girls in skimpy clothes, but because we thought they might have reasonably bland food, suitable for our delicate constitutions. (Other options were the Adobe Grill, which was Mexican food, and a Cajun place.) Joshi's constitution was feeling a little more delicate than mine and Pat's, so he didn't even eat, except for a few of Pat's french fries.
Had our last demos at the conference center for a couple hours in the afternoon -- the last two hours of the exhibition. These demos were as heavily attended as the first one was on Monday.
Hit the road for Tampa, checked into a Budgetel on the highway, and then had dinner with Pat's cousins Steve and Hilda. We ate at some apparently well-known fish joint, but I forget its name now. The crab legs were good. I don't think we remembered to ask about the key lime pie. I know we eschewed the frou-frou drinks.
Continued on down the road to Venice, and met up with Pat's cousin Chris at work. He was in a meeting all afternoon, so he directed us out to a restaurant overlooking the water for lunch. After a quick stop to buy shoes (all three of us), we hung out at that restaurant for a while. Later Chris showed up, but he still had more meeting ahead, but we hooked up with Pat's other cousin Jeff (thus bringing the total cousin count to six for the week), and headed out to Jeff's house on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) to settle in. Actually, we were in the guest house. That picture (and this one) are of the main house.
Headed over (by car) to Pat's uncle Bob's (father of Chris and Jeff), and we all six went out on Chris's boat. Cruised around in the Gulf for a while failing to catch tripletail. The typical method of catching these fish, which hang out near the surface around buoys marking crab traps offshore, is to plane off the boat and cruise past the buoys watching for the fish right at the surface next to them. Unfortunately, it was a little bit too late in the afternoon/evening to spot them easily by that time, so after some cruising back and forth for a while we gave up.
Went back in to the ICW, parked on some island and visited for a while. Stood around waiting to get into some restaurant and drinking rum and cokes. (No rum and cokes for me. Never liked it. Still don't.) Finally got into the restaurant and had yummy steaks for dinner. Cruised around in the boat some more, down the ICW to a bar called Crawdad's. Had a margarita against my better judgment. The first taste sorta made my head swim a little, but I cozied up to it by the bottom of the glass. Cruised back to Bob's house, woke up his wife Beth and sang happy birthday to her. Finally headed home to Jeff's (by car again).
Spent all day on the boat with Chris (no Jeff or Bob). He picked us up at Jeff's dock at 7:30am. We spent most of the time fishing for tripletail. In the morning it seemed like there was a fish at about every third marker, and they were biting like crazy. Everyone caught at least one fish. Most were just short of the limit of 15", but we did end up with two keepers. The fish were so eager to eat our little shrimps that for a while we were calling Pat "One Cast Pat".
Had lunch at the Rum Bay restaurant at Palm Island resort. Their key lime pie was yellow, and we ate some! After lunch we continued fishing, but with less luck. We saw much bigger fish, but I suppose the way you get to be a big fish is that you're smarter than the average fish. They were very reluctant to eat the yummy shrimps we offered them.
Luckily, failure to catch fish doesn't really detract much from an afternoon spent cruising around in the Gulf of Mexico. We saw lots of other wildlife all day (and the previous evening): pelicans, seagulls, herons, egrets, snook (that's a fish), dolphins (lots), a sea turtle. Also saw two beautiful sunsets (see photo page for proof).
Got back to Jeff's house around 7pm, and grilled hamburgers for dinner. Spent the evening hanging out, visiting, standing around on the dock "spearfishing", which in this case means pointing Jeff's spear guns at fish in the water by the dock, shooting, and missing them. Note for land-based spear-gun shooters: they do kick a little. Don't hold them with the butt end in front of your face. On the other hand, my lip didn't even bleed, so it wasn't that bad.
Got up in the morning and slowly made ready to head out. Watched as Jeff kindly cleaned and filleted our fish, and also a rainbow trout that Chris had given us from his freezer (caught on a trip to North or South Carolina, I forget). Grilled tripletail, grouper, and rainbow trout for lunch. All were exceedingly yummy.
Reluctantly got back on the highway and headed to Orlando. Stopped at Pointe Orlando at the mojo store so Pat could have them ship back a Christmas present he bought for Jen. Stopped at the Adobe Grill for one last frou-frou drink (another of those banana coladas). Got to the airport with little time to spare. The advantage of being late to the airport is there's no waiting, but I'm not sure if it's worth the adrenaline rush. I think subconsciously we all just didn't want to leave Florida.
As near as I can tell from a hasty exploration of the gate area where we boarded, Orlando International Airport has gates numbered all the way through the 30s except there is no Gate 37.
