A Day Off!

Well - if there's anything the band needed after this morning's crazy flight, it's a day off. We got one, too! We chose to spend it walking around a 5,000 acre theme park in the 88 degree heat of an unusually hot and humid Central Florida Spring day!

Actually, it was fantastic--and we could have just found a bench somewhere to rest on all day if we wanted. It's rumored that James Allen and Vimbaye found a nice table in an air conditioned restaurant. It seems that they fell so soundly asleep that their "friends" didn't have the heart to wake them, and left them at the table to rest. James and Vimbaye awoke at a table of strangers about an hour later and were a bit embarrassed to have passed out like that. (Actually--I think that James was UNDER the table...)

EPCOT center is spectacular--really--the attention to detail of ANYTHING done by Disney is always amazing. One of the highlights of the day was watching Jim Sparks screw up enough courage to strap himself into one of the capsules of the Space Flight simulation ride. (Jim had earlier experienced motion sickness while watching the Circlevision film about Canada--which, by the way, are both air conditioned.) I have to admit that after what had to be the 25th warning about how disorienting and possibly sickening the Space ride was going to be, I was nervous myself. We entered and it was truly fantastic--Jim made it just fine.

We spent much of the day eating and trying to find the next air conditioned place to sit for a few minutes rest. Finally, the moment that most of us had been waiting for was at hand: We were granted VIP seating for the awesome end-of-day fire works, music, laser, spotlight and exploding planet Earth spectacular! It really was quite amazing, and made just about any other fireworks display I've seen look quite lame by comparison.

Just as the fireworks were about to begin, the heavens opened and we were treated to a beautiful Florida thunderstorm. You can see from the photos that the last thing many of us wanted to do was wrap ourselves in plastic after spending all day in the Florida Sunshine. It was actually refreshing.

We walked back to the bus and were taken to our motel. Some of the band took advantage of the swimming pool and James Allen took advantage of the opportunity to fall with Nick Prince on his shoulders--giving Nick a corneal abrasion when he hit the side of the pool. James was actually quite horrified, but it looks like Nick will get to wear his cool sunglasses for the rest of the trip.

Tomorrow will be a bit easier and we won't have such an early start.