Wednesday 19 October 2005

Day 4 

This was the day that the talk of Hurricane Wilma hitting Orlando really began to heat up. It was a favorite discussion on internet forums, and it was all over the news media, too. People were going to be able to fly in ok, but the day of departure was fodder for some debate. Would the Food & Wine Festival at Epcot shut down? Would the airport even be open? Would delays be horrible? What about those who had to work the next day – would they be getting home in time?

I declared it a sneakers-and-no-mascara day. I no longer cared about maintaining business decorum. I’ve been to conferences down here before, and I never saw such a persistence in clinging to upscale dressing. You’re in Disney World, mah peeps – chill out!

Sessions began for me at 8:00 am, and most of them were at the Yacht Club. I could sit outside in between, and watch the sun sparkle on the water stretching between there and the Boardwalk. What a great morning!

Went back to the room for midday meal and some work that needed doing. How pleasant it was to sit before the open drapes, with the sun pouring in! For the back of the resort, they did it up really nicely. You could hardly tell that beyond that foliage was a parking lot. Eventually, I folded up the computer and took a brief cat nap before heading back to the Yacht club for my final two sessions of the day.

I had mentioned pirates and mooses on one of the previous days. Yes, I know that the plural of moose is moose, but I like “mooses” better, and this is my report, so I’ll write what I want to. At any rate, yes, there is an explanation. One of the forums with the Disney-freak internet people has a pirate theme, and the other has a moose theme. Hence, I was going to meet some pirates and mooses in the coming days. I would start by meeting some pirates this evening at Epcot.

Robin called my cell just as I was trying to leave a voice mail for Kerry and Georgia, two pirates who were hanging around Epcot that day. What ended up happening is that instead of hanging up, I actually put the Kerry call on hold, and he got a lot of dead air on his voice mail – sorry Kerry! Anyhow, arrangements were made to meet and hang out for a while, before I had to go back to the room and do some more work. So after my last session, I walked into Epcot (again, cursing the fact that I had to drag the damned bag with me) to go and meet up with them.

I’d never met Kerry and Georgia before, but I’d seen their photos, and I knew what Robin looked like from her visit to NYC earlier in the year. So it wasn’t hard to spot them, hanging out in one of my favorite places – on a bench in France, right outside the perfume shops. We spent a nice couple of hours just chatting and raiding the French bakery nearby, before I had to head back to Riverside to attend to work matters.

My trip notes say I shut down the work computer and went for a mug pilgrimage circa 9:45 p.m. and spent the rest of the evening surfing, before turning in close to midnight. Again, this was a no photos day.

• Day One
• Day Two
• Day Three
• Day Five
• Day Six
• Day Seven
• Day Eight
• Day Nine

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