The Boston Diaries

Thursday, July 05, 2018

Abandon all hope ye who enter the sucking vortex of ill-marked, multply-named, non-Euclidean roadways known as Orlando

Bunny and I are on the road for a weekend getaway (more on that later). We are headed back into that maelstrom of roads known as Orlando. On the downside, said maelstrom has extended itself a significant distance outside of Orlando and for the first time ever, we missed the turn at Ft. Pierce and ended up on a nearly 20 mile detour.

Then, we nearly ended up missing a service station on the Turnpike—don't ask how that happened. It did. And the maelstrom wrought it's malevolent influence over us to the point where we nearly called the whole weekend off.

And finally, Google Maps directed to the rear of the hotel.

I swear, Orlando is actively trying to kill us.

Singing with scissors

Bunny first proposed this trip several months ago and I was initiallty dubious. I mean, a trip to view barbershop quartets! I was reluctant to go, but Bunny assured me that I was under no threat of losing hair or limbs. No, the only thing under threat was the ears.

We finally arrived at the hotel. As we were walking to our room, it seemed to me that barbershop quartets have shrunk over the years, but the lack of matching outfits, no singing and a definite lack of scissors meant that no, the people I was seeing were in fact Little People milling about. Too many to be conincidental and indeed, there really is a conference of Little People scheduled at the same time and not some Lynchian nightmare.

At least, not yet.

About this hotel

The hotel is quite nice, but it has … a few oddities that I've never seen before. The first, and most innocuous, are all the automatic lights about the place. There's one in the bathroom, one beneath the night stand and the entire garage appears to have motion sensative lights (it certainly got brighter in the garage when I went back this evening to pick up a USB cable I left in the car). It was rather unexpected, but a pleasant unexpectedness.

The next was also unexpected, but to me, not a pleasant unexpectedness. The mirror in the bathroom is nice, large and certainly bright:

[Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the geekiest of them all?]

But there's this odd greyed out section near the bottom. Here's the not-so pleasant unexpectedness:

[I am, for I have a built in television set and you are just stuck with a smart phone.]

It's a television screen! (and yes, when I turned it on, it was tuned to Fox News. CNN wouldn't have been any better)

Really?

First off, are people so addicted to television that one is needed in the bathroom? [Yes. —Editor]. And second, you can't even watch it while sitting on the toilet! You can only watch the television while standing in front of the mirror. That's just … just … weirdly random.

And finally there is this:

[You may look. You may even touch. But on penalty of death, not not remove the elevator stick from the elevator.]

A stick. In the elevator. Just hanging there with a sign saying not to remove it. And it's not limited to one elevator. No, each elevator has a stick, hanging on a sign saying not to remove it. They're just there. I don't know.

Groups of people singing four part harmony. Little People milling about. Elevator sticks. Automatic lightbulbs. Television mirrors.

Orlando is weird!