The Great American Road Trip: Days 98-99

On Monday Kerry had to go to work, so I spent the morning puttering around, returning some emails, and then at noon I drove over to Altamonte Springs to open up the rental house and start cooking before Mariel's flight arrived that afternoon. Mariel and I met in Tucson at a discussion group and soon became friends, sharing weekly dinner and stories (she has the most fascinating stories!). She spent many years in Gainsville, just north of here, before moving to Tucson 13 years ago where she works as an urban planner and writer. When she was deciding when to take her vacation time around when I was going to be here visiting Kerry, she proposed renting a house for a week so that all of our friends would have a place to stay and visit. I love staying with friends (and their friends and families), but admittedly it's nice to have my own space that doesn't feel like I'm intruding on someone else's space and routines, so I jumped at the chance.

I had a little trouble getting into the house, but got in touch with owner and was soon surrounded by bags of groceries and starting to cook. It's a nice house, although quirky in a way that Mariel assures me is "very Florida" - concrete flooring and sunken showers, an interesting mix of modern and old that kind of makes the place feel like it started as a smaller house and was added on to with time, and lots of fans. The biggest issue I'm having is that they seem to have hung a number of the light fixtures, TVs, and fans without considering that someone taller than 5 feet might be living in the house - I keep hitting my head on things! The kitchen was lacking some basic equipment like a cutting board or a grater, so I ended up back at the grocery store a few times, but soon had a pretty impressive dinner lined up (if I do say so myself!) of a kale/black bean/rice salad in a spicy citrus dressing, mango salsa lettuce wraps, and homemade vanilla-almond marshmallows for dessert. Have I mentioned how happy I am to have free reign of a kitchen and an excuse to cook?

Tuesday was a beautiful sunny day. I wanted to explore some of the museums and Mariel was game for an adventure so we drove down through Winter Park to Orlando and took a look at the Orlando Museum of Art and the Orlando Science Center. The art museum only had a few of the galleries open because they'd been hosting fundraising events in the other ones, but it was well worth $8 to see the galleries that were still open. Tragically they didn't allow photos. There was a beautiful Chihuly in the atrium, and I really enjoyed the African art wing - most of it was South African but they had the odd piece here and there from west Africa. The portrait exhibit was actually very interesting, discussing how portraiture has changed from a status symbol that tended to be viewed as a way of documenting family genealogy for future generations, into a more personal form that valued background and other objects for what they told the viewer about the subject's personality and ideology, into modern portraits that often appear more like snapshots in time instead of formal portraits.

The science center wasn't huge but did have a lot to keep us busy for several hours, including a really neat interactive "Science Park" where you could play with and demonstrate properties of magnetism, gravity, acceleration, lasers, soundwaves, reflection, tensile strength, and corrosion. They had a racing and flight simulator that were fascinating to watch, although we deferred to the kids who were very eagerly awaiting their turns behind the wheel/throttle. The dinosaur exhibit was where I really came to appreciate the way the Smithsonian had presented their collections, although the animatronic T-Rex was awesome and the exhibit was set out as a "you help the paleontologist identify what this skeleton is and what these clues might mean about its life" which was a fun concept and made it more engaging than just reading description labels. By the time we got to the top floor and the weather section we were both pretty tired and hungry (so we didn't stay long and I forgot to take photos) but there was a really cool rolling cage where you could walk the relative distances between planets and various stars while wearing virtual reality headsets!

After Kerry got off from work, she and Darrid came over to visit for a while. It was really nice to finally meet him after hearing Kerry talk about him - he admitted that he tends to encourage people to underestimate him, but he's crazy smart and very personable, currently working as a sales manager at a mattress store. He's a veteran who served in Kuwait repairing fighter jets and as a bomb expert after earning a degree in chemical engineering, and the two of us happily chatted about his hobby of making fireworks and the chemical compounds for various colors and effects. The four of us spent a few hours laughing together before we called it a night.