Celebration

We stopped in Celebration for lunch at the Town Tavern, the same place we had enjoyed on a previous trip. Celebration is Disney's version of an American small town, and it seems to work pretty well. If you're in Orlando for the theme parks, it's worth a drive to Celebration for a change of scenery.

St. Augustine

We explored St. Augustine today. Rain was predicted for later in the day, so we decided to do our walking around as early as possible. First up: Castillo de San Marcos, a fort constructed by the Spanish in 1672, but used at various times by the British and the Confederacy before finally becoming a National Monument in 1924 (then known as Fort Marion). By the way, there's a fairly large parking lot at the Castillo so it's a good place to start a walking tour of the city. We walked across the street to the old town area and rambled around the mix of shops, restaurants, and interested buildings until it started to rain. After a bit of confusion with the maps, we managed to find San Sebastian Winery, where we enjoyed an entertaining tour and some wine tasting. Good timing, considering the weather.

Trip to Florida

Today is the beginning of our trip to Florida. After a long drive, the first stop was St. Augustine. We arrived in the afternoon and had some time to enjoy a nice walk on the beach, though the ocean is still too cold for swimming at this time of the year. The Sunset Grille had an excellent happy hour. We were having such a good time, that we stayed for dinner.



All the posts for our Florida trip are being entered well after the fact, but we're back-dating the postings to the date of the event rather than the date of writing - the blogger's version of a time warp.

Volleyball in Turks

We finally made it to Club Med Turkoise in Turks and Caicos. Honestly, we're not big fans of the Club Med facilities, but this is where the Volleyball Vacation was so you have to live with the spartan accommodations if you want to play with the pros. Albert "Al-B" Hannemann is the pro beach volleyball player who organizes the trips. He brings along a few other pros to help teach, and drink, with the campers. We were stuck in Atlanta with two of the pros, and met a third in Miami, so we didn't miss too much instruction that first day. I had a good time playing with some old friends and lots of new people. My Apple buddy, Kevin, and I managed to win the Men's B doubles tournament, which entitled us to an exhibition game with the pros as our partners. The last couple of days were very windy so the volleyball play was not exactly pretty, but we all had a good time. I also got a chance to try the trapeze which was a lot of fun. We'll post some pictures soon.

Ice Storm in Atlanta

Delta Airlines called us last Friday morning (1/28) to say that the first leg of our trip to Turks and Caicos (from Myrtle Beach to Atlanta) had been cancelled for Saturday morning because of expected bad weather. Wow, that's the first time I've ever had a flight cancelled a full day in advance. They offered to book us on a 6 AM flight instead of our schedule 8 AM flight. After some consideration, we doubted that the 6 AM flight would ever take off either so we asked them if we could fly to Atlanta that afternoon to beat the ice storm, and then hopefully take our scheduled flight on Saturday morning to Providenciales (PLS). That meant spending the night in Atlanta, but it seemed like our only shot at getting to Turks on time for the start of my Volleyball Vacation. They let us rearrange our flights to use Wilmington airport (ILM), and we rushed off to get to Atlanta.

It got cold overnight, but I thought the plan was going to work when we saw planes landing at ATL on Saturday morning. In just a few hours, we should be on the beach. We got to terminal with plenty of time to spare. The roads were icy so many of the workers weren't coming in. They had cancelled hundreds of flights at ATL, but the international flights were still on schedule. They checked our bags, boarding time was 9:45 AM. But just before we were supposed to board, the airport was shutdown. Get back in line. OK, we'll send you to Miami this afternoon, and if all goes well, you can connect to PLS this evening. We board the Miami flight at around 3 PM. We'll have to de-ice so there will be some delay, but at least we're on our way. Then, we enter the Twilight Zone -- it took eight hours to get our turn to de-ice. At first, we were second in line. Then, we were seventh. Eventually, the pilot admitted that all the international flights were getting priority over us so we were now 17th. After around 7 hours of sitting on the tarmac, the pilot finally announces that his duty hours are just about up, and since several passengers have been grumbling, he's going to have to cancel the flight! But wait, the tower has decided to let us de-ice next so now we're going. Applause! It took a long time, but we finally got up in the air, landing in Miami at around 2AM. Luckingly, we had taken a chance and reserved a hotel room in Miami. We managed a few precious hours of sleep, grabbed some breakfast and took the shuttle back to the airport for a late morning flight to PLS. We were on the beach by Sunday afternoon.

Total travel time: 48 hours. Two cancelled flights, three actual flights, a world-record wait to de-ice, but we were finally there. But our bags weren't. We each had one bathing suit in our carry-on luggage. Good enough -- let's play!

Last Day at Apple

Today is my last day working for Apple. So long, and thanks for all the t-shirts!

Steve quits

Over the Christmas break, I decided to quit my job at Apple. It's been a great 7 years, but the travel requirements and long hours were starting to get to me. I'm not cut out for that bi-coastal lifestyle. My last day will be January 26. Then it's off to Turks to play beach volleyball and have some fun at Club Med. After that, I'm taking a sabbatical to learn how to play golf. Eventually, I'll probably get back into writing software for a living, but there's no hurry.

Happy Birthday

Bertie was 11 years old on January 20th. He's looking a little grey but still has his puppy-like moments. His Birthday treat is a trip to McDonalds for Chicken Nuggets. Congratulations Bertie. (Click here for a larger picture.)

Happy New Year

We celebrated the coming of the New Year at the Grandes Dunes Ocean Club in Myrtle Beach. The food was delicious and the music excellent. We all had a great time.

Click here for more pictures.

Merry Christmas

We have now summarized the years events in pictures and added another album to get everyone in the Christmas spirit.

We will be celebrating at home with Bertie and Heidi and for New Year's Eve we will be attending the Gala at the Ocean Club.

Night of a Thousand Candles

Last night we went to Brookgreen Gardens for their Night of a Thousand Candles celebration. It was wonderful. The pathways through the gardens were all lit with luminaries and various artists were performing in different parts of the garden. We saw handbell ringers, singers, a grass quintet and a pianist. Last, but not least, we listened to a one-man rendition of "A Christmas Carol" which was amazing.

Pictures

Fire Department Christmas Dinner

On Saturday, Steve and I attended the Calabash Fire Department's Annual Dinner. In March the Department opened a second station just outside Brunswick Plantation and Steve signed up to be a volunteer firefighter. He goes to training sessions on Monday nights (work permitting) and has been on a few fire calls. So far he has not been allowed into burning buildings, but he is learning to drive and work the pumps for the tanker truck. He also (with my help) created a web site for them www.CalabashFD.org which has been very successful. The editor of our local newspaper even called to ask about it. He was getting a lot of hits from our website because we link to articles he writes about the department. The award for "Rookie Firefighter of the Year" was given jointly to Steve and four other rookies from Brunswick Plantation.

To my surprise, I was also presented with an award. A few months ago the firechief asked me to produce maps of the fire district. Because we live in a rural area, many of the printed maps are incorrect. The area is also growing rapidly and the map companies are not keeping up to date. The chief gave me some software and I loaded up the maps for the district and corrected them. For the newer developments such as Brunswick Plantation, I had to draw the maps from scratch. I also indexed all the streets in the district so that the firefighters can look up the street when they first jump in the truck, and at least know which neighborhood to head for. Anyway, the maps have been a huge success and I received a firefighter's jacket with my name sewn on it.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. We enjoyed a nice meal at The Parson's Table, one of our favorite restaurants in nearby Little River, SC.

Raleigh

For Steve's visit to California this month I was able to buy a cheap ticket flying from Raleigh. So we decided to spend the weekend in Raleigh first. We stayed downtown and visited the State House and Capitol Building. We searched out a good Chinese restaurant for dinner which was a real treat.

Aborted Vacation

We were supposed to be on a vacation to England and Prague now but another weather "issue" caused us to cancel the trip. We were sitting at the airport in Raleigh, waiting for our flight to JFK, when a big storm came through. The rain was torrential and we could tell it was very windy outside. Flights started to be delayed but nobody was too concerned. Then we realised that nothing had come in or out for at least 30 minutes. We started to ask what was going on and were told that we should go find a booking agent and try to get our flights rescheduled. On the way we bumped into a guy who was coming down from the control tower. He told us the airport was officially closed. The control tower had been evacuated and a tornado had hit the other terminal and turned over some small aircraft, leaving debris on the runway. It was the remnants of Hurricane Ivan. To cut a long story short, the airline could not get us into London in in the next 24 hours so we decided to cancel our trip altogether.



So we are back at home. We decided to spend some time at the Ocean Club, which has been very relaxing. We also went up to Wilmington for the night and stayed at a very good inn, the Graystone Inn. For dinner we went to one of our favourite restaurants, the Pilot House, right on the river in the downtown historic district.



Despite the cancellation of our trip, we have enjoyed the vacation time and look forward to visiting Europe again in the future.