Summer 2007 Trip Report - Day Six
- From: Ginny Favers <ginnyfavers@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:44:34 -0400
Day Six
Wednesday, August 1
We slept in! We slept in! Finally. Miles would have slept until noon I think, but he heard me up making coffee and got up. We left Joe and Dee and headed out for Epcot together to meet a local friend for lunch at the San Angel Inn. My friend brought her mom and we got a table by the water for the first lunch seating of the day, very nice. That’s my favorite routine. I never ate dinner at San Angel, the prices are higher and the selection doesn’t appeal to me as much, so I just do lunch. And the first seating of the day (11:30 a.m.) is always empty, quiet, and you’re sure to get a table on the waterway for their little boat ride.
I had my usual favorites, Sopa Azteca, the combo platter, and their wonderful rich dessert coffee. Miles had… chicken strips. He was getting pretty restless listening to three women yak for 90 minutes, but we ended the meal with a ride around the Rio del Tiempo con Donald and that was something to look forward to.
As we were saying goodbye, the mariachi band was performing, and all the Mexican College Program cm’s were singing along with whatever song they were doing.
I like this pavilion and the people so much, I’m starting to think I want to tour Mexico some day. Joe and I have been looking at some places in Tulum, but I always get scared off by the Trip Advisor reviews – they invariably mention how great it was except for the lizards jumping on them at night or the bedbugs. Makes me think of that travel commercial where the inn boasts “mosquito nets on every bed” and the couple imagines shining a flashlight in the night and seeing bugs the size of Godzilla surrounding them.
My friend took her mom home (she’s elderly and in a wheelchair most of the time, can’t be out too long at a crack), and Miles and I headed over to Test Track to pull FastPasses for Dee and Joe to use later.
Miles is still too scared to ride Test Track, because of the way the track shakes when the cars go overhead at the entrance. I tried to explain to him that the shaking is what disperses the forces and is a good thing, without the track would break… mentioning that the track might break under any circumstances perhaps wasn’t the best move on my part, looking back on it. Oh well, it’ll have to wait along with Expedition Everest, Rock ‘n Roll Coaster and Tower of Terror for another time. Maybe his 35th birthday. That’s about when I did Rock ‘n Roll Coaster.
Dee’s a huge NASCAR, collectible car, automotive anything nut, so Test Track for her is a big favorite. I had kind of planned today around getting her on it without her having to get there at park opening or us having to wait around on a FP return time that would yank us out of World Showcase at an inopportune time. Joe called me and said they were just leaving the house, so they were running about half an hour late from our originally agreed-on time to meet us. I told Joe to meet me at the exit to Innoventions that faces Test Track and Mission:Space, and took Miles into the air conditioning in Innoventions.
Miles saw the “Make a Robot” thing was just starting, so we got in line and listened to the presentation of the virtual game we’d be doing in a few minutes and the wonders of plastics. Miles and I were one of about 24 teams, we were to design a virtual robot that would race everyone else’s in an animation on a big screen on the wall in front of us. You move the robot by stepping/running on a pressure sensitive mat on the floor.
So the game starts, and of course Miles has chosen me to be the runner. So, I start running. Faster, mom, faster, OH we’re almost in LAST PLACE, come on Mom, left, right, up, down, JUMP! JUMP! JUMP OVER THE WALL MOM.
People, I’m not kidding, I really think I was 30 seconds away from a 911 incident when this damn thing finally ended, but we did NOT come in last place, I’ll give us that. Two other teams did worse than me, I think they had toddlers running for them. I’ve never had my heart rate up that high, ever. Shaking and nauseated, we moved on to the area where the kids get to choose eight plastic parts to make a robot to take home with them. That part’s really quick, but still when we finished Joe was calling me saying they’d been waiting for 20 minutes already. I’d got myself into this Robot Stress Test thinking it would be fairly short and it ended up lasting almost 40 minutes.
I admit it, I’m hideously out of shape. Well, I was then. I actually was five months into trying to get fit when we went on this summer 2007 vacation. I’ve been battling obesity and being almost addicted (I think it is addiction related) to being sedentary since I was around eight/nine years old. February 2007 Joe and I took a short trip where the first 15-hour commando day left me almost totally unable to tour for the next two days. When I got home I knew I’d hit my personal end-of-the-rope and started trying to figure out just what I was going to do about it.
Dieting for me is pure poison. It makes me nuts, I end up binging, I can’t stick to anything, and when my weight yo-yo’s back up, it’s always back to where to where I was plus another full dress size or two. I believe that if I’d never started dieting in Junior High, I’d weigh about 80 pounds less than I do now. So not doing that.
What I need is a deep life change in what I eat, how I eat, and even more importantly in my relationship to my body through exercise. I started out last February vowing to just get up and move for at least 20 minutes three times a week in a way that made me break a sweat. Joe “gave” me a $1 for each time, so for this trip in July 2007 I’d have souvenir money to buy myself stuff at Mitsukoshi in the Japan pavilion (my favorite Disney store). I ended up with $78, which means I “moved” 78 days out of 161. It wasn’t enough to make me lose any weight or drop any dress sizes, but I could absolutely feel the difference in my legs and feet this trip. My stamina was way up.
Even more importantly, it got me in the groove of something I could keep up with. If I can jump ahead of my trip report here, I’ll tell you what’s happened since I got home. When we got back, I just stopped working out completely for about six weeks. Joe noticed and said, what’s up, and knowing we had another trip planned in January, I said, ok here’s the deal – I always want to go to the spa at Disney and we never feel like we can afford it. If I move for 20 minutes in a way that makes me break a sweat every day, without missing one day, between now and our January 2008 trip, I get to go the spa.
Well, I have to confess, I did skip about five days, but since we’re talking four months here, with holidays all mixed in, Joe let me slide and I did go to the Mandara in the Dolphin in January 2008.
In December 2007, just before that trip, Joe and I went the Baltimore Aquarium together for my birthday. There’s a wooden lookout in their rainforest exhibit that has a couple flights of stairs up to it. On several past trips here, I’ve come up with some excuse as to why I didn’t “want” to go up there, and let him go up without me. Truth was, I did want to, but I couldn’t without a lot of discomfort. This time, with just the little exercise I’d been doing, I went right up without thinking about it. Standing up there, I realized that something like that is such a huge payoff for me. Never going back to where I can’t do that again, I’m raising my bar a little on what I won’t accept for myself.
I’ve found that doing things alone in my house was the key to getting started. No gyms, no special equipment or clothing, no public aerobics classes where I can’t keep up and get hurt. I’ve been streaming Yoga and Leslie Sansone’s “Walking” videos to my computer and now my new Tivo via Amazon.com’s Unbox. Or I put on dance music and dance. I tried some Pilates but I don’t like it, it’s too hard to keep proper form when you’re this big.
In January 2008, we just happened to be at Disney during the Marathon weekend. I came home and knew that I needed a new motivation to keep going higher for myself, and I secretly signed up for the Half Marathon. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to afford to go because we need to save up for a summer 2009 vacation we want to take. Still, just the thought that I have that Half Marathon space reserved if I can manage to get there next year is spurring me on.
I’ll need to be able to walk 4 mph for about 4 hours to keep pace, which seems completely impossible, but who knows! I’m going to try. Right now, I’m having bad problems with my left leg, getting cramps and numbness in my tibialis anterior when I walk over about 2.4 mph, so I’m going to give walking a rest for a bit and do some weight lifting and cycling instead. I may need to go see a physical therapist at some point. I did go ahead and join our new local YMCA last weekend, it’s pretty inexpensive and they have lots of state of the art equipment.
I’m starting to address my food by not having a lot of junk in the house (no baked goods or prepared foods unless they’re high in fiber) and “automating” some of my eating. That’s one tip I got from recent obesity research, that eliminating variety and choice is helpful. I think I’ve doubled maybe tripled the amount of fruit and vegetables and fiber I’m eating from this time a year ago. I picked a menu of things I like enough to eat over and over again, and I’ve settled into a daily routine (which I stick to with varying degrees of success based on the amount of stress I’m under) of oatmeal & iced coffee with skim milk for breakfast, banana/nonfat yogurt/strawberry smoothie for a snack, some kind of frozen organic or high fiber/low fat meal for lunch (Amy’s is a good brand), and dinner I just kind of whatever. If I can stay completely away from all restaurants and fast foods except for once or twice a month as a treat, that’s really good. Eating out, especially fast food, is killer for me. They must put stuff in their food that makes you crave it, it’s like you can’t ever have enough. Best to just give it a total pass.
Still haven’t lost a single pound, that’s how tenacious my weight is, but I feel way, way more fit, and that’s the whole point for me. Joe’s totally into me just like I am, I’m not ashamed or unhappy with the way I look. I just want my body to respond when I want it to, and not be limited in anything I choose to do, like stand for 15 hours or hike around in heat for 12 miles or run up two flights of stairs.
OK enough of all that. Back to August 2007!
Sweaty, panting, and bright red, I caught up with Joe and Dee in the lounge area at the end of Innoventions and plopped down to recover. The FP’s for Test Track weren’t up for a while still, so we went on Ellen’s Energy Adventure.
Every time there’s a poll on some discussion board about attractions people think Disney should or could close down, Ellen gets on the list for many folks. We adore it! I’d be so sad if it ever closed. We ride it every trip, sometimes twice. I can’t imagine what people don’t like about it. I love Ellen Degeneris, I really love the musical score here, the dinosaurs are fun, the ride vehicles are so soothing and it’s dark and air conditioned and you can sit down for 45 minutes. What’s not to like?
Dee and Joe got on Test Track next with their FP’s, they were back out in 20 minutes. Meanwhile Miles got some popcorn, his “thing” this trip, and we sat on the benches watching the monorail go by now and then. Joe’s phone rang right as he and Dee walked up to us, and we ended up sitting around over by the water in World Showcase for another 15 minutes while he discussed having one of his car’s engines replaced with some machine shop buddy of his.
http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff76/ginnyfavers/100_2042.jpg
It was starting to look like imminent rain, and we quickly ran over to the Norway pastry seating area just before it let loose. Joe wanted a Kringla and I got a school bread, Miles still had his popcorn, I don’t remember what Dee had. After we ate, it was still raining, and Dee elected to sit and then go hang out in the gift shop while the rest of us rode Maelstrom. I’m not sure why she refused to ride it? Joe says she rode it once when it first opened in the 80’s and thought it was disappointing and has refused to get on again ever since. I can’t imagine wandering around in a gift shop for half an hour would be more fun, but whatever!
Because of the rain there were a lot of people in the queue and we waited a solid 20 minutes before we got on the boat. We were trying to remember the name of the big troll in the tree that sends you back, back, over the falls… I wanted Miles to see the movie so we stayed through that, it’s still the same. Hooked up with Dee in the gift shop, and saw it had quit raining. Miles wanted to play on the Viking ship but it was roped off and closed. At the time I thought it was due to the rain, but I’ve since heard it’s closed for good and slated to be demolished.
We spent the next hour shopping with Dee in the China and Germany pavilions. She bought a Hummel figurine that was being painted by a lady who works for Hummel full time in Germany, she signed it for her. She kept angling for us to say we'd get her a Snow White figurine for $350 for her birthday in August but Joe told her flat out that was way out of our budget. Heck, that's our entire budget for everybody's birthdays for the year. We saw the France movie, and by then it was raining again and nobody felt like staying for Illuminations tonight.
http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff76/ginnyfavers/100_0198.jpg
Another early night home, another early bedtime after some swimming. I think we ordered pizza from Domino’s – extremely expensive and not that good.
All in all it was a very mellow day.
--
~Amanda
aka Ginny Favers, TCD Rescued Princess of Chickapin Hill
“I met the love of my life on the Seven Seas Lagoon”
Trip Reports at http://ginnyfavers.googlepages.com
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