We were still on central time - so getting up was a struggle this morning. We did, however, manage to get up in time to check out, but missed breakfast. So instead, we headed to SoDOUGH Baking Co. and bought a bunch of donuts to take to NASFAA Board Member Bill Spiers and his financial aid team at Tallahassee Community College.
We chased Bill down on his way to a meeting and hauled the huge box of 12 donuts to the financial aid office where they were enjoyed by several. We bought two for our own enjoyment and - we both agree - best donuts we've ever had. Hands down.
After licking our fingers, we headed to the Antique Car Museum for a looksee at some pretty fancy cars and collections. The museum is a labor of love for the founder DeVoe Moore. DeVoe started his first knife collection at the age of 9 and I don't believe he has stopped collecting since. A resident of Tallahassee, his museum contains several collections including over 160 vintage and rare automobiles, boats, motorcycles, pianos, cash registers, telephones, computers, adding machines, typewriters, outboard motors, Star Wars items and - of course - the original Batmobiles used in the Batman Returns and Batman Forever movies as well as the Batmobile from the 1960s television series. Did I mention golf and sports memorabilia? Yeah, this place is stuffed full - but well displayed and with plenty of room to maneuver.
As we wandered in and among the cars, we saw a 1913 Car-Nation Tourer - apparently a very rare car as there are only three still known to exist. There was a 1929 Graham Paige Locomobile built for Paramount Pictures and outfitted to look like a train with a touring balcony. There was an Amphicar (1961-1968) - essentially a boat with wheels that looked like a car and could be driven on land or in the water. There was a story there about how President Lyndon Johnson enjoyed the one he owned. Apparently he would drive them into the lake on his property screaming the whole time about brake failure.
I enjoyed the collection of wooden boats including a beautifully crafted, stylized replica of the African Queen. The boat had been built by Richard Speas who was the owner, creator and manager of a small maritime museum in Jacksonville. He was also a talented woodworker who built beautiful wooden boats. DeVoe included a quote from Richard that had hung in the maritime museum: "If God wanted me to build a fiberglass boat, he would have made fiberglass trees."
Included among the computer collection was the original MacIntosh desktop computer. Isaac was thrilled to see one up close and in person and I got some street cred for having used the Mac in my high school journalism class. I showed him where the floppy disk was inserted and explained how the Mac used the cool and colorful hard cover 3.5 inch floppy that you could collect in a handy dandy file box.
This was a fun stop.
Afterwards, we hopped in the Rav and gassed her up for the last leg to Jacksonville and Sam! We rolled into his place and woke him up from an afternoon nap. We had a nice long visit, borrowed his apartment laundry machines (we had packed light to accommodate the flight back), went to Walmart to purchase an air fryer for his apartment, hugged him and headed back out on the road south to Orlando and Universal Studios. Now - just in case any of you are feeling bad for Sam right now - we did offer him the chance to come along. He indicated he had already been to the parks and, as we discovered later, once a decade is more than enough. Besides, there was a video game tournament going on he felt he had a pretty good chance at winning.
On the way to Orlando, we managed to finish The Lost City of the Monkey God. Turns out, Douglas Preston believes the people who lived in the abandoned city suffered the same fate of many of the indigenous populations shortly following the landing of Europeans in the New World. The first discovery expedition occurred with no unintended consequences. The second, however, was a different matter. The second time, several of the sailors on board the European ships were sick. When they landed, they brought flu and small pox with them which spread through the New World like wildfire. These diseases ended up causing significant reduction of the native populations - sometimes at a rate of 95%. That means that only one in every 10 individuals survived. Entire races and cultures were wiped from existence. As I said to Isaac in the car - all this horrible stuff happened because one sailor decided to go to work sick! Stay home when you are sick, people. Just stay home.
The book took a serious turn when he started discussing the leishmaniasis disease. The research and treatment of this disease is underfunded, difficult to obtain and on its own difficult to survive. In the book, Douglas explains that parasitic diseases - like leish - are most commonly found in third world countries and among poorer populations. Hence, drug companies are hesitant to fund research to fix a disease that won't result in purchased medications. Douglas then went on to hypothesize that there was a real possibility this disease would spread from third world to first world countries causing another devastating pandemic. All it will take is the migration of the sandfly - a small insect that prefers tropical climates. Irony at its best.
Now remember, this book was published in 2017. Towards the end, Douglas predicts the ease with which a pandemic can overtake the modern world not acclimated to diseases that are common in third world countries and for which there is no cure. I wonder what he thinks about this last year of our lives? Someone should give that guy a crystal ball so he can open a store and make it official.
We were a little unnerved by this revelation and it inspired a lot of good discussion. Up to this point, the majority of our trip had been properly social distanced, masked and mostly outside when (and if) there were ever groups of people. (There weren't ever groups of people.) It was a thought-provoking book - especially with the benefit of a little hindsight. Our discussion carried us all the way to our home for the next two nights - Universal's recently opened Cabana Bay Beach Resort hotel. The lobby was managed by a masked gentleman who took our temperature when we walked in and gave us a wrist band to wear indicating that we had passed. We headed to our room following instructions and protocols - i.e. only one family unit per elevator - and unloaded the car.
Hoping to trick our bodies into remembering we were on the east coast - and to take advantage of an extremely quiet hotel (it was about 10:00 p.m. local time) - we explored the resort taking in some Florida night air. It worked. We managed to fall asleep shortly after 11:00 p.m. in anticipation of the reason we stayed on the Universal property - early entry into the parks.
