Around The World – Vero Beach Florida
My goal for this leg of the trip is to visit my father Pete Brown in Florida and fly my sister Sue Brown-Taunton down from Toronto for a week so we can all be together.
I had uneventful flights to DFW and Miami. I have Million Miler status, almost 2 Million, on American Airlines and have built up a lot of first-class upgrades. I’ve tried to use them on every flight segment in the US, but screwed again. I was listed as 20th out of 31 people in line for an upgrade, but nobody got upgraded because they sold all of the first class seats. Rather than being a benefit as a long-standing (sitting) customer, it’s starting to feel like an annoying itch you just can’t reach. Bastards.
Dad picked me up at the Miami airport and we made the long drive home. Florida is surprisingly tall and narrow. It takes hours to go what seems to be a fairly short distance on a map. We stopped at Steak N Shake for late dinner, I had grilled cheese sandwich, the only thing I can eat there, with no meat or onions.
After doing no exercise for 2 months and happily gaining only 6 pounds, I went for a run on the walking path around his awesome seniors retirement apartment complex, didn’t feel awful but will take it easy and build back up again.
The next day I decided to go exploring so I drove down US1 going south. I stopped at the Tiki Hut in Fort Pierce and had a hummus wrap. I stopped at Michael’s for iron-on fabric velcro to turn the button-pocket on my new $6.88 Target cargo shorts into velcro pockets. I continued down and found the Tesla showroom in West Palm Beach but didn’t go inside, waiting for the big visit day on Monday. For fun, I checked Google for apartments nearby, stopped in at one and talked with the rental agent about prices and how to get a garage with a plug for my electric car.
Back in California, I had heard about Eric Idle & John Cleese’s “Together Again At Last For The Very First Time” tour, or what I call the “World Tour of Florida”, which just happened to be booked in at Dad’s favourite performing arts center. I got to see “Spamalot” in Las Vegas so was hoping for good things. In a word, hilarious-in-an-effortless-born-with-it-with-the-history-of-Monty-Python-mixed-in. Well, more than one word…
Here are some of the highlights of the show. While we waited for the start, we saw Eric’s head in shadow walking slowly back and forth behind the big video screen. Then he managed to find a rubber duck on a stick and walked back and forth with that. Then a video clip compilation was played, showing highlights of the show and movies through the years. They came out and talked about the early days and how they got together 52 years ago. Eric was at Cambridge and performed in such key roles as the dead body in comedy shows while John and Graham Chapman wrote for the Frost Report. David Frost then gave Cleese his own show. The two groups came together to form Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The head of comedy at the BBC gave them a 13 episode approval and promised no interference but they still had the BBC censors to contend with.
A while back, all of the Pythons were asked to list their favourite sketches, and not one matched up except the Fish Slapping Dance, so they played the video for that. They agreed that they liked to push the naughty envelope with silly mixed in. They then acted out the Undertaker sketch. Throughout the night, John told some naughty jokes. They acted out the Bookshop sketch but I noticed a few small changes like Ethel the Aardvark didn’t go quantity surveying. Marty Feldman was one of their early collaborators. They played a video of a school quiz sketch from the “1948” show. They acted out a memory school sketch that I didn’t know.
They talked about the first time they were on the Johnny Carson show. There was a guest host that night, who said “I don’t know who these guys are, but let’s see”. They did 30 minutes of sketches in 20 minutes and the audience was dead silent, sitting there with their mouths wide open. When finished they ran out of the building and laughed hysterically in a park across from the studio.
John enjoys making fun of stupidity. See his critique of Fox News on Youtube. John told a story of when he was teaching geography to schoolchildren. Can you imagine this guy being your teacher? For weeks, he had the kids point to countries on a map. On the very last test, one boy got only 1 out of 30 right, and his correct answer was Paraguay. He didn’t even identify the UK correctly. He later grew up to be Prime Minister Tony Blair. No, just kidding.
They played the clip of the King instructing the guards in The Holy Grail. The played a clip of John as a very tough Little Red Riding Hood that I didn’t know. They played the How Many Crosses scene of Life Of Brian. They acted the start of the Bruce Philosopher’s sketch and we did a singalong of the song with the words projected on the big screen. Eric then talked about his new book “The Writer’s Cut” and his play “What About Dick?” and he sang two songs from it. For this next bit, imagine you’re sitting in a theater with your father and about a thousand 70+ year olds, doing a singalong of “Sit On My Face And Tell Me That You Love Me” while the lyrics are up on the big screen. Twice. Epic.
They then wrapped up with a Q&A session. People wrote questions on cards as we waited in the lobby before the show. Eric and John mocked American football and hotels, talked about death, Eric has been a vegetarian for 38 years, John says we only like to eat stupid animals, they’re British so they can’t dance, the both thought Peter Sellers was one of the best comedians of all time, they’re both agnostic and they contradicted a false story about Terry Gilliam being dead 3 weeks ago.
For the encore, we did a sing-along of “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life”. Eric is a very talented guitar player! That was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime event.
The next morning, I went on my second run, going around the path twice. Now it’s getting real. Real sweaty, in the Florida heat and humidity.
The next day was Visit Tesla Roadtrip Day. Tesla has 4 showroom / service center locations between my Dad’s place and Miami. I’m on a quest to visit every Tesla location I can get to, so we decided to hit them all in one day. These will be the 12th – 15th Tesla locations I’ve been to. We were up early and on the road at 8 AM.
We drove to the West Palm Beach Tesla showroom & Service center. It’s in an out-of-the way location but quite large. We then drove down to the Boca Raton showroom which is located in the Town Center at Boca Raton mall. We then drove to the Dania showroom & service center. We met Franklin who was very friendly and he offered a test drive in a Ludicrous mode car. Um, yeah! We did 3 high acceleration passes down the service road next to the runway at the airport. 0-60 mph in 2.8 seconds. Just mind-blowing. We then drove to the Miami / Dadeland showroom, again in a mall.
The next day, Dad’s apartment complex had an “Ask The Director” meeting in the dining room. Management seemed very open with their plans and priorities, in the face of frankly a lot of cranky old people.
Another bit of grocery shopping, got ingredients for my reverse-engineered Chuy’s creamy jalapeno dip.
We had Birthday dinner with Dad’s friend Jean, an incredible piano player. She seemed to think I was too thin, she kept wanting me to eat more!
The next day we went on a tour of the Piper airplane factory, which is located only about 5 miles away. The vast majority of their planes are built by hand on massive pieces of World War II-era equipment, but they do have a 3-D printer with a work area the size of a 4×8 sheet of plywood for prototyping and two 5-axis liquid-jet cutting mills. From a high of 17 airplanes built a day back in the 50s that cost about $4000, now they make one every 3 days, all built-to-order. All are propeller designs with one Pratt & Whitney turboprop model which costs $500K by itself.
We drove to the Orlando airport to pick up Sue. I drove back home and despite having two GPS units going, missed the turnoff to I-95 south and went through to Merritt Island and the Cape Canaveral space complex. Might have been a mistake, might not have…
The next day I had lunch with Dad’s friend Gladys and her daughter Joy who will soon be going to Thailand. We had a good long talk about life in Thailand and the things Joy will see and do in Chiang Mai.
In preparation for the next stop of my trip, I sent an Airbnb request for a sofa-in-a-room in Glasgow. I hope I get it. I have not had good luck with Airbnb as alert readers will know.
The next day I drove out to the beach with Sue. We walked along the sand, picking up seashells and the water was pleasantly warm. We drove slowly down A1A past the mindboggingly-expensive houses.
I saw on Facebook that my high school friend @Elan Bush is doing a multi-week working vacation across the state on Sanibel island, so Sue and I drove over and met Elan and his wife Kate for lunch. We then went back to Elan’s condo and went walking down the beach and looking for shells for a couple of hours.
We then drove up to Sarasota to the Tesla showroom in yet another shopping mall. It was too late to make it up to the other Tesla store/service center in Tampa so we drove back home, getting back around 10 PM after a very long day on the road.
The next morning I got a message from Airbnb that the host rejected my request, saying she “changed job schedule”. This is after her description says “I have an erratic work schedule so you won’t see me very much.” I don’t believe her excuse for a minute. This is why I’m growing to hate Airbnb, lack of professionalism of the hosts, the ones I’ve interacted with anyway. I also find it interesting that you can’t rate hosts who have rejected your requests or make it public on the site in any way. Hiding all the bad information never works in the end.
I went to the local mall to see The Martian movie. Having read the book, I’d say it was 80% loyal, with a Hollywooded-up ending. Still, enjoyable and a good plug for the manned space program and potatoes.
Tomorrow, I’m off to the 4-day Huntington’s Study Group 2015 conference just across in Tampa.
