Vacation Wrap-Up

I honestly took my vacation at the worst possible time. If I would have known 6 months ago when we booked the place that it would be during the busiest month of the year, we may have changed our plans. My project at work is in full-speed and everyone has been working overtime trying to get the new corrugators and conglomerators online. I have worked 50+ hours each week for the past few weeks, which yes, I know many people do that all the time.

One of the things to suffer from this increased workload is my writing. so here are some unrelated items from the vacation that I thought were humorous.

We took a bay-cruise on that pirate ship that you can see from the Route 50 bridge. I think it was about $20 per person and it lasted an hour. This tour is totally for kids and it is like a long water ride. You WILL get wet. I won't spoil any of the fun. However, I noticed on the map that was painted on the deck that they misspelled Government. It is spelled 'Goverment'. I had mixed feelings about this. Obviously I was disappointed that the artist couldn't spell, but I was also happy that a Baltimore City school graduate was able to get a job outside of producing Stop Snitching videos.

The Haunted House on the boardwalk made some changes. I'm not sure what it is, but this place has been there my entire life, and my father says it's been there for as long as he can remember as he went there as a kid, too, but we always feel obligated to go in. It's $3 per person and I usually take my nephew and daughter in, while my son stands outside with trepidation and curiosity. Every year he says he's going in and every year he chickens out. This year he killed the chicken.

I took him in and about 14 inches into the ride he buried his head into my arm and covered his ears. I think this was part of his plan - physically be on the ride and say he was on it. Then if he lived he may go through again. And that's what he did.

On the final day he went with my daughter and my wife. This time he kept his eyes open. He still says it's too scary.

But as I was saying, there were a couple of changes on the ride. Usually the upgrades consisted of adding more day-glow green and orange paint. However, there were a couple of new 'scary' exhibitions and all of the items were functional this year, a big plus compared to last year.

I tend to take a lot of pictures on vacation, though not as many as my friend Duckman would take. This year I took about 400 pictures. My wife thinks I'm crazy and that I take the pictures of the dumbest things, but then I show her something like this and she thinks it's cool. Wouldn't you just love some candy from the Candy Kitchen right now? My new favorite candy? Chocolate-covered Nutter Butters. OMG!!! Fortunately there's a Candy Kitchen every 25 feet in Ocean City - it's required by law.

If my son could have his way - the ideal vacation would be to get to Ocean City as early as possible, go fishing, then go to bed, and when you wake up - go fishing. We went fishing 5 times during the week (which was not nearly enough times for him) and the only thing we caught was seaweed and other people's lost tackle. My optimistic nephew got a few bites from some really really big fish. What's sort of funny - on the way down and on the back every pond, creek, river, puddle, lake, stream, or storm drain we pass - "Can we go fishing there?!!!!!" It drives me nuts. "Yeah, sure. One day."

Much to my wife's chagrin, my daughter started laughing when she saw this sign. So I took a picture of it. "Why do you encourage him?", she said as she was disciplining her.

The Burger King near the end of the Boardwalk is no more. In its place is Davey Jones' Locker. Fortunately it's not full of old sweaty socks, but it's not full of customers either. I suspect it will be something else next year. But you can't miss this brightly painted red and yellow building. It totally fits in with the Ciudad Océano that the town has become. Or is it Smoking City? I'm not sure what it is, but it seems like Ocean City has a disproportionate number of smokers. Ugh. If it weren't for the tacky shops you'd think you were in France with all the cigarette smoke.