{"id":4871,"date":"2018-01-07T15:13:48","date_gmt":"2018-01-07T23:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=4871"},"modified":"2018-01-07T15:13:48","modified_gmt":"2018-01-07T23:13:48","slug":"on-the-boardwalk-daytona-fl-01-07-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=4871","title":{"rendered":"On the Boardwalk \u2013 Daytona, FL \u2013 [01\/07\/2017]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"One cab ride in the dark hours of Saturday morning, one overly complicated trip through airport security, three flights and two lay-overs (and one cup of very over priced airport coffee), and\u2026And so it is that I end up in Daytona. You know, Florida? Where it\u2019s supposed to be warm<\/em>?<\/p>\n

hmph<\/p>\n

The one year I decide to be a snowbird for a few weeks is the year that Florida is having a remarkable spat of cold weather, which \u2013 considering I packed for sun \u2013 might prove to be a bit<\/em> of an inconvenience, but hey, it\u2019s not raining! And I\u2019m Canadian, so \u201cthe cold never bothered me anyway\u201d and all that.<\/p>\n

Daytona is a remarkably friendly place, not at all what I expected. It has an unusual feel to it in some places, as it\u2019s currently off-season and some of the buildings have a strangely abandoned feel to them. One in particular kept pulling me back, even though there was nothing at all there to look at except a closed door. Either there is a story there wanting me to tell it or something else, I\u2019m not sure yet, I suspect I will find myself staring at that door again in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

The place we\u2019re staying is directly on the beach, so I can still hear \u201chome\u201d, in fact the breakers rolling in are like nothing I\u2019ve ever seen before at home\u2026if it wasn\u2019t so cold out I\u2019d be trying my hand at boogie boarding, as it is, I\u2019m content to watch from afar.<\/p>\n

We spent the afternoon ambling through downtown, and were about to turn onto the shopping street when I pulled at Amras\u2019 hand<\/p>\n

Rollercoaster!<\/em><\/p>\n

And it was, a rickety looking thing, that looked remarkably like it wasn\u2019t even running, standing by the boardwalk under a sign that proudly announced \u201cJoyland Amusement Park\u201d.<\/p>\n

A boardwalk, they have an actual board walk.<\/p>\n

Allow me to explain, we don\u2019t have boardwalks at home, not in what you\u2019d call the traditional sense. We have promenades. We do not have rides, and ice cream and arcades.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s go ride the rollercaster!<\/em><\/p>\n

You want to?<\/em><\/p>\n

Yeah! Have you ever<\/u> said no to a rollercoaster<\/em><\/p>\n

No<\/em><\/p>\n

So we made our way across the street. Up close the placed still had that off-season slightly abandoned feel to it, almost as if it was\u2026somewhere else. We wandered through the arcade first, but didn\u2019t find anything that we wanted particularly to play (the Daytona racing game was out of order), before actually going back and working up the nerve to get onto the coaster that had drawn us there in the first place. Up close, it looked even more like a rickety old beast than it had from far away, but we were determined, so we handed over our cash and climbed into the equally rickety looking cars.<\/p>\n

In true old-style rollercoaster fashion, the cars did not sport shoulder braces, they had a single seatbelt that functions as a lapbar \u2013 and Amras is considerably bigger than I am, so these kinds of cars are always nailbiters for me as the lapbars do not truly<\/em> reach my lap. The attendants literally had to give us a running start (seriously, the cars had to be pushed into the first turn of the track), and we started the climb upwards. This was when I made the mistake of looking down<\/p>\n

If I die today\u2026<\/em>raced through my mind \u00a0I should probably tell Amras I still love him<\/em><\/p>\n

It was a very very long way up<\/p>\n

This was a terrible idea! I never should have talked us into this!<\/em><\/p>\n

The first drop was a lot<\/em> steeper than it had looked from the ground. I was half screaming, and half laughing, but by the time we actually got off<\/em> the coaster (yes we survived) I was laughing so hard I was having trouble catching my breath. Perhaps it\u2019s been a little while since I properly laughed? Don\u2019t know, but something about it struck me as completely hilarious.<\/p>\n

So I can now say I\u2019ve ridden a ride on a proper amusement pier. I even played skeeball (badly, I think my score was 160)<\/p>\n

One more thing off the random bucket list that is my life!<\/p>\n

And tomorrow? Universal Studios! (HARRY POTTER!!!!!!! Er, not that I\u2019m excited)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One cab ride in the dark hours of Saturday morning, one overly complicated trip through airport security, three flights and two lay-overs (and one cup of very over priced airport coffee), and\u2026And so it is that I end up in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[99,19,20,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bound","category-theme-parks","category-travel","category-vacation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/thumb_sandblaster_02.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-1gz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4871"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4873,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4871\/revisions\/4873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}