hello homies.

as evident by the title, we did in fact make it to florida, and then i proceeded to forget i was going to make this post both during the trip and after, so i'm doing it now.

it was definitely something, a bit too hot for me (a lot too hot for me, i will melt in texas), but not too shabby.

to start off, dealing with dca was fun, i saw a security person with a sniffer dog and i really wanted to ask if they had a k9 card, but i did not. one time when i was at the mall in arundal mills, they had signs about the k9 people having cards, which made me thing of that (and the nsa dogs having cards).

the flight over to florida was fine, i guess. pretty uneventful. tar swapped seats with me, which i felt bad for since i had originally gotten a middle seat, but they insisted so that is the way it went.

originally i was chilling, but then we took off and it was loud, and as we got higher, my head started hurting more, which was unpleasant for sure. flying is really cool until i'm even just a little bit uncomfortable, then it ceases to be the enjoyable type of cool. still cool, of course.

did some blogging while we flew (the driving 4 post) to be posted later, mineswept a bit, and then my head hurt a lot so i closed my eyes for the remainder of the flight and maybe slept? i dunno.

then we landed and went to a publix (what is a publix?), then got to the hotel where we sat around for a long time waiting to get room keys. the hotel we stayed in over this trip was kind of an L compared to the ocean city one though.

they only provided shampoo, but it was called "conditioning shampoo", so i figured it was like a 2 in 1, but it was not! 2/3s of the way through our trip, i asked for another bottle of shampoo, and the front desk guy gave me shampoo in addition to a BOTTLE OF CONDITIONER! they gatekept the conditioner!!!! :(

the other hotel just had large bottles on the wall, which was extremely convenient. anyways, as per usual with hotels, they had those weird air-conditioning units under the window, so in mine and tar's room, we had it set to 60 degrees with fans blowing on high for like 90% of the trip.

in total, i think i walked approximately 70,000 steps (with my pikmin go app, i left some of my guys in florida fighting a mushroom when we left to go home). my feet really hurt through the entirety of our stay and after we got back.

day one of the conference, we did some pin trading and banner collecting for ben's nametag (the goal was to make it as long as possible and collect every unique banner, and as tar described in a post previously, it was about 16 feet long or something by the end).

in the expo hall, they had a jet engine that you could see partially inside of (super fucking cool guys), and some people from embry-riddle were there showing off a plane they built for a competition, which was also really fucking cool. i love aerospace, i love planes, but boy i do not like florida's weather.

anyways, eventually me, tar, and non all went back to the hotel (despite having been generally instructed to do workshops, me and tar did a total of zero in this trip) to chill, which was chill i guess.

unlike with atlanta last year, i think me and tar ended up going to sleep before 12 am almost every night except for once, when the sysop finally got there and ordered a pizza at 1 am. the wonderful pizza guy gave a bonus of garlic knots, which was not ordered, but it was very appreciated.

i was not really chilling by the end of that first day though, lots of peopling and stress had me really worn out. there was also the entire thing with the opening ceremony, which me, tar, and non left early from, and then the rest of the night was kind of whatever.

onto day two! i was forced to leave with the early people to go to my 9 am event, which involved me being down in the lobby at 6:45 am, on a bus to the convention center within 15 minutes of that, then being at the conference center by 7 am. for my 9 am event.

i did a little studying, eventually non showed up to sit with me, then everyone else got the convention center and walked right past us and said we should go over to them, but it was getting closer to 8:30 so we just stayed at the table and coped with boredom.

i was kind of worried for taking my test since they check id's and my legal name on my id does not match the name i use generally or for fbla, so i thought they might fuss a bit. i went in line, got up to a guy to check my stuff and give me my test ticket, he checked last name i guess? and then i got my ticket and went to test.

test was boring, definitely did not do great, but i tried. then i left and went to the expo hall to buy a little plush guy that i saw the day before, but the shop owner was gone and the whole booth was deconstructed. i went back half an hour later, and in that time, they showed up, constructed part of the booth, then left again!

i checked back in an hour later, bro had shown up again and disappeared, and finally, on the fourth time, they were there so i purchased my little dude. W.

otherwise sunday was pretty mid, eventually me, non, ben, and ghost reunited with tar, birb, and the sysop who had finished their presentation. birb and sysop left, we did stuff, can't really remember though. at some point we ended back up at the hotel with no intent on going back to the conference center, which was pretty nice to just relax and do nothing for a while.

day three- twas monday, and non qualified for top 15, so he had to go present (L). we continued getting banners for ben, he bought me a triple shot starbucks drink with extra caffeine (it did literally nothing), and otherwise i don't really remember.

same as the previous two days, we left early and did not go back! until quite a bit later though, since we had to do universal studios.

we had to wait outside by the bus stop for like 20 minutes, watching buses go by, then when we actually got to the convention center to get the bus to universal, there were so many people that i think we ended up waiting a solid 30-45 minutes just to get to the park. about 15 minutes in i stopped wanting to be there, of course, but eventually we got to the park and guess what! it was really fucking hot!

i lost my fan before then, and it was hot and humid, and i wanted to dissolve for a long while, so we went looking for a restaurant that met two conditions: inside with air conditioning, and had seating. we did find one, and i think we sat in there for 1-2 hours while waiting for it to cool down.

once the sun was mostly down, we finally entered the actual park, and immediately bought stuff. ghost bought a pompurin plush, and me and tar got chococats. then we wandered in further, eventually finding maryland (diagonal alley) where we found sysop and non, and we got to see the dragon spit fire (quite cool). i took a bunch of shit quality pictures on my 3ds before it died, gotta look at those still.

tar, ben, and birb went to go ride a thing, so me, ghost, non, and the sysop went to get butterbeers (they were okay, i still don't like carbonated drinks), then we wandered around into a darker, more diagonal alley, then found a snake, and then we redistributed groups so people could go on more rides.

tar accidentally stole my 3ds which worried me extremely, but my group wandered more in search of a hat for ben (which we did find), and then we slowly started making our way out.

it was like 10:30 pm, it started sprinkling which turned into raining, we kept walking out of the park, then we got out of the ticketed park area and back into the shop part where tarmac met up with us (having sprinted for 2 miles in the rain to catch up), and then we went to the buses! not without struggle though, since me, ben, and tar went to the wrong parking garage and then sprinted to the right one.

we got back to the hotel, sprinted inside through the rain, and i went to shower because gross from hot and rain. by the time i was done and went down to the frat room, i found ben and tar sitting sadly outside of it, ben looking homeless and depressed (which was really funny).

mine and tar's chaperones did a picture room check, so we took a picture then dipped to the frat.

finally, day four was our "day off", where we got to do whatever up until 4 pm when we had to be back to get ready for the closing ceremony. we went next door to icon park, did a bit of stuff but it was hot, and we made our way back to the hotel by about 3 pm (having left around 11:30 or something, don't remember). we got build a bears, i got a creeper, i also got a cup of water from a bar for free (that bartender was a W), and tar and non went on a slingshot ride thing together (it was expensive).

then we hoteled and chilled then went to the conference center for awards ceremony! it was really fucking boring like last year, we were told to stay for non's event which was really near the end, and ben's was third to last, so we stayed for basically the whole thing. i completed my connecticut pin set (2023 helicopter to go with 2024 submarine, i got a sub for my dad for his birthday too) and had two pairs of the florida pins, one for me and one for my dad. i did unfortunately get stuck with a lot of pins i didn't want, including all of the maryland ones (they were not good quality this year, just printed rather than hard enamel), but it's whatever.

non got 9th place in his event, ben finished collecting most of the banners (like three were missing), and we finally got to leave! non almost left his trophy behind (i saw it and took it with me after everyone had left, was gonna tell him i had it when we got on the bus but they noticed it was missing before then) which was silly.

then we left to the hotel, there was a glitchtech board meeting, but me and tar got stuck in our room because of room check and they kept loitering in the hall afterwards, so we gave up and went to sleep. the next morning, we packed and left the hotel, and found out at the airport that i've been made purrsident (?) of glitchtech, tar is now an intern, but we're both on the board so that's cool. they originally made my title "freaky everett" but i really don't like jokes like that when they get applied to my name so they dropped it really quickly thankfully so now i'm just everett who's also the purrsident.

we flew home, i took some plane pictures, it was pretty boring, but what the fuck is the deal with mco (orlando's airport)???? there was like an 8 minute drive for the plane to get to the runway from the terminal, and we drove past a ton of ponds (presumably housing the big ones), and we crossed a bridge?? it was really wack compared to dca, which just has a really short runway (kind of a W, pretty fun).

i repaid two people, one of whom i owed $10 and the other one i didn't owe money but she gave me stuff and i wanted to pay her back for it so i gave her a $5 and she tried to return it to me, confused as to why i gave her $5, then i ran away and left. :)

then i got home to my house (after one hour of driving, bad traffic) and that was the end of florida. i was gonna write this all that evening, then i didn't, but now i did, so, yeah.

overall pretty alright trip, still don't really like florida.

cheers
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