Orlando and South Florida

It was $30 to have a cot brought up to the room at the Hard Rock Casino, but that's $30 more than I was willing to shell out. I gotta worry where my next meal is coming from, after all. I'm ok with sleeping on the floor in a heavily air-conditioned casino hotel room. I've slept in more uncomfortable conditions. But there were two extra blankets and an extra pillow in the closet, and each bed had 4 pillows on it. So my friends each took 1 or 2 pillows, then gave the rest to me, and I lined up 5 pillows on the floor to use as my mattress and used the one from the closet on top of them as my pillow. It worked great. Apparently that's called a "MacGyver Bed".

The next day was the poker tournament so I went to the pool. The Seminole Hard Rock Casino has an awesome pool. While my friends were involved in their gambling with their money, I was involved in sitting in a jacuzzi at the top of this big rocky construct that had a water slide, or floating in the cool waters of the lagoon style pool.

Guess where I got in for free the next day! I'll give you a hint:



Theme parks are great and all, but when you don't have to pay to walk through the gate, it's even better. Not paying just puts you in such a better mood. Yeah, it's hot and humid, but hey free rides! Had a great couple of days thereafter. I saw "Youth In Revolt" which is a hilarious movie. I don't think I went 2 minutes through the whole thing without laughing. I also saw "The Room" which is another hilarious movie but for completely different reasons. We also watched "Unthinkable" which is pretty good but not for the faint of heart. After that, I rode down to Miami in the uncomfortably hot Florida summer.

Now here I am in Miami, visiting family. There will be pictures and descriptions of things later.

At bike week in June, I saw a really good pair of hot weather motorcycle gloves for cheap. I thought "I almost wish I needed new hot weather gloves so I could get these." Wouldn't you know it, about two weeks ago, my gloves started to deteriorate. They've served me well for 8 years but have finally started to wear down. The right glove is coming undone on the outside of the palm near the bottom:



My left one...has also seen better days:



So I ordered a new pair of hot weather gloves. I managed to snag a pair of Yoshimura SCS gloves on clearance at about 1/2 off for under $30:



I went from perforated leather with gel-padded knuckles to mesh with carbon fiber armored knuckles. Ideally, I've upgraded both the cooling and the protection but let's hope I never have to find out just how protective they are.

There is no non sequitur for the end of this post.