JOURNAL: EEC Pre-Race

This past weekend, Chuck and I went over to Orlando/Disney for the Expedition Everest Challenge. This was Team Pud Muddle's second appearance on the Disney Endurance Series circuit.

We left Melbourne late Saturday morning and headed directly to Disney's Wide World of Sports for race packet pick-up. There was no expo, but the scene was still quite festive with photo-ops and an entertaining guy going over final race instructions.


From there, Chuck and I drove over to Dosntown Disney for some lunch. We walked through Pleasure Island where there were already people in line at the Adventurer's Club -- it was the last night for all of the PI clubs.


We ended up at Fulton's Crab House. Both our first times, Chuck had the scallops and I had the crab cake. It was good but we know that we'd be eating again before the race.


We walked around the West End Marketplace -- looked at the T-Rex construction progress, checked out the Lego store, and went to the World of Disney.


Then we met up with my coworker Jordan and his son Alex to do more shopping -- though I think that I was the only person to buy stuff. After a couple stores, Chuck and I left to head over to Coronado Springs to check-in. The place was very fancy -- much fancier than the Ramada or even Pop Century where I'm more accustomed to staying at.

We ate at the resort's Pepper Market, which was like a Spanish dim sum of sorts -- we each had a card that we'd get stamped when we got food.


Anyways, after that, we drove over to our "Casitas", and got to our room. The smell of turpentine/rubber cement was strong, and we immediately got a call from the front desk to apologize (the carpets were just replaced) and offer a different room. We didnt want the hassle, and so long as it didn't kill us, we were fine with the room.

Exhausted, we took a nap (separately, i.e.). And when I woke up, I just had to call back and request the other room... the smell was too much. The front desk had new keys rushed to us, and we scored a room with a water view and a mild-but-present smoky smell... still an improvement over toxic glue, I suppose.

View BeforeView After(both very beautiful)
By then, it was time to leave for the race, so we changed into our matching pale yellow bunnies-getting-bombed team t-shirts and were off.