The surfaces I walked on were a veritable treasure trove of textures and temperatures — cobblestones, smooth polished chipseal, wood, rubber, glass, exposed aggregate concrete… it was a feast for the soles, and it was warm and soaking wet to boot, so I got so splash in puddles. There was extra super bad ass bonus magic in this trip to the Magic Kingdom.

The place is immaculate, so I had zero fear of stepping on anything. There’s an army of smiling, theme-dressed people with brooms and dust pans keeping any significant debris from collecting. More about them later.

I was the ONLY person barefoot, which mystified me at the time. God, it was so NICE. Especially given the rainy conditions, why didn’t it occur to a single other human soul there (and there were a sh1t load) to whip off their shoes and enjoy the rain? I’m baffled, still. What a powerful force social mores must be about “needing” to wear shoes. The only time I put them on was in the bathrooms and restaurant.

About those sweeper people or, “cast members,” I was told once, by a friendly older lady in Frontierland that she was very sorry, but had to ask me to please put my shoes back on for safety reasons. I just shrugged and whipped out my flip flops until she was out of sight, at which time I whipped them right back off. What safety reasons? So I don’t step on something dangerous? Isn’t that your job, anyway? Maybe so someone doesn’t step on my toes, or I don’t stub a toe and sue them. What a stupidly litigious society we live in. Anyway.

I was also taking mental notes on the route of the Disney Princess Half, though I’d never in a million years put in writing that I’m wanting to run that race. Or anything like that.

This was kind of a first for me. I’m didn’t get into barefoot running intending to become obsessed with my feet (and other people’s feet too, I will not lie) or a weird eccentric. I may be turning into one or the other, and if that’s the case, then so be it.

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]]> http://gkikas.com/she-can-decorate/feed/ 0 http://gkikas.com/tijuana-flats-gets-a-second-chance/ http://gkikas.com/tijuana-flats-gets-a-second-chance/#comments Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:57:47 +0000 Chris http://gkikas.com/tijuana-flats-gets-a-second-chance/

Tijuana Beef Chimichanga (with everything)

Mobile post sent by gkikas using Utterli.  Replies. ]]> http://gkikas.com/rusty-discs/feed/ 0 http://gkikas.com/grocery-store-outing/ http://gkikas.com/grocery-store-outing/#comments Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:01:45 +0000 Chris http://gkikas.com/?p=163 The wife’s pregnant, and she needs milk for breakfast in the morning. We’re out of milk. It’s 9:30, Sweetbay’s not closed yet. I’m off.

The first thing I head for’s the milk, because I know where it is. I rarely shop in this grocery store. I’m usually at the dirt Publix three blocks from the house because it’s closer. But, they’re closed by 9 and Sweetbay’s open, so I’m in a strange grocery store with a mission to find some nonstandard items.

On my way to the milk, I see Edy’s Grand ice cream is on crazy sale, two for seven bucks. Lunatic flavors, too… Coconut Pineapple? Cherry Chocolate Chip, red velvet style? Shit.

So now I’ve got the milk, and the ice cream, which is melting. Fiber One bars. Where the hell are those? Cereal aisle.

Not there.

I needed apples, and they’re right over there. Braeburn? Cameo! $1.39/lb – Bang.

Ice cream’s melting. Shit. Fiber One bars. Shit.

I stop two girls in Sweetbay garb, even though they’re clearly off the clock and doing their own shopping. They were cool, though, and after I looked at them somewhat frantically after getting off the phone with my wife who said, “Ask someone,” I asked them about where I could find, you know, “chewy granola chocolate chip things, like I thought I’d find in cereal, but it wasn’t there.” Aisle 5. Thank God.

Ice cream’s melting, and the lines at the register are thick, so I head back over to dairy to swap out my now-softened crazy flavored ice creams with fresher, colder ice creams from the cooler. And on my way there, I see this black dude that looks just like Samuel L. Jackson, and he’s wearing a do-rag, and a Tucci t-shirt.

Tucci, Tucci…. where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, Wanee Festival. Some local dude, like a dentist or something, with a blues band. Was this the same black dude who jammed at the campground jam, and that I’d chatted with for a while before Junior Brown’s set? No, this was a different dude.

By now, I’ve gotten fresh ice creams and decide to make a break for it. Oh yeah, Sprite Zero. The pregnant wife’s got some odd dietary habits lately. Got it, so now I pick the least of all evils and go for Checkout Lane Six.

In front of me is a guy in one of those personal scooter motorized grocery shopping go-carts. He’s flipping through the magazines and knocks all the People magazines from its shelf in the rack. They spill all over the floor. Do I help him out? After a short pause, thinking, Yeah I should help this dude, I go for it and, as I’m stooping down to pick up the strewn mess, I say, “Lemme help out with that.”

“Oh, I’m not crippled, I’m just feeling lazy today.”

Feeling lazy today? Was he serious?

Sure enough, as the line inches forward and he motors up to the conveyor belt, he stands up out of the seat to hoist a gallon of milk or six-pack of beer or something onto the conveyor. I thought for a moment whether I should say something to him, but thought better of it and just laughed inside, wondering if he parked in a handicapped parking spot outside with the same rationale.

Behind me, there’s a guy that looks like Robert Duval, wearing a CB radio type thing hanging from his breast pocket with one of those curly cords going down to some receiver on his belt. He’s talking to himself pretty loudly. I realize he’s probably talking to someone on a wireless phone headset, and sure enough after a brief moment, he turned his head and I saw the Bluetooth piece.

This wasn’t just “Uh huh,” or “yeah, lemme call you back when I’m out of the grocery store,” this was a fairly animated conversation about hauling something made of aluminum. If I weren’t helping the non-cripple in front of me, I probably could have recalled more details about his can’t-wait conversation.

Now I’m at the register, and Lazy, ahead of me, is having problems with the debit card swipe. The checkout lady, now resorting to the “plastic bag AND backwards” swipe trick, looks at Robert Duval behind me, then glances at me and all I have for her is my best Jim Halpert smirk. She smiles at me with a quiet laugh as the plastic bag trick works and we watch Lazy scooter himself out with his loot.

“It’s like a Seinfeld episode,” I tell her as I grab my receipt.

“I know, isn’t it?” she replies, as I leave the Sprite Zero sitting there, walk out to my car and drive home to remember just now about the Sprite Zero. Shit.

Photo used without permission from Birder’s World Magazine – hope they’re cool with it

It’s dusk in my backyard and I’m meandering around with my dog Oyster. Hotdog, our old-man Maine Coone cat, lounges in the neighbor’s yard, twitching and flipping his tail contentedly. It’s a lovely Spring evening.

Out of nowhere, a smallish, feathery silhouette flutters near my cat’s head and zooms back to the telephone wire hanging above. At first, I think it’s a bat, but realize it’s too big for a bat. It is the bat time of evening, and I look skywards and see a few actual bats careening around the evening sky and realize that whatever is swooping down near Hotdog is too big to be a bat.

It’s a Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia), a tiny little raptor that lives in mazes of underground tunnels, usually in open fields. In Southwest Florida they’re very common, though I’d never seen them before.

This little owl is attempting to snatch, and presumably haul away for a tasty snack, my 16 pound male cat, Hotdog. He’s unfazed, and appears to not even notice the terrifying brushes with death he keeps enduring. The owl swoops near him again and again, returning to his perch on the wire, sometimes on the shed, where I get a halfway-decent look at him. They’re very pretty.

Then…. THREE MORE of them show up, all on the wire overhead. By now, my wife’s outside with me, marvelling and laughing at the fact that these tiny little birds are attempting to murder our cat, when all of a sudden, they start divebombing us! Coming within inches of our heads, we duck and cover as they assail us from above. Hands-down this is one of the funniest and most amusing thing I’ve seen in ages. We’re okay, and nobody’s injured. In fact, Hotdog’s back inside now and probably doesn’t even know how close he came to being carried away and pecked to death.

An enthusiastic phone call to a friend later, I’m in Play it Again, buying “factory second” discs at $10 apiece. Then, I’m driving through parts of Sarasota I didn’ t know existed, winding through a residential neighborhood until coming upon Lakeview Park, with its 18 hole disc golf course.

I am intimately familiar with the Gainesville course on 34th Street but few others (I’d played Lake Wauburg in Gainesville, and of course Spirit of Suwanee’s Grateful Dead course last weekend). The excitement of a new course, this close to home, was almost unbearable.

Unfortunately there wasn’t a map of the holes, and we ended up meandering like tourists through 18 holes of challenging, at-times-heavily wooded, swampy dream for any disc golfer. We never found holes 11 or 12.

The course is fun, with creative pin placement and lots of water. The park had restrooms, water fountains, a fenced-in dog park, and picnic tables. Nice.

This whole thing’s got momentum. I’ll be playing the North Watertower Park course tomorrow morning, which is apparently either on-par with (no pun intended) or even better than the Lakeview course. I’m learning all of this from the Sarasota Sky Pilots web page. Yep, a full fledged disc golf community, which I’ll duly be looking into. Tuesday and Thursday night handicaps? Count me in!

They had a DISC GOLF course at the park (among other things) that John and I and his fiance Tracy took the opportunity to play. We both scored well, considering we’d never played this very narrow, challenging course before. I also got bit on the ankle by something with fangs, but I survived and am doing okay. Thanks for asking.

If you’re unfamiliar with disc golf, don’t be surprised… it’s a hippie sport that most people haven’t heard of. It entails throwing specialized frisbees into chains. It scores just like golf, you play it where it lies, and copious amounts of inebriants are often involved, in our case, historically.

Background music – Sugar Magnolia, Grateful Dead, Europe ’72