![]() I've never been a fan of water I cannot see below. When I was 5 years old, I took the typicacal swim lesson at the YMCA and back in those olden days in the 60's, they favored the "sink or swim" way of teaching, where the adult brought the small child into the 12 feet deep and dropped them to let them naturally come to the surface. Well I sunk like a stone. Thankfully I came up, but traumatized. Needless to say, I had nightmares about it into my adulthood and while I have gotten over it and love to swim (in water I can see the bottom of), lakes, rivers, and oceans, still give me a feeling of vertigo. Florida and the Disney area is helping me to face that fear head on, and do it in a really wonderful way. Especially over at the Saratoga Springs Resort. One of the main attractions to being in this area for us, was the ability to walk in interesting places any time we wanted to, and to see beautiful, interesting things.around us. We saw Saratoga Springs as we rode the Sassagoula Riverboat one day from Downtown Disney and thought it looked just so wonderful and colorful. So we went to see it. We started to walk and turned a corner and there it was. The bridge. Ok, it was beautiful and your first thought is, "this is Disney so it is well constructed". When I saw it, however, there was this little part of my mind that went back to being 5 years old and I wasn't sure I wanted to walk across this. If there is one thing I have learned in my travels through life, it is that life is meant to be lived and fear might make you miss something you don't want to miss. So we went forth onto the bridge. The amazing thing about this bridge is that when you walk on it, you are going downhill toward what feels like walking at water level. You really aren't that low, as you can see when you look at it from the side, but the sensation is definitely going down. At night, the sensation is even stronger because you can't tell the height of the water easily. We got to the center of the bridge with water all around us and the really cool thing for me, is that although I had that small sensation of fear from my past, it was so beautiful around us, and that feeling completely knocked out the bad feeling. Our daughter was a little cautious for sure! The feeling on this bridge is one of just cleansing your soul. When you are on it and you look around at the peaceful surroundings and you hear the sound of the fountain and you see the lights and the colors of the buildings and the trees, it is truly a wonderful experience. I know that all of our trips to Disney in our past, were always too short for our liking and the thought of doing anything besides power hitting the parks and seeing as much as we could in the short time we had, was priority. I'm sure we are not that different from others in that way, but as you can see from this, there are so many hidden treasures all over the "World" that are not about the parks. Truly a bridge over wonderful waters! Your ad here
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![]() As we walked the Boardwalk one beautiful night, we walked past a group of the cutest, most brightly decorated 4-6 seater bikes we had ever seen. They were so old fashioned complete with the fringe on top and the striped canopies. We had just recently moved here to Florida from Illinois and due to a very greivous error on the part of the truck rental place, we ended up having to leave our bikes behind, which was heart breaking for all of us. So we thought that a nice ride on one of these all together would be a peaceful, wonderful way to spend the evening. Chris was reluctant and wanted to instead take a boat ride but these looked like too much fun to pass up although we worried it would be mega bucks. We went to check with the gentleman at the desk and it turned out to be quite reasonable, so we got signed up and got ready for our ride. We paid and the man took us over to the bike to explain things and train us in how to use it and where we could ride. He told us about the circle we would follow from where we were on the Boardwalk around to the Yacht and Beach Club and back around to here. He quickly mentioned 2 "little" hills on each side that we had to go over, and made sure to tell us that they were, "no big deal". So we got strapped in and started peddling. We were avid cyclists in Illnois so how could this be any different right? Well, at first, I thought something was wrong with the peddles because my legs were just spinnning with no traction. Quickly we found that if someone was peddling faster than you on the same chain, you would just spin fast. Our daughter was back there just peddling as fast as she could. We finally reached our groove and were moving along very loud and baudy so that they could probably hear us at the Magic Kingdom from where we were. Then we reached the first uphill incline. You know...the one the guy said was a "little hill". I'm not sure what his concept of little is, or maybe we are just major wimps, but let's just say that half way up the hill, we started going backwards, complete with screaming and laughing, until Chris got out to start to push all of us back up the hill, all the while laughing and muttering about the boat ride he wanted to take. We finally reached the top and then came the going downhill, which was equally as scary and maybe even more so. When we look at the video that we took from inside the surrey, it does not look like we are going that fast, but the way it feels is completely different. We flew down that hill, ringing our bell, trying desperately not to run anyone over, screaming and laughing out of control. People along the way were cheering us on and telling us "you can do it", laughing with us. I love that about Disney. The bonding with people you don't know out of happiness and fun! We took 2 laps because that is what you are allowed, laughing the whole way together. It was a blast! There is a part on the video where you can hear my son yell out, "I love this place!" I am thrilled that I will hear those words for the rest of our lives ringing in my head. I love that he yelled that out and that this is how he feels! I have included the video below. You cannot see much because it is at night, but the sound rack is hilarious and maybe it will help you decide if you want to give it a shot and try to tame those hills or not! Will we ride another surrey bike? Probably, although I don't think I will easily talk Chris into it. There are so many boats just calling out to him that don't require pushing! |
Sherri and crewWe lost everything and had to start over again, but we decided to do it with magic and style here in the most magical place on earth. We were scared to death. The destroyed economy made my "vanilla frosting" biz fall apart. You might ask what a vanilla frosting biz is. It is one defined as something people would love to do and should do bc it helps their kids to have a better future, but when the basics became hard to afford, the frosting was not attainable. We tried to use credit cards as a temporary fix to keep the only thing I knew how to do and had trained for my whole life floating, but the overhead was unsustainable and then the credit cards also became that way and so we fell. Lost it all. The house, the office, our lifestyle, which in retrospect now, we realize that although we were always happy together, we had gotten used to an unhealthy and boring lifestyle. That was all about to change thanks to our fall and amazing silver linings. The fall felt like I was letting go. Couldn't control anything anymore so I allowed myself, although terrified, to truly fall and see where G-d, life and fate wanted me/us to go. I allowed fate to see us through! I prayed a lot everyday that this fate would be a happy one. Archives
February 2014
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