I’ve definitely been kept busy these past few days. I am in charge of batteries along with Schmitz, digital video capture and co-photographer with Annie. Coincidentally, those tasks are also the only ones that require the equipment to be carried back to the hotel every night and to the convention center in the morning. Me, John and Schmitz are the equipment mules. I only carry my still camera, video camera, tripod, laptop, and a “suitcase charger”. With all that equipment hanging off my belt, I’m like friggin’ Batman.
During the day, of course, I’m recording a lot of the matches. Not all of them, but the good ones. “Good ones” is basically any one where there’s sure to be carnage like those with spinners, drumbots and rotorbots. We can’t upload video with the shaky internet access, but we’ll have plenty for you when we get back. All I can talk about now is what we did.
“In the ghetto… in the ghettooo-ooooo…”
We were really excited to be able to go to Miami Beach for the Robotics competition. What this meant last year when we were in Miami suburb, Coconut Grove, is that we got booked at a kick-ass hotel. We had even higher expectations this year, what with being on Miami Beach. (We didn’t have a beach last year.) The district was supposed to put us up in some Ritzy digs all on their dime. Instead, as soon as we landed, we found out that instead of a beach front, we got a hotel two blocks from the beach in what everyone was calling the “ghet-to”.
This was the view from our room.
Besides that, there was some random pipe sticking up from the floor not attached to anything. There were broken windows everywhere (not a big deal in Miami) including our room (pane 2 down,4 right), the bathroom doors didn’t close as much as they were jammed enough not to open, no clock, shower pressure was that of a gentle mist, the room always smelled like cigarettes after being cleaned.
The upside: we soon found out we were down the street from a topless beach and, just look at this picture.
Oh yeah, it’s awesome, isn’t it? You guys must be so jealous. How often does your hotel room have a full-sized refrigerator? Annie’s room upstairs had a sink and stove. Between us, we had a kitchen so we made brownies.
To further the description of the quality of our hotel, I now share with you the story of Baril and two women in the hotel room next door of …questionable chastity. From what I heard from others it went like this when Baril initiated it by greeting them.
“You ladies have a wonderful evening!”
“Hey, you’re cute. How old are you?”
“I’m sorta young. I’m only 18.”
“How ’bout you come up to our room tomorrow?”
I forget how this story ends.
“Oh, how exciting! We’ll be a gang of young toughs roaming the streets stirring up all manner of mischief!”
Of course, if the hotel is this crappy and prostitute-riddled, we have no choice but to go out, unlike last year where we ordered pizza four nights in a row. Upon exiting we first see the National, Sagamore and Ritz-Carlton luxury hotels dangling cable television and wireless internet above our heads like tantalizing ripe fruit. There was also another hotel which had a really weird sign:
What’s weirder than that? They don’t even capitalize it.
“I don’t say this as a bedmate, but as a good friend: Roll the hell over!“
There’s also a distinct problem that arose when we got smaller beds than last year. Now most are not privy to such intimate information, but my conscience would not let myself live without a warning to the public. If Schmitz rolls too close to you while sleeping, poke him three times in quick succession. If you poke him once in the ribs, his hand will come up and hit you in the face and he will continue to sleep unaware. Oh, and he kneed me in the ass. Jerk.
“Well, I’m no psychologist, but I don’t have to be to read into this.”
One thing I didn’t do a lot of last year was going in the pool with the other guys. Oddly enough, it seems that whenever there are enough guys in the pool, Folta initiates a group tackling on one particular person that always snowballs into a homoerotic dog pile. Huh.
After that, we went back to our rooms and John and Schmitz had a wet towel-whipping fight for about an hour. I didn’t think anybody would ever put their shirt on. I took a picture, but Schmitz made me delete it under threat of severe whippage. His exact words were, “You think you can beat me? I’m like Harrison Ford, bitch!”
We were all sad to leave, despite the crappy hotel. There was one big glaring reason though.
It was mostly the phrase “Lesbian Film” that drew the guys.
We ran into heavy delays while leaving Miami. First of all, their airport sucks. It’s way too small and unorganized. Secondly, the TVs that are supposed to show instructions are stopped at one frame that didn’t change for the two hours I stood in line.
Apparently, the three steps to reduce your wait time are to wait in line until it’s your turn. We just barely made it out, but American Airlines screwed up and lost John’s luggage and all his “medications” from Miami.