Why I Love Orlando: Trip Preview Part 1

Yet another day of nothing in the news NBA-wise and things are seeming dead for the rest of the week, so let's focus our attention on something much more important...well, to me at least:

Next week, starting this Sunday, I am going to be doing my annual Orlando visit for vacation. This is one of my favorite events all year and since many of you readers are from Orlando (or are at least familiar with it since you like the damn team!), I'm going to be writing a bit about the great city that I call my second home.

As usual, when I looked at the weather for next week, every single day says "Scattered Thunderstorms". During this season in Florida, it must be the easiest job in the world to predict the weather. In fact, it looks like the weatherman just copy and pasted this text over every day:

"Scattered thunderstorms possible. Highs in the low 90s and lows in the mid 70s."

Wow. Now THAT'S a way to ensure you predict the weather correctly. Someone actually gets a lot of money to say, "Weather for the next 10 days? I got ya covered. It may, ya know, rain or it may not rain...who knows?...and the temperature? Well, it will probably be somewhere within this 20 degree range."

It seems like this time of year the same thing happens every day: It will be nice in the morning, have a shower in the afternoon, and then clear up around the evening. I'm sure Orlando residents will say otherwise as it can't be that way EVERY day, but when I visit it seems to be a daily occurance (cue it raining toads the entire time I am there).

Even if it does rain the whole time, at least I will be going to my favorite place in the entire world, the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress in Orlando. This place has been like another home to me since I was young, with me spending almost every summer there. The inside of the lobby is full of trees and is amazing, the pool (which resembles a cave) is spectacular, and the hotel has all of those little gecko things running around which is quite fun. If any readers here have stayed there or even work there, shoot me an email to say hi since it is one of my favorite places in the world. I am rarely so corny about staying somewhere, but the Orlando Hyatt occupies a special place in my heart.

Staying at the Grand Cypress and having such a fun time in Orlando is precisely the reason I bucked the convention and chose to have all Florida teams as my favorites (Magic, Dolphins, and Marlins). While I am sure many of you Orlando folks follow the Buccaneers, please understand that as a kid growing up in New Jersey I had to choose between the Dolphins and Bucs since Orlando didn't have a football team. It was a pretty tough choice, considering the fact that the Dolphins were a perennial playoff team, had a hall of fame QB, the league's only undefeated season...and the Bucs had creamsicle colored jerseys, were dreadful, and had a logo with perhaps once of the most flambouyantly un-manly guys in the history of man (he had a big foppish hat and a knife in his mouth). The Bucs wound up as the team that won the Super Bowl in my lifetime between the two, but I still think that my life turned out easier because I didn't like the team with that logo. My favorite part is that the Buccaneer in the logo has one eye shut, almost as if he is saying without words "I can't even look at myself in the mirror, I look THAT ridiculous".

As for what I will be doing in Orlando, I would be remiss if I didn't of course say I will hit up Epcot, probably wind up at Jimmy Buffet's on the Universal walk, go to the Orlando Ale House regularly, hit up the Cheesecake Factory at the Mall at Millenia...whoa...I just realize all of those places serve drinks. Not intentional, but not a bad thing either!

The first night there, one of my greatest feats will once again be tested. No it is not hoisting barbells over my head or beating someone in a test of wills...It involves me against a burger. Back in 2005, I somehow completed the "Headhunter Challenge" and to this day I still have no idea how. There is something called "The Headhunter Burger" at Jungle Jim's Restaurant (another place that serves drinks), and it is a monstrosity. I'll let the menu do the talking for me:

"Few have been able to finish this belt-busting burger bounty! Care to join them? Just clean your plate (that's everything but the paper and toothpick) and the next one's on us on your next visit to Jungle Jim's. A monsterous full-pound of 100% Certified Angus Beef TM, grilled ham, two lean bacon strips, cheddar and jack cheese, iceburg lettuce, tomatoes, dills, Safari Sauce 1000, topped with two olives and -- just to make it tougher on you -- a full-pound mound of world-famous fries."

That is an actual drawing on the menu of what the burger looks like. It is a pound of meat and a pound of fries, not to mention the combined extra weight of the 3 buns and all of that extra stuff. I think my arteries just exploded simply by reading that description. I am an in-shape guy, so my stomach should be nowhere near capable of actually holding that much food, but somehow I did before. Probably the most terrifying aspect of this whole ordeal: If you actually somehow eat this whole burger (and fries...doesn't count unless you do that too), you know what you win? That's right- ANOTHER HEADHUNTER for free the next time you come in! Somewhere there is a tombstone that reads "One Headhunter too many...someone eat my free one."

If I am unable to once again defeat the Headhunter, I really will not be ashamed as I will probably live at least a week longer in the end.

That's it for now. I'll be sure to write tomorrow on more plans for the upcoming trip. If any of you have any more suggestions on fun things to do in Orlando, leave a comment or send an email