One of my dreams has always been to compete in a race going through Disney World. So in april 2010, as a birthday present for myself, I signed up for the Walt Disney World Goofy Challenge in early january. It is called Goofy Challenge, because you run a half marathon on saturday and a full marathon on sunday and if you complete both races you receive the special Goofy medal. This sounded quite stupid, so it was a no-brainer for me to do that 🙂
I finally found a use for the 150$ voucher from Continental Airlines, that I got last year after they ruined my trip to Saipan and Guam due to complete incompetence (perhaps I will write about that later) and booked a flight to Orlando, with a short detour via Washington on the way back, so that I could earn a few thousand miles more.
The journey didn’t start well, since the flight from El Paso to Houston was delayed for more than an hour and my connection time there was round about the same. So I was almost expecting that I will be stranded in Houston and my luggage will be going somewhere never being found afterwards. But, to my own surprise, we made up a few minutes during the flight and I had 10 minutes to liftoff. In these 10 minutes I had to get out of the plane, change the terminal, find the new gate, board the next flight and get seated. I made it, but I was breathing as if I just climbed Mt. Everest. This had to be way harder than the Goofy Challenge. The flight was uneventful, but my next surprise was at the baggage claim in Orlando, since my bag was the forth one on the belt. Perhaps the priority luggage tag is useful after all.
After having to wait almost half an hour at the Hertz rental counter, I was finally on my way to my hotel in Kissimmee – a very cheap Motel 6 that looked very worn down from the outside, but for 22$ a night there was not much to complain about.