Day 5 - Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2010

After a long day on Monday today was a partial relaxing day. Today I only attended one class, "Career Killers for Police Chiefs: Avoiding Costly Mistakes".

I had most of the late morning, afternoon, evening with my wonderful family - Rita and Noah (of course you know the girls and their respective men were unable to join us). Rita and I had a late breakfast. We then hopped on the I-Ride (with Noah) and went to the conference center and walked around a bit. We had to stop at the Lexis-Nexis booth to pick up our invites to their vendor party later in the evening. I also wanted them to see an illusionist at this booth. Noah went up with him on his "stage" and was somewhat amazed. He used my ring and put it in a small purse and hooked it onto a clip in someones pocket among many other things that were very cool to watch.

We then went back to the I-Ride and went up the street about 1/2 mile to Air Orlando or something like that for Rita and Noah to take their helicopter ride. They had a blast! See a photo or two below. Back to the I-Ride and to the hotel. We all went swimming for a while. Then Noah and I played mini-golf and foosball then went swimming again and Rita took a well deserved nap. We found a pizza place that delivers and ordered pizza and wings for dinner. Then Rita and I headed out for our "date night". Noah was suppose to do some homework, but he said he fell asleep then forgot to do his homework. Guess what he is doing tomorrow when we get home from Sea World?

Around 5:45 pm Rita and I left to catch the I-Ride to stop 22 and go to Tommy Bahama's for our Lexis-Nexis vendor party. It started at 4 pm and ended at 7 pm - glad we showed up late. We still got cool light up glasses, drank free beer and booze (they made the best Mojito) and a killer Captain and diet, and when we left, we got a free schwag bag. All the free booze and food you could drink and eat. It was wall-to-wall people. There we talked with a few chiefs and people from WI, met the Sacramento, CA, Galena, IL and Fremont, IL chiefs. Had a good time talking about the Packers with all of them and Brett Favre - they are all interesting.

We moved on to our second vendor party sponsored by Harris, they were about 100 yards from the first place. We only had one drink here (the Captain and diet was really weak). There were hardly any people over there, but we did get a free t-shirt. We walked around the shops in the area looking at some very cute dresses. Then walked about three or four blocks to the third and final vendor party of the evening.

I2Cop sponsored this one in the Peabody hotel. Very fancy, elegant (and huge) hotel. Once we arrived at the location we registered, ordered our drinks and sat down. Stayed until after 8:00 pm and watched someone else win the IPad they were giving away. We left shortly after that.

Now we walked about 5 blocks to a Walgreens to pick up some stuff. One more block to the I-Ride stop. The folks waiting there said they had been waiting for about 15 minutes so we decided to give it 10 minutes or so. We struck up a conversation with a young couple from England for 10 minutes or so. They are driving to Fort Lauderdale on Friday for a 7-day cruise. He is a little scared about driving on the right side of the road! While we were talking to them a family (Grandma, mom and child) were there as well. The little boy, 7 years old or so, came over to us and said he was from Germany. We excitedly told him he was the first person we met from Germany this week and let them know we were proud Cheese Heads. Very cute.

Well, the green line I-Ride bus came and said the Red line (the one we wanted) was only 5-10 minutes behind. We waited. The couple from England thanked us saying they would have gotten on the bus and would have had to walk from Sea World to the hotel - which they said wasn't a bad walk. The bus came and we finally got on the bus. Well, we started talking with the couple from England, who happened to be staying at our hotel and completely missed our bus stop. The young England girl said something and I quickly told the driver we forgot to pull the cord for the stop and asked him to stop. He did - Thank you Lord! It was really very funny.

Once back, Noah was pretending to be asleep. Then we went to the pool (the one by the hot tub) and it was like 100 degrees. We swam for a while and went to the hot tub which was like 108 degrees. Too hot to get in, but we soaked our feet with a bunch of other chief's from WI, NJ and OH. We talked for a while, went swimming for a while again then came back to the room so I could blog and get some sleep.

Well, that was the day for Team Gregory on Day 5 of our Orlando, FL trip. If you have been reading from the beginning you should get a prize, but you won't. Sorry, I wrote too much and Rita turned off the light and is near sleep, so there is no editing again this evening. Here are a couple of photos for you to enjoy.