Friday 11th September

Well one of the slowest mornings as a shift so far, we were on Lori's Magical Flight, this has 6 hang glider type double seats, 2 of which are wheelchair accessible. This ride was named after a former wish child who became a wonderful volunteer passed away at a far too young age last year, a fitting tribute to a special young lady that both Jane and I met and worked together with. We were thoroughly trained and stood waiting to put our training into practise, we operated the ride 5 times I the 4 hours we were there, I know because we had to keep a tally of the times it was used. It is a popular ride in the evening but as we have said before the majority of the guests visit the parks during the day so after about 915 there was nobody to be seen. This ride is outside and the sun was beating down on us so we were able to sit in a shady area with a huge fan going which made life bearable.the saving grace this morning was our chats with Duane and Margi. Now Margi originated from Switzerland but came to the U.S. In the early 50's, found love and stayed, her job today was as train driver but only had two early customers.

A whole paragraph for Duane, he has been involved with GKTW with his wife since the villages conception, even before the village was built. He is a friend of Henri Landwirth who we sadly found out today is at stage 3 of  Altzeimers and in a home near his daughter in Jacksonville, Florida, he is 89 now. His third wife Pamela is the President of the board of directors and today was one of four annual board meetings. Duane's  wife is on the board as she has worked tirelessly it seems on getting companies to support the village, back when the idea was conceived she was in charge of charitable requests for Proctor and Gamble. They count people like Walter Cronkite, John Glenn and Jane Goodall and many others as their friends. It was really interesting listening to how it all started and how it had changed. The expression from little acorns to mighty oaks came to my mind. He did make us laugh though as he described how one of the volunteers had told him off by wagging her finger up and down at him when he had the audacity of getting a guest a coffee of coffee, coffee pouring was HER domain  it seemed and no one else was allowed to touch the coffee. We told him of Mr Scraper's rules too, we did laugh a lot. They had left their home at 5 this morning to travel down from St Augusta, near Jacksonville where they are building a home, her for the meeting and him to spend the day volunteering. Without Margi and Duane it would have been a long morning.

Well Debbie's last shift done, Pirates and Princess again but this time outside by the pool and slightly different jobs too. Debbie was on Pirates tattoos and face painting and I was doing the same for the Princesses. Not too bad  although one little girl wanted red lipstick and she did look a little like Marilyn Monroe, well the lips did if not the child. The children were all so excited  as all the Disney Princesses made an appearance  as did Mayor Clayton and his lovely wife, Ms Merry. The highlight for the children was the arrival of the Mermaid Lorelei, she arrived in a wheelchair and elegantly slipped into the pool where she flapped her fin around for quite a while swimming around . Think it was Taylor, one of the volunteers who was following her around with puppy dog eyes , he met her last week and when Dan told me, I said he must be smitten, he liked my choice of words!

Tonight we did slip off as soon as the party had finished, asked to be excused the clearing up as we wanted to get a meal out as it was Debbie's last night. Off we went to TGI Friday's again , after all it is Friday! Had a good meal and a chat with the waitress who we had to explain the term 'kitty' to, same language again but alien choose of words.

Well it is now 1120, not too busy a day but am now tired.

Thanks for joining me Debbie, it was fun, hope you enjoyed it too. We really did laugh at similar things and we laughed a lot xxx