I awoke this morning to the sound of Tom Kakert's voice. Not exactly the worst way to wake up, but not exactly how I envisioned day two starting. I smiled and didn't let him know he woke us up. It was time to get up anyway as it was a little after ten.

Tom was already working, I wasn't.

Got up, got ready, went and picked up the rental. Not too exciting. Rode the #3 elevator down to the lobby. What a trip! That darn thing will make a normally sane person think twice about riding an elevator every again.

Got back to the hotel and noticed that Shorts Travel had put a table in the lobby to check in guests as the came in. The Iowa invasion has begun. Went through the names and spoke with the travel agent, but didn't see anyone that I recognized. There are 60 rooms at this hotel and another 40 at the Royal Caribbe for the Short's tour alone.

Everywhere you go, you see Black and Gold! It's pretty impressive actually.

We then took a little drive around Orlando to get accustomed to where we were in relation to where we needed to be.

Ate lunch at Joe's Crab Shack. Been there before, was better the first time. It's a fun place to eat, but I prefer those little crab houses on the eastern coast that you walk into and see plastic table cloths on the rows of tables and little crab mallets next to the silver. Now those are good crab shacks. Joe's is trendy, but decent.

Let me just say this: Orlando, and Florida in general, is not that nice. Sure, it's a beautiful 74 degrees today. But if you look around at the poverty that is apparent in nearly every neighborhood, especially around the stadium itself and the downtown Marriott area, it would make one wonder why so many would want to retire to this area, or state, in general. It's not a pretty site.

Went to meet up with Tom and Blair, but Tom had to do the call in show on Sports Wrap in Cedar Falls. Blair was at another hotel. Saw Todd Brommelkamp at the downtown Marriott. He might have mentioned that he had a bone to pick with me. I didn't know what he was talking about. Sat and had a couple relaxing drinks with Todd, talked everything but Hawkeyes and then decided that instead of going to the radio show with Tom, hosted by Dolph (which was at 8 EST tonight), we were going gambling. After all, we are on vacation.

Got back to our hotel, spoke with the bellman, he told us we missed the shuttle to the gambling boat. Oh well, gambling is immoral and we'd be setting a bad example.

Now what?

How about a dip in the hot tub?

A ride up the #3 elevator, the one that stops abruptly at every floor, was not fun. It's like a carnival ride.

Got changed and head back down for a dip in the 200 degree water. Ok, it was only like 110, but that is hot enough. Luckily, we were on the #1 elevator that eased into every stop.

The pool was heated and felt incredible. After a nice swim and dip in the hot tub, we decided that maybe the thing to do would be join the other Hawkeye faithful in the pool side bar. It was, after all, filling up.

Went upstairs to gety changed. We had the misfortune of riding #3 again. That isn't happening again!

Forgot to mention that we had been visiting the complimentary lounge on our floor with each trip on the elevator. Things were getting pretty interesting.

Made it back to the pool side bar, met a brother/sister tandem from Cedar Rapids named McCarville. Both were attending their first bowl game and both were very much looking forward to Saturday. One guessed an Iowa win by 10, the other by 17. When I asked about LSU, they just said….LS Who? Cute.

We ended up sitting next to another couple from Spirit Lake, didn't catch their names, but they were down with their two children and booked through Shorts. They were relaxing, like many other Iowan's in the bar area, taking some time away from the Iowa winter and enjoying the warmer Floridian evening.

A nice day overall. Tomorrow, we will be hooking up with friends from Waterloo and taking in the Hawkeye Huddle at the convention center. Stay tuned and good night!