Category: Travel

Monday Night Countdown

This past Summer when gas prices shot past $4 per gallon I told everyone that listened to me that gas prices had peaked, and that they would plummet by as much as a dollar per gallon before Thanksgiving. Everyone laughed at me. As it turns out I was only half right. Gas prices have actually dropped by more than 50% in many locations, and we’re now getting nearly two gallons of gas for the same price as a single gallon cost just 4 to 5 months ago. In fact gas prices are now at their lowest levels since the Spring of 2005 !

Florida is currently 25TH in the nation (right in the middle) as far as gas prices are concerned, but the Miami area is actually the 28TH most expensive metro area in the nation to buy gas.

Here are the TOP 5 metro areas in the U.S. where gas is the cheapest:

5. Wichita Kansas – $1.985 – Never been there. I’ve never set food in Kansas.

4. Corpus Christi Texas – $1.974 – I’d like to visit this place. I think I’d like it.

3. Kansas City Missouri – $1.937 – Never been there. I’ve seen it on “Cops” a lot.

2. Des Moines Iowa – $1.936 – Never been there. What’s there ?

1. Tulsa Oklahoma – $1.932 – Never been there. Been to Oklahoma City though.

Source: GasBuddy.com

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date October 28, 2008
1 Comment on Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

1. TODAY will go down in South Florida history as one of the coldest October days EVER ! We officially dropped down to 57°F at Homestead Air Reserve Base this morning, and we’ve been stuck in the 60s all day long. Tomorrow morning when we wake up we could have howling wind chills deep down into the 40s !

2. Homestead was shivering (I love that phrase), and everywhere you looked you saw adults, children, and pets alike all bundled up in thick winter clothes that usually only see the light of day about a dozen days a year. Those people over there in the tee-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops ? Those are what we like to refer to here in Homestead as ‘snowbirds’ – also known as Canadian tourists.

3. My 7TH cold in 12 months is officially in the history books, or as I like to refer to as my very public history books – this blog. This cold seemed longer and harsher than a lot of the previous ones, so it was not my ‘Lucky 7TH Cold’. I’ll be flying back from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, so that’s only 32 more days until I get my 8TH cold in 13 months !

4. Last Friday was Election Day in my living room. I voted via absentee ballot. I put it in the mail on Saturday morning. I just checked online with the Miami-Dade County Elections Department, and they have indeed received it as of this past Monday. One week from tonight we should find out who our next President Of The United States is. Whoever it is I will stand behind him and support him as he takes on a mountain of problems. I have very strong political views. They are so strong that I keep them to myself (most of the time) because they would offend and shock most people I know – including many of my close personal friends.

5. Let me tell you something about a company by the name of ALLSOP with headquarters in Washington State, Ireland, and Shanghai China. I recently bought a ‘Metal Art CPU Caddy’ which is basically a little metal cart for my computer to fit in. The cart has 4 wheels, but one of the wheels was defective in that it was missing a bolt so I couldn’t attach it to the bottom of the cart. The cart was useless. I sent a short and simple E-Mail to the company on a Friday afternoon, and they sent me a personalized response back the following Monday morning. I replied to that response later that same day, and the next morning they shipped a replacement wheel to me via first class mail. I received it a few days later, and my CPU caddy is now in business fulfilling its mission ! In this modern era of widespread poor to non-existent customer service from retail companies I was totally ecstatic to discover a company that still does business the old-fashioned way no matter how big and universal they are. They cater to their customers who buy their products. You just don’t see that very much nowadays. THANKS ALLSOP !

Those are my thoughts for this Tuesday night. Thank You So Much for taking the time to read them.

Driving Politics Travel Weather

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date October 14, 2008
2 Comments on Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

1. Walt Disney World’s Pleasure Island went out of business back on Saturday September 27TH 2008. Apparently people began lining up at the entrances to the ‘Downtown Disney’ section at 9 AM that morning just so that they could get in to the joint for one last party to go. From what I’ve read at Wikipedia it was the biggest party that Pleasure Island had seen since its hey day of the mid-to-late-1990s. I believe it too. I spent a lot of time there for about a dozen years from 1994 to 2006. I saw a once-thriving nightclub district begin to diminish and die a slow death as this current decade continued on.

2. Back in July when gas prices were hovering right around $4 per gallon I boldly stated that they would plummet to the $3.25 to $3.50 range in time for Thanksgiving. Later on I got even more outrageous by stating that gas prices would collapse by at least a dollar per gallon. And so here we are. Average gas prices are now below $3 per gallon in 17 out of 50 states, and several cities in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas now have gas near $2.50 per gallon. Want my next ludicrous prediction ? Tune in next Tuesday night.

3. Get ready for a real-life wintertime cold front to sweep through South Florida this weekend. Get ready for our rainy season to come to an abrupt end. Get ready to shock everything metallic in sight as the relative humidity plummets towards arid conditions. Get ready for temperatures early in the morning in the refreshing mid-60s ! Yeah you heard me !

4. I received my absentee ballot for the upcoming election in the mail last week. Maybe this Saturday I will declare it to be ‘Election Day’ in my living room as I vote on paper and send it on its way via the U.S. Mail.

5. This young man is cool and smart:

Holidays Life Travel

Bedtime Stories

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date October 12, 2008

Good Evening My Friends,

It’s Sunday night. It’s after 9 PM, and I just felt like posting one more blog entry for tonight before I retire to bed. Tomorrow is Columbus Day – a major Federal holiday here in the U.S. – or as this cat refers to it – ‘a fake holiday’ – a normal work day for Life Pointe Church staff.

This morning as I was driving southbound along the new-and-improved ’18-Mile-Stretch’ (U.S. 1 between Florida City and Key Largo) I was trying to figure out when was the last time I had driven down into the Florida Keys. It was nearly 22 months ago – about 3 weeks before I discovered Life Pointe Church for the first time. It was back during the final few days of December 2006 when I drove all the way down to Key West with my parents who were visiting me here in Homestead for the first time in about 18½ years.

Although it’s been nearly two years since I set foot in the Keys I was a fairly regular visitor for a good decade up until 2006. I mostly went down there to party – back when I used to that. In fact I used to party pretty much within a single mile of where our new campus is located at in Plantation Key (near Mile Marker 90).

There’s a lot of places I don’t go to anymore because of who I am today as a born-again Christian. The Florida Keys (to the south) and Orlando (to the north) are two such places that I no longer have a vested interest in. Well scratch that – because of our new Life Pointe Church campus down south. It felt weird returning to the scene of the crime after all of this time – just as weird as it felt returning to Orlando for a national Christian conference last April after previously abandoning everything that I had up there. My Life (always capitalized) has changed since then. Thanks Jesus for rescuing me from the darkness and saving me. I owe it all to You.

Well that’s ‘Bedtime Stories’ for this glorious Sunday night. Thank You for allowing me to share my Life with you, and until we hang out again – REMEMBER THIS !