Real work has kept me rather busy the past few weeks and will for the next few weeks. I've been to Philly, San Francisco, Chicago and have trips to Atlanta, Sarasota, Seattle and Phoenix in the next few weeks.

As such, EP is suffering :-( Hopefully we'll be back to normal posting in a week or two.

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Driving back from the airport on Monday I noticed that the Sonic in Haines City is open again. If you remember in early 2006 the Haines City and Bartow locations closed down.

What's the status of the Bartow location? Perhaps my readers in that area can post a comment. (The picture below is the closed Haines City location from 2006)

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The Starliner at Cypress Gardens has certainly had an interesting launch. My son and I visited the Gardens this past Saturday, but by the afternoon the ride was already closed up (photo below).

The Other Orlando Blog has a great riff on the 'opening' of Starliner:

Driving from Orlando to Cypress Gardens in Winter Haven at the ass-crack of dawn: $15 worth of gas and coffee

Standing in the sun for an hour waiting for the opening ceremonies: $12.95 worth of sunburn cream

Hearing the CEO of a multi-million dollar company say you can't ride his new roller coaster because they forgot to file their "accelerometer test" paperwork with the state saftey inspectors: PRICELESS!!!

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Some design work I did a while back for PolkVoice has finally been published. Barry has the details.

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I have a hectic work and travel schedule over the next few days. Posting will be non-existant. See you next week, maybe :-)

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Polk County Tourism and Sports Marketing are hosting an event with Fantasy of Flight in November but it doesn't have a name. They're asking you to help name it. From Kris Keprios at PSCM:

The three day festival will be held at Fantasy of Flight November 9-11, 2007 and will start Friday with a VIP food and wine tasting. The weekend will feature a hot air balloon state championship race, water ski demonstrations, vintage racing boats, a classic car show and airplane aerobatics featuring aircraft from all eras. The Polk County Restaurant Association, which is made up of several Polk County area restaurants, will be serving samples from their menus throughout the weekend as well. All entries must be submitted by Sunday, July 22. The winning name will receive a hot air balloon ride for two and VIP access to the entire weekend.

You can submit your entry and review the contest details at: http://visitcentralflorida.org/festival/

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Dawn Wade, a reporter for the Polk County Democrat recently took a trip on the Citrus Connection. Her write-up is similar to the public transportation experiment I conducted two years ago.

Hat tip to Barry.

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This afternoon as I was driving into Lakeland I noticed that there is another Starbucks under construction on 33 (near I-4). That will make a total of 5 so far in Lakeland, 7 if you count mall/Target locations.

Back in the 'Big City' of Winter Haven we have 0.

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Just a a quick reminder that we're having a local blogger meet-up from 7-9 at Black & Brew in Lakeland. See you there.

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Over at the Colliers Turley Martin Tucker blog, Mark Sonnenberg, SIOR, CCIM, writes about the new emergence of railroads and intermodal facilities in the commercial real-estate world:

“I’ve been working on the railroad” has returned as a familiar refrain heard across the country. America’s railroads are spending billions each year to keep up with increasing demand for hauling freight. Last year alone, U.S. freight railroads spent $8.3 billion to improve roadways and structures and equipment, according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR).

Mark talks about how the increasing use of intermodal, i.e. rail to truck and vice-versa is leading this boom in rail traffic. The growth of rail is of course tied to other economic development. It's an interesting read to see the 'real estate' side of thing.

At the end of the article Mark lists all the new intermodal facilities that are under development. The CSX/Winter Haven project is one of them.

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Over at the Hanging in Haven blog, Ledger reporter John Chambliss posts about a discussion he had with a city official about the 'size' of the city.

A city official recently took issue when I called Winter Haven a "small city." For Polk, Winter Haven may be big. But if you're from Tampa or Orlando, the Haven is just another town several miles off Interstate 4.

I'd love to know who John is referring to since I'd like to ask them how they would define something like Lakeland (which is 2 to 3 times the size of Winter Haven) or Tampa/Orlando. Are they 'mega cities'?

I really don't consider Winter Haven a 'big city', in fact when I travel to other 'big cities' I will tell people that I'm from a small town in Central Florida. So there, I just demoted Winter Haven from a 'small city' to a 'small town'.

Cities like Winter Haven and Lakeland always want to have things both ways. When it comes to attracting businesses and other economic development initiatives they want to appear like a 'big city', but when it comes to quality of life they want to appear like a 'small town'.

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Today's Ledger has an article about my involvement in a blog project for Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA - think PlayStation). In my 'real job' I worked with cnp_studio in Winter Haven to develop the official PlayStation.Blog. Of course the interesting angle that the story leads off with is that a group of folks from Polk County would even be working with Sony in the first place.

As Bob Gernert recently noted over at the chamber blog, there is a tech gathering in Winter Haven, perhaps even more-so than Lakeland.

I live in Winter Haven because I grew up in the area and I enjoy the quality of life. I am fortunate that my work allows me to live where I want and work with some great firms around the country.

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It's been almost 70 hours since I purchased my iPhone and it still has not been activated by AT&T. As of right now I'm on hour two of hold for the 'Activation Support Line'. Fun stuff.

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