Bye-Kea in Words

Bye-Kea weekend.

Our annual trip to Ikea during the Browns bye week.

If you need visuals, Billy Brew has a couple of pictures posted on Holmanium and a nice write-up on the trip.

We used the Browns bye week to extend Caroline's birthday and to erase the horror that has become the Cleveland Browns football season. As a wrinkle, we made the trip into an overnight with a stop at Great Wolf Lodge in Mason, Ohio and a picnic at Loveland Castle.

We managed to not take a single picture during the trip, which is a shame because there were plenty of moments that were blogworthy.

Bill's depiction is accurate, though.

Indoor waterparks have an over-abundance of the following:

1. Tattoos - I reached my lifetime quota of "tramp-stamps" and armband "barbed wire" tattoos during the visit to GWL.

For those who want to see what funny looks like, I found this on the web. [Note the heavy use of skinny-boy flex with the tricep...this dude was a master at his craft.]

2. Body hair - I thought I was at a Joseph Enterprises convention. I kept looking for the guy below to make an appearance:

3. Unhealthy lack of friendly advice - if you are wearing a bathing suit that makes someone around you throw up in their own mouth, you should not come to the waterpark.

See below:

4. Spooky animatronics. GWL provides its guests with a twice-daily rendition of some song that is a total knock-off of Lion King's "Circle of Life". Freaky-looking animatronic animals and a mannequin-esque Native American girl move around and sing a song to the same tune but with lyrics that caution children that "there's nothing to be afraid of at GWL."

It was creepy. We didn't stick around for the end.

Overall, though, everyone had a ball.

Good times.