Ryan and Debi Cragun’s Blog

We decided to take a day off yesterday for the 4th and spend the day at the beach.  We’ve been to Fort de Soto’s two beaches so we figured we’d try another beach.  This time we went to Honeymoon Island.  It’s a state park and costs $5.00 per car to get in.  It was pretty packed yesterday, though that still didn’t mean it was busy as the beaches we’ve seen in California.  Even though we aren’t really beach bums, we are starting to become beach snobs.  While the beaches on Honeymoon Island are nice, they still aren’t as nice as Fort de Soto’s.  The beaches aren’t quite as wide and, at least where we were, there was a distinct sulphur smell most of the time.  Also, the beach is a bit rockier.  Those two minor issues aside, it’s a nice beach.  Staying there for nearly 8 hours gave us a chance to see the changing tides, which dramatically alter the shape of the beach, which was pretty cool.

Having never done so before, I decided I wanted to build a sand castle.  Here I am hard at work with my high-quality sculpting instruments (I actually used a broken piece of sea shell for most of the sculpting).

Our neighbors at the beach, who were just behind Debi as she took this picture, were kind of fun to watch.  There were three kids: an infant and two kids between 5 and 10 years old.  The two older kids saw us building the sand castle and decided they wanted to make one too.  They didn’t really know what they were doing, but they tried hard.  The ended up with a circular mound, kind of like our moat, but without any towers.  I finished our castle and was just about to say they could come play with it when I saw the boy who was building the castle take a toy hoe to it and dash it to pieces.  I didn’t invite them over…

Here’s Debi by the sand castle at sunset.

And here’s the sunset just before we headed home:

It was a nice day overall, though we ended up with some minor sunburns.  I failed to put sunscreen on my ankles, so they are nice and red.  I lathered up Debi’s back, but it wiped off while she read and she didn’t realize it.  So, she ended up with a rather toasty back.  Even so, it was a very enjoyable and relaxing day.

As I noted last week, my Uncle, Stan Winston, passed away. I had the opportunity to go to the funeral along with most of my siblings and in-laws.

On the way out to the funeral I read a book about Stan Winston Studio called The Winston Effect. The book was published in 2006 and Stan sent all of the kids in my family a copy with a personal note in it. I skimmed through the book back then, but thought it a fitting time to read it in depth. It does a great job highlighting the many, many contributions Stan Winston Studio made to the fields of makeup, digital effects, puppetry, animatronics, and prosthetics. It also gives some of Stan’s personal history, which I was not completely familiar with. I’m really glad I read it as it helped me recognize some of the people at the funeral who worked with Stan for years and contributed to the studio’s success.

The Associated Press wrote up a nice summary of the funeral, which you can find here. Rather than repeat what they wrote or highlight all of the famous people who were there, I just want to touch on one point that really touched me. Many of those who spoke pointed out that despite his money and fame, Stan’s greatest treasure and most valued “possession” was his family. He talked about them to all of his professional colleagues and spent a great deal of time with them. This reinforced in my mind the human condition: We spend a great deal of time on pretenses - who is more popular, who has more money, etc. In the end, none of those things matter: we are all vulnerable animals.

But, and this is the part that moved me the most, we have the remarkable opportunity to share our lives with other vulnerable animals and experience something truly remarkable: deep, powerful connections with the people around us. While probably an artifact of our biological evolution, the power of those relationships is hard to deny.

My cousin, Matt, described Stan’s last day at the funeral. While it might seem voyeuristic, he explained that describing it perfectly illustrated and celebrated Stan’s life. I won’t go into all the details except to say that, at one point, Stan was in a hospitable bed with an oxygen mask on. He was barely able to breath, but as he looked as his wife, my Aunt Karen, Matt described Stan as “radiating love.” That’s powerful!

While in no way can Stan’s passing be described as a good thing, I have to admit that, from Matt’s description, his family made the most of a really difficult situation. It sounded, to me, like Stan’s final moments were how every person should exit this world: He was surrounded by family and friends who wanted only to express their love for him. Matt also noted what he described as a miracle: As Stan was passing, The Beatles’ song “Golden Slumbers” was playing in the background (Stan was a huge fan of The Beatles). If you know the song, you know that it is about the most perfect song to have playing at a time like that. A miracle, maybe not. But the perfect accompaniment for the loss of a loved one, absolutely!

We were in LA for several days and did a few other things while there (went to a restaurant that we first went to during our honeymoon, toured the USS Midway in San Diego, played cards with my family, visited Debi’s brother, sister-in-law, and nephew, and walked along the pier at Huntington Beach). Our last night there we stopped by 6522 Hollywood Blvd to see Stan’s Star. We forgot our camera and our phone batteries were dead, so we couldn’t take a picture, but I wanted to see it before I left LA as I don’t know when I’ll be back there. It was a nice culmination of a trip dedicated to the memory of my Uncle Stan.

All in all, it was a great trip to celebrate the life of a great person. Debi described it as the best funeral she’s ever been to. I couldn’t agree more. Even in passing away, Stan created powerful memories…

I found out this morning that my uncle, Stan Winston, passed away Sunday night. Stan was a favorite uncle in my family, not because he was rich or famous but almost despite his fame. Stan was always kind and considerate. Even while he was winning Oscars, he kept up with Cragun family happenings in rural Morgan, UT. He went out of his way to make time for his immediate family (he has two kids and four grandkids) and also his extended family, which was no small task considering the size of my family (I have 8 siblings). He and his family came to most of our weddings; the Winstons were a regular fixture in Utah when I was growing up.

Some of my fondest memories are spending Thanksgivings with the Winstons and my Nealey grandparents at their home in Ogden, UT. It was a tradition to go see a first-run movie on Thanksgiving, a fitting tradition given Stan’s line of work. I remember very clearly going to see my favorite movie of all time one of those nights: The Princess Bride at the domed theaters in Roy, UT in 1987. The movies were always more entertaining as a result of Stan’s humor and insightful criticism, something I didn’t really appreciate as a young, relatively naive boy growing up in rural Utah. Stan and his son, Matt, were side-splittingly funny, especially when they were together. It was impossible not to be entertained when the Winstons were around.

The Winstons were also gracious hosts. I remember my mom pointing out at my cousin Matt’s wedding the amazing ability of all of the Winston family to entertain people by getting people to talk about what was happening in their lives, which is all the more amazing considering the remarkable lives they led. Stan was also always willing to share his work with my family. Over the years I’ve been on at least half a dozen tours of Stan Winston Studios, many of them guided by Stan himself. He guided tours for my closest friends and even my in-laws and some of their friends. I’m sure he had very important meetings and phone calls he needed to take care of, but family was always right up near the top of his list of priorities.

Stan also gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever heard. During one visit to his studio, he asked me and my guests what we were planning to do with our lives. We weren’t sure at the time and said so. Then Stan offered the following (paraphrased from my memory of the event), “Hopefully you’ll be as lucky as I have been. But it’s not all about luck. If you want to be as happy in life as I have been, find what you are passionate about and do that. Then work isn’t work; it’s play.” He was right. For those of us lucky enough to have a choice in what we get to do, finding something we are passionate about and doing that turns our work into a pleasure. His advice directly influenced my decision to become a Sociologist, as I’m sure it has influenced countless other people to pursue their dreams.

The world may have lost an amazing, artistic genius Sunday with the loss of Stan Winston, but it also lost a favorite uncle, an amazing father, and a generous, loving, and kind person. We’ll all miss you, Stan…

(Note: His death was covered by the NYTimes and Slashdot, among thousands of other news sites.)

Addenda (I’ll be adding stories and thoughts as they come to me over the next few days):

I’m constantly amazed at how widely known Stan’s work was and how devoted his fans were. On my way to Costa Rica in early 1996 I sat next to a relatively nondescript individual. I stood out, of course, as a Mormon missionary and we struck up a conversation. As we talked on the overnight flight, it eventually came out that Stan Winston was my uncle. As soon as he heard that, he flipped, as though some how meeting me providing some metaphysical connection to Stan. He talked nonstop for at least 30 minutes about all of the movies my Uncle had worked on and how much he loved his work. He knew more about Stan’s work than anyone I had ever met (other than Stan, of course). We talked about Stan and his work for quite a while and then I surprised him with a gift. My parents in the Salt Lake City airport had just given me a hat with the Stan Winston Studio logo on it. I always loved getting merchandise from Stan’s Studios - they had the coolest artwork on them and were great conversation starters for “people in the know”. When I pulled out the hat, the guy’s heart rate must have doubled. As much as I wanted to keep the hat, I felt it would really make that guy’s day, so I gave it to him. I was reminded of this as I have followed the forums discussing Stan’s passing on some of the tech websites I follow. The devotion of some of his fans is really touching.

Here’s a great tribute video highlighting much of Stan’s work.

When my aunts and uncles were out here visiting a couple weeks ago, it reminded me of some stories from when I worked in the orchards one of them ran. The orchard was in Pleasant View, UT, which is where my Dad is from and where many of my relatives still live. I created a map of the orchard here. Here are some of the stories I remembered:

Selling Smarts:

The orchard wasn’t particularly lucrative, though my aunt did say it made them money most years. But there is a funny story that goes with the orchard. I don’t know which ancestor originally planted the orchard, but I do know my great grandfather, Mormon Cragun, worked out there (and, sadly, died from an accident in the orchard). But my grandfather, Earl Budge Cragun, owned a lot of land around the orchard, including, apparently (according to my aunt), about 300 acres directly above (kind of north and east) of the orchard (it’s marked on the map). The land was littered with enormous rocks and was basically worthless to my grandfather, as he was primarily interested in farming. When someone approached him about the land above the orchard, he was ecstatic to get rid of it and sold it for a paltry $300 for the entire 300 acres. The person who bought the property saw something my grandfather didn’t: The looming market for massive rocks for lawn decoration. This market boomed in the 1980s and 1990s in Utah; people wanted large rocks to decorate their yards. One of my close friends up the street from where I lived had a yard bordered by rocks like this. The guy who bought the orchard extracted the rocks and sold them for, get this, literally millions and millions of dollars. He turned that $300 investment into a multi-million dollar business.

This was always a sore spot in Cragun family lore. The guy also negotiated for easement rights for the property, so he was able to access the quarry. Enormous trucks ran up and down the side of the orchard for years. When the family eventually sold the orchard, they sold it to the owners of the rock quarry, who tore down most of the trees and put in a road to make access to the quarry easier. So, grandpa, about my inheritance… :| (That’s a joke; I’m not expecting an inheritance!)

Sweet Cherry Tumble

Some background on cherries. There are really two basic kinds of cherries: sweet cherries and pie cherries. The ones you buy in the store with the stems on them are called sweet cherries. The ones you buy in cans for cherry pie are called pie cherries. I describe below how pie cherries are harvested, but sweet cherries, because they need the stems on them to stay fresh, are generally harvested by hand. We’d start work around 5 am and work until 1 pm, so they were harvested when they were moist. We got paid by the pound. And by “we” I mean, every young kid in Pleasant View, plus a lot of my relatives, and occasionally migrant laborers who, of course, only spoke Spanish. I have a lot of stories from the time we spent picking cherries, like the day my cousin Matt Winston spent picking cherries with us. Matt’s now a semi-famous actor, but he has an amazing sense of humor. He wasn’t particularly interested in making money or even picking cherries, but he did keep us all entertained the day he was there. My favorite memory of that day is him wondering how many cherries he could fit in his mouth at one time. I don’t remember the number (I think it was in the 30s), but it was a lot, and he looked hilarious.

Anyway, with all the young kids working out there (I was doing this at 6, too), it was amazing there were not more accidents. The youngest kids would pick the low hanging fruit, but older kids climbed ladders and used sky hooks to pull branches down. I remember one day watching a young girl who was new to picking cherries climb a ladder a couple of trees away from me. She hadn’t placed her ladder well and it tipped over, dumping her a good 10 or 15 feet to the ground. She fell hard and immediately started screaming. I was probably 10 or 11 at the time (I’m not sure), but I remember watching my cousin’s husband, who had just barely joined the family, McKell Young, leap from his ladder and run to her aid. He was there in a split second and immediately calmed her down and started to splint her terribly broken arm. McKell is now a dentist in Missouri with a handful of kids, but whenever I think of McKell, I think of this story.

Here’s a picture of McKell with one of his children a few years after that at an Easter family gathering in the orchard:

If I remember correctly, as a result of this incident they raised the minimum age for non-family workers to 12; the girl was younger than that. Also, according to my aunt, that was the only bone broken bone in the orchard (she even remembered the girl’s name, though I forget it now).

Tractor Tale #1: Oh Brother!

The orchard was very much a family business. My aunt and uncle’s children worked in the orchard most of their lives, and many of their cousins (me included) also worked out there. I started working in the orchard at 6, and was driving tractors by the time I was around 8. My first tractor driving job was to drive the tractor pulling the cherry tanker along side the harvester.

For that to make sense you probably need a bit of an explanation of how pie cherry harvesting is done To harvest pie cherries, at least 3 tractors (more like 4 or 5) are required. One tractor pulls a large trailer called the harvester. Here’s my rudimentary drawing of a harvester:

The harvester has one side that faces the cherry tree being harvested (depicted above). Two people would ride on this side (the faces). When they pull up to a tree, they pull out a large tarp attached to a winch on the harvester (in blue) until it covers the ground under the harvester. The yellow in the picture is my attempt to depict the fabric above the trailer that catches any cherries that fall that way. Once the cherries are shaken from the tree (see diagram below), the winch pulls the tarp back in, dropping the cherries through a hole in the harvester and down to the other side, depicted here:

Two or three people work on this side. The green boxes represent bins. The cherries fall through the hole in the harvester and into these bins, where the workers remove as many leaves, twigs, dead birds, etc. as possible. Once the bins fill up, they are carried down a row of trees where the cherry tanker, pulled by another tractor, is waiting. Here’s my depiction of a tanker:

The cherry tanker is a large trailer that is filled with hundreds of gallons of water. The cherries, as they are harvested, are dumped into the cherry tanker. The water keeps them from getting smashed and keeps them fresh. It also helps all the leaves and sticks float to the top, where they are later skimmed away (my first job at 6 was to skim the crap out the tankers).

And now the shaker. An attachment is connected to another tractor that has a two-pronged extension on it. That attachment wraps around the tree like shown below:

The gray prongs are what is called the shaker (I tried my best). They wrap around the tree then shake it like crazy. The two tarps attached to the harvester (in the background) catch the cherries then send them into the harvester. That’s basically how it’s done. Oh, and this starts at 10 pm and continues until 10 am - harvesting at night keeps the moisture in the cherries so they stay fresh longer.

Anyway, back to the story. My second job in the orchard was to drive the cherry tanker. This is a pretty easy job since all I had to do was keep the tanker level with the harvester - every time it moved, I moved. That made it easy for those dumping bins of cherries to get them into the tanker. Mind you I started doing this when I was about 8: someone believed I was responsible enough to drive an enormous tractor attached to a multi-ton tanker when I was 8 years old.

There were two hard parts to the job. First, it went on, non-stop, all night for about 4 weeks. At 8 (and now), I liked sleeping at night. So, I had a hard time staying awake. Sometimes I’d fall asleep and the other workers would yell at me. The other hard part was making sure that no one was around the tanker when I pulled forward. Remember, this is an all steel tanker filled with hundreds of gallons of water and hundreds of pounds of cherries. It weighed several tons by the time it was full.

Well, one night I checked behind me to make sure no one was dumping cherries into the tanker then pulled forward. As I did I heard a scream. It was my brother Danny. If you look back at the diagram of the cherry tanker you’ll see that the tires are actually on the outside. He had stepped up to dump a bin of cherries just after I checked and stepped between the tires. His leg was there when I pulled forward. The tanker rode up the back of his leg and threw him face first into the ground. Luckily others heard the scream and came running. And, luckily, the ground was soft. I ran over his leg, but it was mostly just pushed into the dirt, so there was little damage done - mostly bruising. I felt terrible, but no one really blamed me for it as accidents were pretty common out there (though rarely serious, which is amazing). Danny got the night off (with pay), but was back the next day.

Here’s a picture of me a bit older pulling the tarps out on the harvester (the shaker is in the background). This is the only picture I have of my working in the orchard:

Tractor Tale #2: Hang On!

My oldest brother, Troy, was an orchard regular and old hand out there. He had been working out there for years, and by the time this happened he must have been close to 18. He had graduated from most of the crappy jobs to a periphery job: he managed the cherry tankers. Basically he used a fourth tractor to pick up the full tankers, take them down to have them skimmed, then filled the empty tankers with water and delivered them, as needed, to where the rest of us were working. His job was pretty nice because he could basically lay on the tanker as it filled and, if he angled it just right, when it got to the right level, the water would leak out, getting him a little wet, and waking him up. Sometimes he’d sleep, other times he’d read. He had the dream job out there.

I rode up with him one night to watch as he filled the tankers. Rather than wait for it to finish filling this time, he decided he’d rather take the tractor for a spin. So, he told me to hop on (they are all one seat tractors) and hang on. The orchard is laid out in rows and the rows are easy to drive along. But Troy was more interested in having a wild ride, so he angled the tractor down the hill and started driving from row to row, plowing through trees, irrigation ditches, and anything else in our way as we went. I don’t think we took out any trees, but by the time he was done, I felt like the trees had taken me out. I was covered in scratches and had leaves and branches all over me. He was hollering and screaming the whole time. I’m not sure how often he did that, but he seemed to be an old pro at it.

Tractor Tale #3: I’m going to die!

I saved my favorite story for last. I worked in the orchard during the summers until I was 16 or 17, when my aunt and uncle started negotiating to sell it. I learned a lot out there and saw some amazing things, but this is one story I’ll never forget. You can’t see it in the Google Maps link above, but the orchard is actually on a hillside. And by hillside, I mean a fairly steep incline, probably a 7 to 10 degree incline. That’s not much of a problem if you take it an angle, like the side roads in the orchard did. It’s also not a problem if you’re driving down one of the rows as they are terraced so you hardly notice the incline. But if you ever take the middle road in the orchard, you face that entire incline. Now, driving a tractor alone up or down the main road isn’t a problem - those things have so much horsepower that it’s not an issue at all. But, if you’re pulling a cherry tanker, that can be a serious problem. Cherry tankers weigh several tons when full.

I faced this scenario for the first time one day when I was about 12 years-old. Someone asked me to drive a full tanker of cherries down to the skimming station at the bottom of the orchard. If I was near one of the sides of the orchard, I would have taken one of those, which isn’t much of a problem. But I was near the middle road (you can see it in the map), and since I figured I’d need to learn how to do this some time, I decided to just go ahead and drive the tanker down the middle road. There were two problems with my thinking here. First, I had never done this and no one had ever shown me how. Second, just above the skimming station, the middle road in the orchard takes a sharp left turn. If you miss the turn, there’s about a 30 foot drop off. Remember, the orchard was on a hillside. Whoever designed the orchard hadn’t made the best decision building the road that way, but I don’t recall it ever really being a serious problem (though I’m sure someone has missed that turn before).

So, I hopped on the tractor and headed down the center of the orchard. As I inched my way down the steep road, I started to notice that I was going a little too fast. I was in first gear, but it was still too fast for my novice abilities, so I pushed in the clutch on the tractor and hit the brakes. The multi-ton tanker behind me laughed at my rookie mistake - those brakes on the loose dirt weren’t going to stop it. It kept coming, picking up speed. The tractor started sliding, and then started to jackknife as the tanker was pushing it out of the way. I was still probably a couple hundred feet or so from the drop off when I started skidding. But I knew it was coming, and I was still picking up speed. If the trailer and tractor didn’t flip, killing me in the process, then I’d probably slide over the edge and certainly die. My heart raced and my life flashed before my eyes - the only time this has ever happened to me. I was going to die!

Then, it hit me: My brother Troy had told me a short time before this what to do, “Whenever you’re driving a tanker down one of the roads headed down hill, don’t EVER take it out of gear! If you do, the tractor’s brakes won’t be able to stop it and you’ll wreck.” That was the answer - put it back in gear. I slammed the gear shift into first and popped the clutch. And, like the magic I thought it was at the time, the tractor slowed to a near standstill, the tanker straightened out, and everything returned to normal. The tractor’s brakes couldn’t slow the tanker, but the tractor’s engine could. I inched my way toward the turn as slowly as possible and made it safely. With only a couple of close contenders, this is probably the closest I’ve ever come to dying (the close contenders are fun stories too!).

Here’s a final picture of another Easter party out at the “Good Earth” which is what we called it. We used to have a great time hiding easter candy on the rocks and having races to find it all. McKell is in the picture with his son (male in sunglasses on the left). I’m standing, next to me is my younger brother, Josh, then my two cousins, Brian and Nate Belnap. This rock was about 15 feet tall and was a blast to climb:

So, those are my orchard stories. I hope you enjoyed them.

The last couple of weeks of school were packed with grading and other activities. We are now finished with those responsibilities and have started our “summer of research” (some people get “summers of love” or “travel summers;” we get “research summers”!). We have enough research projects to keep us busy for two summers, but we’re going to do our best to get as much research done as possible.

But life isn’t all about doing research… Okay, the tenure clock is ticking, so it is all about doing research! :( But all research and no play makes me… go… insane! So, I insisted that we schedule a few fun activities amidst the 12 hour research days (literally, we wrote them into our calendars). Yesterday was our first fun activity. We biked the Gandy Bridge that connects Tampa and St. Pete. The walkway/bike path is actually called Friendship Trail Bridge (sounds so inviting, doesn’t it?). The bridge is about 2.6 miles and is the old Gandy Bridge for vehicular traffic. It was converted from car traffic in 1999 and is now open only to walkers, runners, bicyclists, rollerbladers, skateboarders, etc. Having crossed the Gandy Bridge via car a number of times, I’ve seen the Friendship Trail Bridge and thought it would be fun to bike across it. I mapped out some of the key points in Google Maps. Here are a couple of helpful pictures. First, here’s the Gandy Bridge (the thin strip at the top is the Friendship Trail Bridge:

Here’s a close-up of the parking area:

And here area a few pictures of us there. First, here’s Debi on the west side of the bridge, advertising water bottles:

Here’s Ryan sporting his summer hair-do:

If you look close in the above picture you can see some buildings in the background; that’s downtown Tampa.

And here’s Debi on our way back over (headed east),

We were biking the trail for exercise, but we were also chatting about our research as we went and didn’t push ourselves. At our pace, it was about 20 minutes from one side to the other. The great thing about the bridge is that there is no concern of cars; your biggest concern is hitting other people. But the bridge was not busy at all and everyone there was friendly. There is one hill towards the east side where the bridge rises up to allow boats underneath, but otherwise it is flat and perfectly straight.

If you’re looking for a great place for a jog or to get a little exercise during a trip to Tampa/St. Pete, this is a very scenic place to do it.

Aside from our biking adventure (we’ve got another one penciled in for next Wednesday), two of my aunts (with their husbands) came to visit us this last Saturday. One aunt and uncle, Al and Norma Liston, were serving an LDS Mission on the LDS ranch in Florida (Deseret Ranch, of course). We kept talking about going over to visit them, but with how busy we were, we never did get over there. But, as loving relatives, they decided to come visit us. Another aunt and uncle, Helen and Ray Johnson, were in town to visit them and drive home with them. So, they came over to Tampa (the ranch is near the east coast of Florida) on Saturday, arriving at 1:00, just after our commencement finished. It was great to see them and spend the afternoon with them. We took them to Fort de Soto’s North Beach, the same place we took my dad when he came. We now have quite a collection of beach chairs, beach towels, and beach umbrellas (hint, hint) - enough for all six of us to sit comfortably in the shade and enjoy the beach while we caught up. We had a great time.

After the beach we headed to Rouen Thai for dinner. There was an unfortunate, relatively minor accident on the way into the restaurant (one of my aunt’s skinned her arm when she tripped on a parking block - I still feel bad about that as I almost caught her), but we had a great dinner (Rouen Thai is awesome and they were very accommodating). We then drove up Bayshore Boulevard and stopped at the University of Tampa to show them our campus, which is very beautiful. By that time it was getting late and they had to get back across Florida and home. Which leads me to my funny story…

My aunts and uncles are super nice and very knowledgeable in their respective areas of expertise (one is an electrician, the other builds homes). But they aren’t particularly tech savvy. They bought a brand new GPS unit for their trip home driving across the U.S. to Utah. It’s a Mio unit and it’s very nice. But, they weren’t exactly sure how to work it. They plugged it in and figured out how to put in an address and used it to get from their place, literally just miles from the east coast of Florida, to mine, just miles from the west coast. They called about 10 minutes before they arrived and told me that they were on Martin Luther King Blvd. and about 22nd street. That wouldn’t be unusual except I-4, the freeway that runs east/west from one coast to the other would have taken them right passed that area. It sounded to me like they got off the freeway early, but I didn’t really think much of it.

Having only been to Fort de Soto once, I wasn’t 100% positive of how to get there, but I was positive that we could take I-275 most of the way. So, I directed my uncle who was driving to get on I-275 then pulled out their GPS unit and plugged in the address for Fort de Soto. It took me a minute to get used to the new unit, but I figured it out and told it to plot us a course to the beach. Right away it told us to get off the freeway. That seemed really odd to me as I knew the fastest way to get there was on the freeway - my GPS unit (a Garmin) told me so last time. I figured maybe it was trying to route me a different way, but I wasn’t convinced, so I ignored the unit and told them where to go. Even so, I left the unit on and it continued to tell us to get off the freeway at every possible exit. After about 15 prompts to get off the freeway it dawned on me that maybe there was something wrong with the settings of the GPS. I started flipping through the screens and eventually found the setting that I was looking for. Apparently the Mio allows you to choose your method of travel: taxi, car, big rig… and walking! The default setting on their GPS was “pedestrian.” The reason it was telling us to get off the freeway was because pedestrians are not allowed on the freeway and it thought we were pedestrians. Apparently it’s pretty common for pedestrians to do 65 mph (come on, Mio, how hard can it be to figure out when someone is a pedestrian and when they are not?). I was glad I figured it out, but then it dawned on me what had happened earlier: My relatives had driven all the way across the state of Florida on back roads because their GPS thought they were pedestrians. That’s why they were not on the freeway when they called. I felt kind of bad telling them, but they were cool about it and we all had a good laugh!