Florida Archives

February 26, 2014

Riverbend Park Bike Ride

I see SE Missouri may be looking at another wave of ice and snow, so I ALMOST hate to post this. Friends Jan Norris and George Primm have been talking up riding their bikes on the trails in Palm Beach County’s Riverbend Park near Jupiter, Florida.

When Anne Rodgers sent me a message saying she had an afternoon free for a ride, I set aside stuff I was supposed to be doing and decided to see if I could still ride a bike. For the record, the trail, is beautiful. It’s not long, but there are lots of loops and it is very peaceful. (At least on a weekday when very few people were around.) Click on the photos to make them larger.

I USED to ride a lot

Before I started this blog, I did one on PalmBeachBikeTours.com. I was riding as much as 3,000 miles a year, with metric centuries (62 miles) a couple times or more a month and a century (100-miles in a day) a couple times a year.

Interestingly enough, I rode a lot more when I was working than after I retired.

This blog takes a lot of time and travel.
My long-distance partner, Mary, crashed while not wearing a helmet, fractured her skull in five places and hasn’t been able to get on a bike since.
Riding partners Osa and Anne have real lives, so scheduling rides is a lot more complicated and we never rode enough together to do long distances.
I don’t deal with heat as well as I once did, so I switched a lot of my riding to nights. Don’t worry: I’m more visible at night than in the daytime.
I have a feeling like a pebble in my sock when I ride more than about 35 miles. The foot doc gave it a fancy name, but it boiled down to I don’t have the padding around my toes I once did.

Trail is mostly packed shell rock

My Surly Long Haul Trucker touring bike has relatively wide tires that rode very well on the hard-packed shell rock trail.

Here’s part of the account I sent to Curator Jessica when she asked how my ride went: I am severely diminished.

The first loop was a beautiful shaded trail with abundant wildlife. Then Anne, bless her heart, (an old Southern expression) suggested we ride another trail. She, being young and eager, led the way. THAT trail led under a bridge and then into single track mountain bike country that took us to a part of trail with water and ruts that could have been called the Grand Canyon had that name not already been taken.

Shell rock turns to grass to sand

That trail changed from packed shell rock to grass. Fortunately, that didn’t last long. Unfortunately, the next segment was patches of sugar sand with stretches of mud and water. We had strayed onto an equestrian trail.

Anne is a twig. I looked at Anne’s tire tracks. She was sinking in about half an inch. I’m two Annes and was plowing a rut. I was operating at wobble speed or less and my heart rate monitor was approaching the line marked “Red Fountain.”

I told Anne that I was on the verge of bonking and needed to fuel the furnace to tide me over until we could find a nice place to dive into the sub sandwich she had brought along. We each had an energy gel that is about like a gummy worm in consistency.

We hadn’t gone very far when I got impatient and bit down on the gel. On my second bite, there was a very un-gel-like crunch. I told Anne to hold up a minute while I fished around in my mouth. Just as I had suspected, I had pulled a dental crown loose.

I ended up pushing my bike about half a mile because it was too soft to ride.

Deer were a nice surprise

Once we got back on the main loop again, we made much better time more comfortably. We weren’t going so fast, though, that we missed this herd of deer chowing down on grasses. They showed interest, but not fear, even when I got to within about 50 feet of them.

Another rider spots the deer

Two guys on mountain bikes rode up while I was shooting the deer. They were nice enough to stand back to keep from spooking them, but I motioned the one guy forward so he’d have a better chance at getting a shot. The deer drifted away slowly, but they must be used to seeing people in the park.

The parking lot we started from is also where there is a canoe concession to float the Loxahatchee River. If you are in Florida and want to have a taste of what the region used to be like, Riverbend Park is the place to go. Just stay out of the sugar sand and don’t crunch down on a sticky energy gel.

Oh, by the way, right after the dentist got me all numbed up, he told me he wasn’t going to be able to reuse the old crown and asked if I wanted to discuss payment options. NOW would be a good time for you to click that big red button at the top left of the page to order something from Amazon to help me pay for my new crown.

December 31, 2013January 1, 2014

Birds on the Beach

Wife Lila sent me a text this morning: “Can you be spontaneous? Put your pants on and come to the beach to take pictures.”

I’m glad she sent it at mid-morning on New Year’s Eve. The last time she got one of those “spontaneous” urges, I found myself at Lake Worth Beach on New Year’s Day 2010 confirming that, yes, indeed, that bright light in the sky pulls itself out of the ocean at ye god o’clock in the morning. As much as I hate to admit it, she and I took some really nice photos that day. (That’s Lila’s shot above, by the way.)

She wanted promo photos

She wanted photos of her and Neighbor Jacqie/Bill Jackson wearing reunion T-shirts to promote the Class of ’66 Florida February Extravaganza. What would be better to make people with frozen nose hairs envious than by posting New Year’s Eve beach photos? (You can click on the photos to make them larger.)

Here’s an announcement she put up on the ’66 Facebook page: Classmate Jane McKeown Neumeyer will be in Sarasota, FL during February, so we are planning another luncheon. So far, the details consist of the date… February 6, 2014 … at a restaurant in or near Sarasota. For more information as it becomes available, keep checking Terry Hopkins’ website.

She’s become a Class of ’66er

Several years back, she and some of her Central High School Class of 1966 grads (and a few stragglers from other classes) started getting together for lunch once a month in cape. She always made it a point to go when she was in town. When she realized how many Cape folks had moved down to the Sunshine State, she and her Florida cohorts decided to start meeting down here.

Here is an account of their first get-together: The original Florida group members; Lila Perry Steinhoff, Jane Rudert McMahan, Bill (Jacqie) Jackson, and Terry Hopkins met for an inaugural lunch at Dunedin on the west coast of Florida in July. It was a fantastic day with friends, food and so many memories and stories. We talked and laughed for more than four hours and decided we had to do it again. Once we put the word out on Facebook and on the 60s’ email list, we started picking up more classmates.

After months of planning and juggling of time schedules, the logistics finally settled and… those living in, visiting, or driving to the Tampa, Florida, area met for lunch at the Thirsty Marlin in Palm Harbor, Florida, on September 9. It was a pretty fantastic day. There was a lot of laughter and memories were shared and stories swapped. Attendees were Jane McMahan, Lila Steinhoff, Bill Askew, Jesse James and wife Margaret, Bill (Jacqie) Jackson, Don Wareing and wife Peggy, Mike Riley and wife Sheila, and Mike Heron.

You can see videos and still photos of the group on Terry’s page.

Florida Pigeon

The beach is usually the domain of seagulls, but this morning a contingent of what Wife Lila thought were Florida pigeons had moved in. She thought that because, even though the temps were in the mid-70s, they were all puffed up and some were huddling in deep footprints in the sand.

Bigger than average gull

This was a bigger than average gull and one with a slightly different color than I’m used to seeing.

Speaking of gulls….

I wasn’t really happy with what I had shot of the T-shirted couple so far. That’s when I turned and spotted a young woman hauling her surfboard to the water. I walked up, said, “Could we borrow you and your board for a minute?”

With only a second’s hesitation, Rachel tucked herself between the old geezers and I made a photo that should entice at least a few members of the Class of 66 to come down.

I sent Rachael a thank-you email, a copy of the photo and some words of wisdom: “I hate to tell you this, but you’re going to look like these folks in a blink of an eye. Enjoy life while you can.”

December 17, 2013

Robert P. Adams 1927 – 2013

Wife Lila and I attended a military memorial service for the father of her best Florida friend, Nancy Fratz.

Robert P. Adams, 86, formerly of Ft. Pierce and Lake Worth, passed away on Wednesday, December 11, 2013 following an extended illness. Bobby was born on April 24, 1927. He is survived by his wife of 65 years, Hazel Adams, and his children, Nancy (Thomas) Fratz and John (Claudia) Adams.

South Florida National Cemetery

The memorial service was held at the relatively new South Florida National Cemetery west of Lake Worth, Florida.

The cemetery’s website says South Florida National Cemetery is the fifth national cemetery built in Florida and the 125th in the national cemetery system. It covers 313 acres and is projected to be able to handle veterans’ needs for the next 50 years.

The site was used as farmland and for cattle grazing up until the time of its purchase by the National Cemetery Administration in 2002. The cemetery was opened for burials in 2007, and was formally dedicated on March 9, 2008.

I had read that many of the national cemeteries use recordings for Taps, but this is the first time I had encountered it at an outdoor service. The bugler only pretended to play while a recording provided the actual call. No matter how the sound was produced, it was moving.

Origin of Taps

The tune is a variation of an earlier bugle call known as the Scott Tattoo which was used in the U.S. from 1835 until 1860, and was arranged in its present form by the Union Army Brigadier General Daniel Butterfield, an American Civil War general and Medal of Honor recipient in July 1862 to replace a previous French bugle call used to signal “lights out.” Within months, Taps was used by both Union and Confederate forces. It was officially recognized by the United States Army in 1874 and became a standard component to U.S. military funerals in 1891. (From Wilipedia.)

October 11, 2013

Shari Tackles Palm Beach

Friend Shari and Wife Lila have been touring South Florida while I’ve been trying to wrap up projects before hitting the road. I got a bunch of work done Wednesday, so I had a few hours free Thursday morning to take Shari on a short bike ride along Palm Beach’s Lake Trail.

When I mentioned that because I am folically challenged, I wear a Cool Max headsweat under my helmet to keep salty bodily fluids from splashing onto my glasses, she said she usually wraps a bandana around her forehead. Reaching into my back jersey pocket, I produced this souvenir from the Tour of Southern Rural Vistas. I didn’t notice the “Springtime” on the bandana until I edited the picture.

Where’s my Segway?

A covey of Segways cruised by buzzing like a batch of angry bees while Shari was vamping next to this sculpture at the Four Arts Museum. “Why are we riding these? Why don’t have one of those?”

Some things don’t deserve an answer.

Feed it a kid first

No trip on the Lake Trail is complete without pausing at the huge kapok tree south of the Flagler Museum. We pulled up just about the same time a mother with several children arrived. When Shari started to elbow them aside, I said, “We find it works much better if we feed the tree a couple of kids before the first adult gets close to it.”

From the look on the mother’s face, I’m pretty sure my name has been added to some kind of registry in Palm Beach.