Anne Rodgers Archives

March 1, 2014

Glenn Yarbrough 1968

You may have noticed I had a varied group of road warriors traveling with me last year. One of the things that makes for a successful trip (meaning that the same number of people arrive at the destination as left) is working out the Rules of the Road before you take off.

Friends Jan and Anne were bike riding partners, so we had plenty of time to work out the kinks of our relationships while pedaling down the road. Friend Shari was my first high school girlfriend (which didn’t end well), and we hadn’t spoken in close to four decades, so I had to learn that she doesn’t become close to human until after her first cup of Starbucks coffee, she needs frequent smoke breaks and she gets up about the time I’m normally going to bed. We were stopping often for her to check out antique shops, so the smoke breaks weren’t an issue, and I’d leave her my car keys so she could get her Starbucks fix before I even thought about waking up.

Curator Jessica from Athens, Ohio, was a going to be a challenge. She was half my age (OK, more than half my age, but who is counting) to start off, so I was afraid we would have generational issues. We managed to compromise on a waking and sleeping schedule, types of eating establishments (she wasn’t picky) and where we would stay (no place that rented by the hour or where bodies had been found in a room recently). The only place where we hit a speed bump was when we got to talking about music play lists.

“No Glenn Yarbrough,” she insisted

I’m not really a Yarbrough fan – in fact, I get Glenn Yarbrough and Gordon Lightfoot mixed up, probably because of the G-names – but I wasn’t going to concede all that easy. “Miz Jessica, Ma’am, you’ve read my blog. You know that Baby the Rain Must Fall, Glenn’s biggest hit, was how I met Wife Lila. Surely you wouldn’t make me cut that from the playlist, would you?”

She would. Yarbrough was a non-negotiable with her. She also wasn’t big on C.W. McCall, but she WOULD let me play the home brew Cars & Trucks mix tape that was a Steinhoff family trip staple.

So, when I was editing some of my Ohio film, I was surprised to run into Glenn Yarbrough in concert at Ohio University on March 2, 1968.

Jessica, this are for you.

He is as bland as his music

While I was editing the film, I cranked up some Yarbrough music. Sorry, Glenn, I had to dump you after about the third song. You make Gordon Lightfoot sound exciting. On top of that, the photos are dull, too. I’m only including a bunch of them in case some reader was one of the folks who bought some of his nearly four dozen solo albums. He also sang on almost two dozen albums with the Limeliters. SOMEBODY must have liked him.

I’m sticking in some shots of the guys in his band just in case they became famous on their own later.

Glenn Yarbrough photo gallery

Click on any image to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.

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.

October 12, 2013October 12, 2013

Picking a Motel

It’s always a challenge figuring out where to stop for the night when you are traveling with new folks. I’m not overly picky: I’m looking for somewhere clean and cheap.

I made the mistake of letting Friend Jan pick a place in Louisville on our trip this winter. Bad Move.

Friend Anne didn’t mind playing the role of spatting newlywed to win a discount in Lake City.

I tried to show Friend Shari alligators around Lake O, but they must have been federal alligators laid off because of the government’s shutdown. We spotted one little one at the Canal Point locks, but he wouldn’t have made a slipper, let along a set of shoes.

We were getting hungry and were going to be too late to get to Roy’s in Steinhatchee, so we opted for the always great buffet at the Golden Corral in Okeechobee.

Hotel Jacaranda

The meal was so large, that Shari immediately passed out. She came to when we passed through historic downtown Sebring. She REALLY came alive when we got to historic Avon Park and the Hotel Jacaranda. I’ll have more pix of it when I’m not so sleepy. Unlike Shari, I didn’t get a nap.

I DID shoot some pictures of the diving woman in front of Reed’s Motel. I shot her in 1990 when I did a story on U.S. 27 between Little Havana in Miami and Havana, FL, on the Georgia line.

By the time we got to Ocala, my passenger was whining that it was six hours past her bedtime. Instead of a place to lay my head, though, she wanted to find a Starbucks joint so she could steal my van and get a jolt before I had hit my snooze alarm for the third time in the morning.

Smoking rooms harder to find

THEN we went looking for a motel. She’s a smoker, so that eliminated most of the more modern, upscale places. She wanted a Mom and Pop with loose standards.

She picked the first one because it was named after a long-legged bird she is fond of. Let’s just leave it at that. It was a 1950’s place that rented by the week. I got a little worried when I noticed that the windows in almost all of the rooms were open. So were a lot of the doors. In one of the doors was a guy who was busily scratching parts that itched. I suggested we go to the next place listed on the GPS.

It was a fancy bed and breakfast. I don’t like them because I don’t want to be warm and fuzzy with the owners. I want a good, anonymous room where I can throw a wet towel on the bathroom floor and not feel guilty.

We can’t afford a place with “grounds”

Candidate three was eliminated because it was too fancy: it had “grounds.” “We can’t afford anyplace that has grounds,” she said.

Candidate four was similar to Candidate One except that the windows were closed. All but one of them. When our headlights played across the rooms, a guy carefully pulled back a corner of the curtain and stared at us. It wasn’t clear if he was expecting someone to be making a pickup or a delivery, and I don’t think he had pizza on his mind.

We finally came up with a place that was minimally acceptable. (If we wanted a microwave or a fridge, it would cost $5 extra.)

When the desk clerk asked if we would like adjoining rooms, I said, “Nah, she’s a smoker. If she sets her bed on fire, I’d be happy to have her in a different building. He took me at my word. She’s not only in a different building, I’m pretty sure she’s in a different area code.

I’LL find the room tomorrow night.

October 8, 2013October 8, 2013

Roadtripper Shari

Before I started this blog, I had PalmBeachBikeTours.com. Kid Matt said, “You’re always picking up strays along the road, why don’t you do bike tours?” Well, that lasted until the first time half a dozen riders of various abilities and attitudes showed up (and they weren’t strangers, they were friends and family). I decided I wasn’t cut out to herd cats, so I concentrated on writing about rides and reviewing products.

Jan got to feel cold

It looks like THIS blog is turning into a touring group. I got to introduce Jan Norris to cold weather and Old Man’s Cave in February.

Anne got to sing with Elvis

I hauled Anne Rodgers from Florida to Cape this summer. (Jan and Anne were both newspaper colleagues and bike partners).

Now it’s Shari’s turn

My first high school girlfriend, Shari Stiver, flew into town Tuesday afternoon to spend a few days in Florida before heading back to Cape with me. Wife Lila shot the photo at the top of the page of the two of us listening to Friend Jacqie Jackson perform at the Tides in South Palm Beach. The ocean and a huge lighting storm way out at sea are in the blackness behind us.

I’m not sure, but that may be closer than Shari ever got to me when we were dating.

Jessica is next victim

My next victim after Shari will be Jessica, the curator at the Athens Historical Society and Museum in Athens. She’s riding from Athens to Cape with me. She says she can’t believe half the stories I tell her about SE Missouri, so she wants to see the place for herself.

I told her Bill Hopkins will vouch for me. (I’ve already cautioned her not to stare at Mother’s arm. She’s sensitive about it since that riverboat mishap.)

I don’t have many pictures of Jessica yet. The best I could come up with is this shot of her trying to convince the cat in the window of the Athens County Board of Elections that the museum would be a better home because it provides catnip breaks twice a day.