Shari Stiver Archives

July 21, 2013July 21, 2013

Snakes Alive!

I have a number of places I take visitors and friends for a ramble. A week or so ago, I took Friend Shari and her mother, LaFern, on a ride that paused at Horseshoe Lake near Olive Branch, Ill.

The little park and spillway at the south end of the lake is almost always pretty. Shari stopped to use the restroom – it’s an outhouse, but Friend Claire pronounced it acceptable on our visit last year. Shari also gave it a passing grade.

While she was otherwise occupied, LaFern and I checked out the spillway. I saw a huge fish chasing minnows as soon as I got there, but he disappeared, never to be seen again on this visit.

There were plenty of turtles, including a softshell with a neck a foot long who was snurfulling along the top of the water until he spotted us.

Snake

This guy cruised by to the base of the spillway, then disappeared. His coloring and rounded head makes me believe he was harmless.

Moccasin, maybe?

I was less sure about this one. His body was thicker and his head was more triangular. I was ready to label him a water moccasin. Either way, I wasn’t about to dip my toe in the water.

I’m happier with turtles

I was happier to see a batch of turtles looking like they were playing on a seesaw. I count at least five on this log. (You can click on the images to make them larger.)

Ernie Chiles and I rode our bikes around the lake in 2009.

July 12, 2013July 12, 2013

1-2-3 JUMP!

Here are five young women Friend Shari and I met at the Old Appleton bridge. They said they are all from Cape.

I went to the trouble of getting their last names, but in case anything they did needs plausible deniability, I’ll just go with first names, left to right: Makayla, 16; Nicole, 16; Sara, 17; Sylvia, “almost 18,” and Autumn, 16.

I dubbed Makayla The Smart One because she didn’t engage in any of the Tomfoolery of her friends. She hinted that she might do so when there would be no photographic evidence around, but I don’t know if she did. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

The Wild Child

“Almost 18” Sylvia was quickly named The Wild Child. When I first met her, I asked what the girls planned to do. “You’re not going to do anything crazy like jumping off the bridge are you?”

“Do you want me to?” she asked.

“No, no, no,” I replied. “I wouldn’t ask you to do anything like that. People drown here all the time.”

The next thing I heard was “SPLASH!”

The floodgates opened

After Syliva’s head popped out of the water attached to the rest of her body and she pronounced the water deep enough that she hadn’t even touched bottom, the rest of the girls, minus The Smart One, lined up. There was some discussion about jumping on “Three!”

The message was garbled

Sara, The Countess, jumped ON three.

Countess Sara was all alone

I thought maybe the other girls wanted TWO water safety checks before they launched, because Sara was on her own.

The first shall be last

The Wild Child must have heard that “the first shall be last,” because she was the last of the quartet to hit the water this time.

Getting it together

The girls lined up for another go. I heard them working out the details. “This time I count 1-2-3, THEN we all jump.” The timing was a little better this round.

Time to dry out

Shari and I left the crew hanging out and drying out. I took a careful count to make sure we were leaving behind the same number of girls we saw when we arrived at the bridge. If anything happened after that, I’d go looking for The Wild Child.

Former Wild Child Shari was content with wading in ankle-deep water below the dam. Wife Lila, in a text message, commented, “I jumped off that bridge once. Glad there are no pictures.”

July 11, 2013February 26, 2021

Alan, Lisa and Reality

I was supposed to meet Friend Shari and her mother, LaFern for an afternoon ramble. The left rear tire was a little low, so I went down the hill to Plaza to have them check it out. I rolled forward slowly and nothing appeared to be sticking in it, and it would taken them an hour to get around to me, so I had them air it up and I went to pick up my passengers.

We were going to be driving around on some remote roads, so I stopped at an auto parts store and picked up a portable tire inflator “just in case.” My two passengers pronounced it “cute” and thought it would make a good Christmas stocking stuffer. (If you get one, credit – or blame – me.)

We paused at the Thebes Mississippi River overlook and admired Alan and / or Lisa’s pronouncement of devotion. You can decry graffiti on public property, but it had to have taken a long time to etch out “Alan Hearts Lisa Always” in the seat. It was at least 3/8″ deep and filled in with black.

There is always a cynic around

In different handwriting and with an indelible marker, the inevitable gonna-rain-on-your-parade cynic scrawled, “This Week!” above the “always.”

Debris from flood

We looked at debris, including a green buoy, deposited by the recent flood.

What are these?

On the way to the car, we tried to identify these purple things. We weren’t sure if they were berries or grapes. They were intermingled with mulberries and poison ivy. Maybe somebody can tell us what we were looking at.

This is bad news

When we got to the parking area, I noticed the tire was down about a third. I said we’d better go back to have it checked out. Just before we got to the bridge, I could tell the tire was almost flat by the way the rear end was acting squirrelly. Yep, it was nearly flat. I pulled out the “cute” inflator and let it pump away. The box said it should inflate a tire in five minutes, but that might be one that’s not leaking air. When it hit 32 psi and wouldn’t go any higher, we took off.

By the time I got to Plaza at William and Kingshighway, it was flat again.

The nice man who looked at it said I was lucky to have made it in at all. It had a big split on the inside of the tire. “And, by the way, did you know you had two wrong-sized tires on the rear of the car?”

Nope. But it turned out to have been two tires I had to buy at Sam’s in the middle of Nowhere, GA, when I had a blowout on a day when temperatures were just short of that of the surface of the sun. Since the second tire was getting close to the wear bars, I had them replace both of them. That should keep me safe from hydroplaning if I have to make a mad dash through a tropical storm or hurricane.

Did I mention I had calendars and books for sale? I ask because Wife Lila called yesterday to say that our 20-plus-year-old washer died on the same day she had her power steering dohickey replaced.

I felt like I had been swatted by the guy who added a dose of reality to Alan and Lisa’s message.

January 31, 2013

Gateway Arch and Goodbye

Friend Jan and I had planned to visit St. Louis’ Gateway Arch Tuesday, but the torrential rains kept us from our goal. We got to the site too close to her departure time for her to see the movie on the building of the structure, one of my favorites, but she did get to walk around it taking photos.

You have to lick the arch

I tried to convince her that it was tradition that newcomers to the arch had to lick it. Daughter-in-Law Sarah must have warned her about that gambit, because she got close enough to tease the arch, but not close enough to give it a healthy lick.

Turned down tram ride

I think she was ready to take the 4-minute tram ride to the top of the arch despite all the horror stories about claustrophobia and getting stuck. Ready, that is, until she got into a mock-up and realized that she’d be sharing that small space with four other riders.

I got the feeling her togetherness quota had already been exceeded on this trip.

Time to wave goodbye

Eleven days, 2,422 miles and nine states after we started our trek, it was time to put her on a plane back to sunny Florida. She made her escape just in time. Shortly before I dropped her off, I noticed some white pellets on my blue jacket that weren’t dandruff. The wind picked up and the white stuff kept coming down harder. It wasn’t sticking yet, but there was enough of it to blow around in the roadway.

I met with some folks about a possible St. Louis photo exhibit, then went to dinner with Friend Shari. When we got out of the restaurant, the stuff was still coming down and I had ice on the windshield. That’s when I decided to stay at Brother Mark’s house one more night rather than chance finding a slick spot on the way back to Cape.

Is this going to work out?

To be honest, before we left Florida, I wasn’t sure how this pairing was going to work out. Sure, we had worked and biked with each other for years, but being trapped in a car with someone for days is another thing. That’s why Wife Lila flies back home and I drive.

After it was all over, Jan and I are still speaking each other. She and Mother bonded. (I’d wake up in the morning hearing they chattering away in the kitchen like magpies.) I even noticed a few times when Jan said, “The next time I come back….”

Photo Gallery of the Last Day

Here are some pictures of Jan’s last day in Missouri and the Gateway Arch. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.