I mentioned last month that my wife found the Palm Beach County Full Moon Drum Circle “pleasingly primal” and promised to take her back this mont The Ultimate Junior Golf Guide h. We were accompanied by D-In-Law Sarah and 5-year-old Grandkid Malcolm.
The radar was full of reds and yellows
The radar looked iffy, but we decided to give it a shot anyway. The closer we got to the Lake Worth Beach, the darker the clouds looked. When we got to the parking lot, it was spitting rain.
After some consultation, the decision was made to set up the drums in a covered pavilion, even though it doesn’t allow for a true circle and the acoustics aren’t as nice as on the beach. One of the drummers explained that the circle lets the drummers’ energy feed off each other and being able to see everyone makes it easier to keep the beat.
Darker than the inside of a whale’s belly
The light was better than on the beach, where there is NO light, but it was still one shade less dark than the inside of a whale’s belly on the ocean floor. I gave up shooting stills early on when it became obvious that folks beating on drums were going to be blurry. Not artistically blurry. Ugly blurry.
Drum Circles make better video than stills, anyway
How did the 5-year-old like the Drum Circle?
So, how did 5-year-old Malcolm like it? He boogied to the beat from a branch in a nearby tree with as many as seven other kids. Drumming was a side benefit, but he was perfectly happy tree-climbing for close to two hours.
Looks like this is going to be a regular entry on our schedule. I may give up on trying to shoot it, though.
Stage 2 of the Tour of Missouri is headed to my hometown, Cape Girardeau, on September 8.
Jim Baughn, webmaster of The Southeast Missourian’s web page, has a must-read blog called Pavement Ends where he covers things off the beaten path.
Tour of the Tour of Missouri
His August 31 Tour of the Tour of Missouri Bike Route blog is a collection of photos and descriptions of things along the route that the riders won’t take time to notice.
I love his factoids like A small stretch of Route WW, from Holmes Road south to the terminus with Route T, follows along, or very near, the Three Notch Road. This ancient road, dating from the early 1700s, connected the lead mines at Mine La Motte with the outside world at Ste. Genevieve. It was the first road built in Missouri, although “road” might be a misnomer. Road conditions were so primitive that three lines were notched into trees to reassure travelers that they were still following the road.
One of Jim’s other interests is bridges. Because of that, he takes particular note of some bridges along the way, including a link back to the bridge I’d rather forget from my learning-to-drive days.
I’ve ridden most of this route
I know these guys are pros who go UP the Alps faster than I’d go down them, but anybody who doesn’t do his homework is going to get caught out when they get to a couple of 90-degree turns hiding short, but steep climbs.
The guys in the front 10 will be OK, but there will be a log jam behind them as everybody jockeys to squeeze the peleton through the narrow space.
Legs and math won’t agree
There’s another factor, too. Missouri doesn’t have a lot of really long climbs, but it has lots of ups followed by downs followed by ups.
A series of 400-foot climbs followed by 400-foot descents may add up to a total altitude gain of zero feet for the day, but your legs are going to let you know that math doesn’t tell the whole story.
They won’t stop in Pocahontas for the hummingbird
I doubt that they’ll stop for roadside pictures at the hummingbird mailbox in Pocahotas like Bro Mark and Friend Deeds did on our 2003 ride.
When they fly by Altenburg, they could look up and see some attics that used old glass photographic negatives for window panes.
If a breakaway gets a big lead
If there’s a breakaway with a big lead, they can get off their bikes and take a break pacing the exotic animals at a farm along the way.
On their way south, they’ll pass a huge gravel bluff near Oriole where my dad set up a gravel plant to get material for building roads when I was about 10. (See picture on Jim’s blog.) I’m surprised that I didn’t break my neck trying to scale that cliff.
Sometime riding partner and former coworker George Primm sent me a message this morning:
Saturday is “International Vulture Awareness Day.”
Take a lawyer or politician to lunch….
(My apologies to vultures. As nature’s recyclers, least THEY serve a useful function.)
Vultures seen near Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail
That got me to thinking about how many vultures I’ve seen on or around the Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail (LOST).
The single ones playing around in the thermals never worried me much. They provide an interesting diversion while I’m cranking along.
I AM a little more concerned I pass ones like this. I don’t like the way they’re eying me.
Mommy, make them stop looking at me
Matt and I weren’t too worried about these guys we encountered on our cross-Florida ride. They were full from polishing off a dead deer on the side of the road.
International Vulture Awareness Day
This isn’t a joke. There’s actually a web site promoting it. It started out in England and South Africa and has now gone international.
Vultures aren’t cute and cuddly like some of the other birds I see from bikeback, but just think where we’d be without nature’s garbage collectors.
Somebody has to clean up all those slow-moving armadillos, possums and other roadkill.
Support your neighborhood vulture
So, the next time you see a vulture on the side of the road, give him a nod of thanks. And keep moving. They eat dead stuff.
Tim O’Meilia won’t miss International Vulture Awareness Day
Tim O’Meilia was a general assignment reporter at The Palm Beach Post. Every year, the vultures would arrive in Palm Beach County for The Season.
We locals were used to it, so we weren’t concerned when the skies over us were covered with circling carrion crunchers. Snowbirds and tourists weren’t quite so sanguine. They would be concerned that Bernie Madoff or someone like him had come to pick their bones clean literally as well as financially.
Eventually, some editor would pull his eye off the gazillion TV sets hanging from the ceiling and actually look out the window at the Real World. That’s when you’d hear, “TIM!!!” on the editor bellowcom.
The corpse is already picked pretty clean
See, Tim was the poor guy who had to write The Vulture Story each and every year that I can remember. To his credit, he managed to find a fresh peg every story. We old-timers would have understood if he had put his old stuff on a five-year cycle, but, no, it was always something new.
At one time we started a pool to pick how many years it would be before Tim would grab a shotgun and start blasting away at either editors or vultures. (My money and preference were on editors. See lawyer joke above.)
Fortunately for both the editors and the vultures, Tim was one of The Post 300 who left the newspaper a year ago.
I wonder who’ll get drafted for The Vulture Story this year. With the state of newspapers these days, the circling vultures may actually know something. Unfortunately for them, they’ll find the corpse has been pretty much picked clean already.
Time sure does move quickly. My first newspaper photograph was published April 18, 1963, on the front page of The Southeast Missourian.
The day before, my high school earth science teacher, Ernie Chiles, and I had stumbled upon this crash moments after it had happened.
After taking the pictures, I called the principal at home and talked him into giving me the master key for the high school so I could open up the darkroom to process the film.
The next morning, bright and early, I went in to see John Blue, editor of my hometown paper. He knew my name from letters to the editor I had written, but this was the first time I had ever met him.
That afternoon, when I showed up to pick up my bundle of papers for my afternoon paper route, my pictures, with a byline were leading the front page.
The next day a check for $10 showed up in the mail.
The next thing you know, you’ve put college behind you, worked at The Jackson (MO) Pioneer, The Southeast Missourian (MO), The Athens (OH) Messenger, The Gastonia (NC) Gazette and The Palm Beach Post and Evening Times.
I wrote this to a Telecom group several years ago:
I’ve covered race riots in Illinois, anti-war protests in Ohio and Washington, D.C., a truckers’ strike in Alabama, the gas shortage in Detroit, a blizzard in Indiana, Ku Klux Klan rallies in three states and the Cuban Boatlift.
I’ve attempted to cover, with little success, the landfall of at least 13 hurricanes. (Unfortunately, four of them have found my house in the last few years.)
On the other hand, I’ve also been to a thousand Kiwanis club plaque presentations, 40-million fender-benders and several hundred bridal showers. I still get nostalgic for the smell of teargas in the springtime.
Then, it’s all over
Then, after 35 years working at Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc., as a staff photographer, director of photography, editorial operations manager and telecommunications manager, you’re walking out the door for the last time.
It’s been a year since that door slammed behind me.
Do I miss it?
Not in the slightest. Twenty years ago, when I let the job define who I was, then it would have been hard. When an opportunity arose to take early retirement in 2008, I was ready.
I have to admit a little twinge the first time I went back to visit my old staff and had a visitor pass stuck on my shirt.
I’m going to bed
I had planned to pull together a batch of favorite pictures taken over the last 12 months: the trip to Vegas where I spoke at a telecom conference; pictures around Cape; stuff shot on the bike (and OFF the bike); our trip to New Mexico to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary; shots of Grandson Malcolm getting bigger.
Then, I realized that being retired means that I can just go to bed if I want to. You’ll get to see those pictures later.
I like the West Palm Beach Freakbike Militia folks (referred to hereafter as FM because I manage to misspell Militia and have to keep correcting it) and they tolerate me hanging around, so it’s a good mix.
When TIII sent out a message that there was going to be a 48-hour bike build at the Hen House, I sort of wangled an invitation.
Another naming convention: I know that most of the FMs have birth certificates somewhere with real names on them. They prefer to go by nicknames like Wet Paint, Accident, Banjogrrrl, KrusherZ and the like. One of them mentioned that it has to do with parole officers, but he was kidding. I think.
Jack told the FM that he had to move to a smaller place to cut down on rental costs.
TIII set three goals for the weekend
Build as many bikes as possible – particularly kid bikes
Repair damaged drywall in the unit
Empty and remove a huge rack in the middle of the shop, all to prepare for the move.
Drinkslinger drove down from Melbourne
Drinkslinger, in the red shirt, came down from Melbourne and worked at least 40 of the 48 hours. He was cranking out bikes every time I looked at him.
When he wasn’t building them himself, he was showing others how to tear apart and rebuild old clunkers.
“Lots of grease,” he counseled. “That’s the ticket. The kid will probably outgrow it before he wears it out.”
Ricky, in the white shirt, had already knocked out seven or eight bikes when I saw him the next morning.
Freakbikers also teach
Freakbikers do more than just party and build funny bikes. They spend a lot of time working with high school-age kids like Rand, one of KrusherZ’s neighbors. TIII is showing him the finer points of tire valves here.
Think Shop Class with heavy metal
And cool teachers who do this because they love it.
When the crew needed a break, they’d pull out their own pet projects to work on. There are tall bikes that are eight feet tall; and low riders that almost drag the ground; bikes that look like they have scales and bikes that shoot fire. Imagination and the laws of physics are the only limits.
These are not your *-Mart’s Huffy bikes. They may be MADE of discarded *-Mart bikes, but that’s the end of the resemblance.
Building a tall bike
KrusherZ, left, Wet Paint and Accident are starting to work on a tall bike.
“We’re all here because we enjoy what we’re doing and we enjoy giving back to the community,” KrusherZ said. “And it gives us something to do other than sitting at home playing video games.”
Accidents WILL happen
Putting a bunch of young males (and some who are not so young) in a room with instruments that cut and make sparks pretty much insures that blood will be spilled eventually. Parental warning: Nothing REALLY gory happens, but there IS one brief, if understandable, use of profanity in the video.
Tony was using a grinding wheel when he discovered that the spinning blade takes off flesh faster than it does metal. Fortunately, the Hen House stocks first aid supplies. After a debate about which of those supplies to apply first, KrusherZ produced the REAL first aid. “Icy pops fix EVERYTHING,” he said.
The last time I saw KrusherZ and Tony, they were headed off to KrusherZ’s house where Super Glue was available.
Do I REALLY want to run this video?
I sent a message to ask Banjogrrrl if she thought anyone would take offense at the Freakbike Militia First Aid video.
“Oh, I was fine with the video. I don’t know Tony, but I figure he would be too…I’ve ground a knuckle or two my ownself (although apparently not that badly, or maybe I just have a higher threshold for pain — anyway, not badly enough to require a fainting couch with little girl bike tires as a pillow…)”
OK to quote you?
“oh, lolz, sure. Again, I don’t know Tony, so I don’t know how he’d feel about it, but I feel like I have built up enough injury cred to be able to get off a little good-natured ranking :)”
So, Tony, if you have a grinding wheel in your hand the next time we meet, I want you to remember that it was Banjogrrrl who said that, not me.
Hundreds of bikes will go to needy kids at Christmas
After some consultation, the decision was made to set up the drums in a covered pavilion, even though it doesn’t allow for a true circle and the acoustics aren’t as nice as on the beach. One of the drummers explained that the circle lets the drummers’ energy feed off each other and being able to see everyone makes it easier to keep the beat.
Saturday is “International Vulture Awareness Day.” 
Matt and I weren’t too worried about these guys we encountered on 
The corpse is already picked pretty clean
The next morning, bright and early, I went in to see John Blue, editor of my hometown paper. He knew my name from letters to the editor I had written, but this was the first time I had ever met him.
