Two Wheeled Tales: February 2011

Monday, February 28, 2011

Florida Pics

Ok, it's back to the Florida trip for some more pics - these are from Matty's camera. I still need to catch up to Bill and get his pics up here, too.

These are in no particular order...

Here's the serene beach view from the Marker 88 bar. The ducks were loving it here.

This is Dixie again. She was the one who wasn't really sure what to make of us when we arrived at Diane's bar (Neighbor's). But once we convinced her we were (relatively) harmless, she was on board with the Jaeger thing.

This is the golf cart that Brian stole (twice) while we were at Beaver's the first night. I didn't get the name of the owner (in the hat), but his bulldog Jack was getting a kick out of all the excitement.

Hanging with the Englewood crew at Flounders bar!

Katia and Bill. She gave him the headscarf she was wearing and he wore it proudly.

The Englewood lobster that Wayne picked up for us, and we added him to the posse.

Matty and Fred (and Potsy and Mongo), at Babalu's.

The Bean Depot in El Jobean (this is the "South Boston Depot" place).

Matty was a big fan of the $1 Pabst Blue Ribbon drafts.

Me and Bill (and Matty's hand), at Hooters.

"Beautiful Model Meghan" was digging the turtle after she warmed up to us.

I believe this was outside the Safari bar, just outside of Key Largo.

The boys, taking in a live show at Sloppy Joe's on Duvall St in Key West.

The boys had to have their pic taken on South Beach to show all the folks back home.

A better pic of the Southernmost Point.

A fantastic shot of the sunset, from the Sunset Pier in Key West.

Potsy and Mongo welcome the latest additions to the crew.

More pics to come, as they surface...

Rogue Shakespeare Oatmeal Stout

Our latest subject is the Rogue Shakespeare Oatmeal Stout. Let’s see how things turned out…

Well this bottle looks promising...

Not really sure what’s with the fist held high. Looks like he should be holding something in his hand, but there’s nothing there. Maybe he’s channeling his inner Brother and is giving the Black Power salute, I dunno.

The description on the side says “Ebony in color, with a rich, creamy head and an earthy flavor that comes from oats and a mellow chocolate aftertaste.” (So you’re saying the flavor comes from oats? Wow, that’s a stretch for an oat stout.) A rather uninspiring write-up…here’s hoping it’s not a portent of things to come.

Anyway, let’s get to it. The cap was decent looking and would be a good addition to the bar-top project so I went for the straight-edge to pop it off. It didn’t exactly pop off – it farking blew off with a loud *boom* and I had to go searching for it (I found it in the next room!).

Alright, so this thing is feisty! Things are looking good!! But my excitement was quickly tempered with a whiff of the aroma floating out of the top. Damn – also uninspiring. This isn’t looking good, but there’s nothing left to do but give it a taste…
And yes, we have yet another disappointment. The flavor was exceptionally bland, with no real finish (chocolate or otherwise). Overall; I would rank this stout as one of the worst yet.

*Sigh*, the search continues...

Friday, February 25, 2011

Is This The Last Florida Post?

Maybe it'll be the last...[shrug] I'm sure there will be other things I'll remember and will have to throw up on here. But, to summarize; it was the best week we can remember having had, in ages. Matt went so far as to say "Best week of my life!"

What goes into making something the best week of your life? Well, you take a few things like;
Escaping a sh*tty New England winter...
Landing in a warm and sunshine-ey climate...
Picking up bikes for the week...
Cruising along turquise oceansides...
Fantastic bars and a mini-New Orleans atmosphere...
Meeting amazing people that treated you like brothers.

Hell, we all got along so well, it was hard to believe we’d only just met. In fact, at one point on Sunday (after we'd been having enough fun to last a month), someone made the realization that we hadn’t even been together for 24 hours yet! (We kept an eye on the time and when the 24-hour mark did arrive, we had a huge hoist-‘n-cheer.)

Simply amazing. I've said it before and I'll say it again; our plan was to hit FLA this year, then Louisiana next year and then California after that. That plan has been scrapped and we are now anxiously counting down the days/weeks/months until we find ourselves once again, heading south, and...

Riding Hard, Taking Chances

It's Jaeger o'clock somewhere!

I'm not sure how this little tradition got started - somewhere in Key Largo, perhaps…although, now that I think about it, it may have been Paige’s idea, when we were in Orlando. Yeah, it must have been Paige. Anyway; whenever it was 11 o’clock, the “Jaeger!” call went up and the Jaeger bombs were laid out. We carried this tradition throughout our trip, with pride!

Orlando, we had them with Paige...
Key Largo, we had them with Jackie...
Key West (day 1), we had them with...oh, a number of people...
Key West (day 2), we had them with Fred the parakeet at Bablu's...
Englewood (day 1), we had them with Dixie, courtesy of Diane...
Englewood (day 2), we had them with...oh, lots of people, again...

(It should be apparent that there were plenty of times other than 11 o'clock when the call went out.)

Hey, it's always Jaeger o'clock somewhere!!

Gliding the Streets

Back when I bought my Electra Glide, I'd opted to skip the Street Glide (and save a couple G's). However, after enjoying the low sleek handling of the SG this past week, I now know the next bike I buy will be one of these amazing machines.

Many times when I've been riding the EG, I've missed the awesome handling that the Fatboy had. But I've found that same handling again, on the SG. It's gotta be the roughly 1" lower height, but man it makes a ton of difference. It felt so nice to be just throwing a bike around again...uhm...not that that doesn't happen on the EG, but it was just much smoother on the SG.

Now it's just a matter of getting my EG out of the shop...someday...

Money, Money, Monaaayy!

Willie T’s (on Duvall St. in Key West) is the name of the first place we found that had dollar bills all over the place. I looked on-line and found a better pic than the one I posted from my phone:

Not bad, right? But that’s NOTHING compared to the No Name Pub in Big Pine Key. This place is like an ATM that’s gone haywire. Again, I looked on-line for some better pics than the one I posted, and here you go. But even these don’t do a good job of the sheer volume of dollar bills hanging in here. Walking in here is like walking under a thick canopy of leaves in a forest. Just unreal. (Again; the estimate info we found said somewhere between $65,000 and $75,000 dollars, just hanging around on the walls!!!)

Sure hope they’ve got an excellent sprinkler system in this place…

Thursday, February 24, 2011

El Jobean

South Boston?? But we can’t be back home, it’s way too warm and sunny here!

This is the old (circa 1922) El Jobean Post Office/General Store (hotel, jail, meeting house, café, train station, etc.)

The county of El Jobean got it’s name from Joel Bean, a South Boston lawyer/developer (who then anagrammed his name to come up with El Jobean).

Carnies used to stay here as well, the most famous being Leo “Suicide” Simon, known for climbing 150’ into the air, lighting himself on fire, then diving into a small pool of water. As an added bonus, he’d line the outer edge of the pool with sharpened stakes (maybe he needed a bit more incentive not to miss the pool?). After he had many years under his belt, he changed his act to something slightly less dangerous. He’d lock himself into a crate with two sticks of dynamite and then light them. The ensuing explosion was always a crowd pleaser. (How the hell did this guy live so long???)

Anyway, none of that crazy stuff nowadays. Now it’s just a great place to park the bike on some grass and sidle up to friendly folk enjoying cold frosties and listening to live music.

51 weeks until we're pulling in once again...

Nomenclature

This bike belonged to one of the Englewood crew. It's a sweet looking thing, but it's too stretched for my tastes. And it sure didn't look comfortable, but hey, he looked like he enjoyed riding it and that's all that matters, right?

I don't think I ever got his real name, but he was known as Tumbleweed. Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to remember that and could only come up with "Sandbar". Unfortunately again; his buds thought that was a riot and said his nickname would now be Sandbar.

Sorry Man. LOL

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

South Beach, Miami

On our way from Orlando to Key Largo, we took a detour to South Beach, Miami. It was a hot day, we needed a bit of refreshment. Besides, the ducks were a bit dry and wanted to take a dip in the warm Miami waters.

We found a spot to park, set the kickstands, strolled over the dunes and aimed for the beach. In our jeans and riding boots, we stood out from all the bikini'd hard bodies like a sore thumb, but we were undeterred. We walked into the water and set the boys down for their photo op. Unfortunately, the waves kept knocking them over (being ducks, you'd think they'd have a better sense of water-balance than this). I finally had to settle for this shot, where at least one of them was upright, and with that, we ambled back to the strip.

Oh yeah - another way that we stood out from the crowd; when we got back to the top of the beach, there was an elderly gentleman and his family. The elderly gentleman had been in a motorized cart, to allow him to travel along the hard-packed sand road along the top of the beach. However, the sand of the dunes proved too much of an obstacle for the cart, and it had bogged down, hard. We asked if we could help them and they were more than thankful that three dusty and dirty bikers would stop to help them out, when so many other folks were just walking around them. So there we were; one in the front and two in the back, and then that sand held no more hold over the cart, as it floated easily over and back down onto solid footing.

It was time for a cold beer on the hot strip of South Beach. We'd earned it.

The Passing of a Mascot

I realize the pic is small, but had I known this guy was going to jump ship, I would have taken a better pic of him. You see; at the end of Sunday night, we realized that Mongo was no longer with us. We weren't sure at what point along the evening's events he'd accepted a better offer from someone else, but the evidence was clearly in front of us; he was not among the mascot bunch. Had we forgotten him somewhere? I don't think so. Kim had him at the dance club, Diane had him at the pool place, I'm not sure who had him at Beaver's (before the almost-fight), and I don't think we even checked on him at Denny's (gotta love a breakfast place that's open at 4am). Anyway, if you see him, tell him we're sorry we didn't keep a better eye on him...but, being a biker duck, I'm sure he understands. In fact, it's possible he was having so much fun that he didn't want to come back to Mass, and it was he, that bailed on us. Yeah, for all we know, he hopped onto one of the girl's bikes and headed back down to Key West.

Atta boy, Mongo, you stayed. You were smarter than the rest of us!

Cleaning up

As you can see from the haphazard manner of postings lately, I'm trying to get everything up here that might have been missed. (I'm sure there will be a few more random posts as well.) I'll also do a longer writeup, summarizing what an incredible time we had, the amazing people we met, and how we've made friends for a lifetime, in only mere hours.

Going into this trip, our plan was to make this an annual thing. This year was to be Florida, next year was to be New Orleans, and the 3rd year was going to be San Diego (we hadn't planned anything yet for year #4). However, after such an incredible week, we've changed our plan. There will be no New Orleans, there will be no San Diego. As far as we are concerned, there will only be Florida. For we really can't imagine that any other place could give us so much fun in such a short time. (How is it possible to have made so many new friends, at each stop along the way, when we're only at that one spot for maybe two days at best?)

51 weeks until we do it all over again...

New Friends From New Friends!

At one of our many stops in Key West, we managed to abscond with two additions to our mascot crew (another duck, and a turtle). Then, in Englewood, our new friend Wayne took it upon himself to locate yet another new friend for our motley crew. A Florida Lobster! We now had FIVE!

FWD:

Another pic from some point during the vaca that I found in my phone. Bill had a terrible time, too, LOL.

FWD:This is why we don't let Bill play with the ducks because bad things happen

This is why we don't let Bill play with the ducks, because bad things happen.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Just landed. It's F'ing cold up here. :-(

Me 'n Rex are laying low but no worries: Matty is taking up our slack (beer &

Me 'n Rex are laying low, but no worries: Matty is taking up our slack (beer & shot).

One of the locals stopped by to see us off to the airport.

Loved partying with the Englewood crew. They welcomed us with open arms, they laughed easily, and they rode hard.

We got rooms at the hotel next to Diane's bar so we wouldn't have far to go when it was night-night time. And yet, we never made it back to Diane's bar, once.