Clark Kessinger...The greatest "old time fiddler"

When I lived with my grandmother for many years, there was a framed photo of her father playing the fiddle on a porch in West Virginia. Not until many years later would I realize that he was deemed the greatest old time fiddler in the US.

My brother sent me this link last week. My great-grandfather, Clark Kessinger getting it done on the fiddle. Personally, I think he's a better dancer.


-He Said

La Chua Trail

Last week I turned in my Nature Writing final which finished up my second graduate course in Florida Studies. Needless to say, I feel I did pretty terrible on it. Who wants to read an amateur rant about nature observations?
To celebrate the completion of a very difficult semester, Ariel asked me if I wanted to cruise the La Chua trail last Saturday. I couldn't resist: it's one of my favorite rides in the state. And just like our last ride down this trail, it ended up being pretty eventful. Highlights were; chasing a wild turkey to get the crappy photo below, seeing an 8 to 9ft alligator lumber out of a marsh to devour some lunch, and my friend Andrew almost getting T-boned by a deer crossing our bike path.
Here are some photos.
(Above...cactus were in bloom)

My crappy, photo of a wild turkey. You don't have to believe it...but I know what I saw.

This sign made me laugh as well as gave me the chills.

This Blue Heron flew off just in time. Note the alligator to its immediate right.

Full, content and sunning.

Somehow, this was pretty amazing. Backwoods Florida at its best.

-He Said

I'm back!

And broke, but that's another story.

So I've spent the last few months traveling and writing and scrambling to meet deadlines and squandering my quite expensive gym membership. My dream of a 5k was fast fading away, until a friend recommended the book Three Months to a 5k. I've just succesfully finished week 1, which means I'm only 11 weeks and 44 sweaty dates with the treadmill away from the finish line ...

Does anyone else get really itchy when they do cardio? Maybe I'm just allergic to excercise.

Around the world in two minutes...(kind of)

Ms. Ariel and I are planning our next vacation for this summer. We're not sure where it will be? Considering the down and out dollar bill is worth little internationally, we might stay close to home this year. We'll see.

I was flipping through our photos of the last four summers of tripping. I found some good ones and I thought I'd share (plus I need some inspiration to work on my current paper for class).

Some were shot by he, some were shot by she.

Enjoy.

-He Said


The Isle of Skye. Scotland.
Gledalough, Ireland.
London Bridge.
Rock of Cashel, Ireland.
Naples, Italy.
The Parthenon. Athens, Greece.
The Blue Mosque. Istanbul, Turkey.
Rhodes, Greece.
Mykonos, Greek Isles.
Surfing in the middle of the city. Munich, Germany
No mans land, Ireland.

Tulsa's finest!

Bikerfox Movie Trailer Bicycle Dancing Queen from BikerFox ® on Vimeo.

Tulsa, Oklahoma's finest. Motivational speaker, bike stunt extraordinaire, and all around badd-ass. Look out for his movie in 08...Biker Fox!

Tallahassee: Florida Panthers, Confederate civil war graves, and dozens of police saying "you can't do that here."

“Hey Matt, I think you just drove through wet paint.”
I walk out of the coffee shop, Ty’s hanging halfway out of my car, his torso hovering over a puddle of fresh, white house paint.
“I think we have a problem here…”
Thursday, February 28th, 10:30pm, Gainesville, Florida. It’s about 40 degrees. For the next hour, me and my friends Ty Stuyvesant and Mark Mulville scrub white paint off of my rims, tires, and wheel wells. By 11:30pm our wet hands are frozen, we’re tired, and we still have to finish the 2-1/2 hour drive northwest to meet up with another group of friends; Chad Degroot, Dave McDermott, Jeff K., and Brian Kachinsky.
This wasn’t the best way to start our weekend trip to Tallahassee.

(Check out my new white wall tires...beautiful)

About an hour away from Tallahassee the coffee is wearing off. I keep asking Mulville to tell me stories so I have a reason to stay awake. Off in the distance on the side of the road, my headlights reflect off of two marble sized objects. As we get closer, those marble reflections become the two eyes of an animal runs against us. Mark screams “Did you see that?” waking Ty up from the back seat.

I turn to Mark, “I saw it too…looked like a Florida Panther to me.”

For the rest of the ride to Tallahassee, Mulville and I revel on the possibility of what we saw. Spotting a Florida panther today is as likely as winning a million dollars on a scratch off ticket.

(Me in front of the Capital building wondering when our governor is going to come out of the closet)

By 1AM we roll past the capital building and into our motel room. Three days in Tallahassee; here we go.

A little background on Tallahassee:
1.It’s the capital city of Florida.
2.It’s probably the hilliest section of Florida offering up plenty of rails, ledges, and stairs for us to ride.
3.It’s the only big(ger) city in Florida that is reminiscent of the South.
4.There are two, huge Universities: FSU and FAMU. Both campuses have a ton of stuff to ride, but also have heavy security to stop you from doing so.
5.It has a dialed cement park. But like most skate parks in Florida, “no bikes allowed.”

(A really, really old and wild shaped live oak near downtown)

Friday morning we woke up and immediately pedaled into downtown to check out some spots and get some breakfast. By noon, we headed onto FSU campus. And within 10 minutes, FSU police had kicked us out and warned of arrest on our return. This cat and mouse game went down at the capital building, the stadium, under a random overpass, and finally at some federal building on the outskirts of town. By 5pm, we were kicked out of 5 dialed spots. In desperation to have a decent session, we headed to the skatepark in hopes that we wouldn’t get the boot.

On arrival, the park was packed. We loaded out and hung out in the bleachers like a bunch of vultures waiting for some spare carrion. Slowly we made our way in to shmooze with the locals. Rule of thumb: At an anti-bike-park, It’s always good to butter up the locals. Be friendly, ask questions, get permission to ride…this always seems to work. Well, at least it worked for us on that Friday night. We got a good three hour session in which pulled us out of a trip slump.

From then on we were pretty motivated and the weekend ended up producing some pretty unique (possibly) untouched spots on the fringe of the city.

(I just recently learned the difference between "cabbage" and "Washingtonian" palms. These are cabbage palms. In celebration of my new knowledge, I jump between two)

(Old city cemetary and dozens of unmarked, confederate civil war graves)

(Ty tabling out of an unrideable transition behind someone's apartment while I film in the blazing hot sun)

(The infamous witch grave of Tallahassee...old Bessie with Mulville as a model)

(Chad Degroot. Roof hop at FAMU minutes before we got kicked out by security)

-He Said

Fish Eating Creek

On Friday afternoon, the big boss man let me leave work an hour early so I could head down to Fish Eating Creek (a private nature preserve about 120 miles from Tampa near Lake Okeechobee)...a trip sponsored by the Florida Studies program at USF. At 3pm, I took off from St. Pete and drove through the little towns of Myaka and Arcadia, arriving at my destination at about 6pm. By that time it was getting dark and the mosquitoes were ready to feast.

On walking up the path that lead into the sanctuary, I was surprised when my friend Sean rolled up on this swamp buggy to pick me up. Homemade, this beast got her done in the mud. Its drive shaft had broken earlier in the day but was somehow miraculously fixed by our host and guide, crazy Bob.

After about 15 minutes of rolling through muck and swamp, I arrived at the camp fire and our motel for the evening...picture a giant shed, walled with mosquito netting, a makeshift kitchen, and about a half dozen bunks. This would be the first time I've slept outside since I was 12.

After some really good food and even better conversations around the campfire (as well as finding out that one of the twelve guests with us was Susan Surandon's brother), we headed to bed at about midnight. At this point, the reserve was dead silent except for the sporadic, eerie hoots of barn owls.

At about 7am, everyone woke up to some breakfast and coffee over the fire. Soon after, we took off for a pretty long walk through the woods. Not far from camp, we discovered this saw palmetto above. This palmetto species only grows about a centimeter a year. Granted the size of this one in particular, we're looking at about a 250 to 300 year old plant.

Through the reserve, Cypress knees were a dime a dozen. At one point I was certain that my clumsiness was going to send me to my death atop one of these bad boys...I was wrong, luckily.

On our walk there were many sloughs to cross. Most of them had makeshift bridges to span the water. This was the most aerobic of the lot. Here is one of my professors (Dr. Mormino) making it happen...this guy knows an ungodly amount of information about Florida.

Sour orange and lemon trees were found at random throughout the reserve. Most of them were pretty deep in the bush. Legend has it that early Spanish settlers planted them. Too bad they weren't concerned with taste...these things were terrible.

I had to snap this shot on our way out. This is Fish Eating Creek. Pretty breath-taking...I felt pretty lucky to have experienced its remoteness.

Thanks to Dr. Mormino for the invitation. And thanks to crazy Bob and Sean for picking me up in the swamp beast. If not, I would have had filthy feet after walking through the muck. If you didn't know, filthy feet are on my top five list of things I can't deal with...Yes, I'm an odd one.

-He Said