One year ago today: November 30, 2024, overages, a closer look.
Five years ago today: November 30, 2020, America is angry.
Nine years ago today: November 30, 2016, getting settled in.
Random years ago today: November 30, 2014, a different Sunday.
Today we need adventure, even it if amounts to another box. The point is working with what we got, which should get easier as time goes by. Am I right? I have to go into Winter Haven tomorrow, so how about a day drive in the opposite direction? Done, and eventually I drove through Ruskin. On the way, I had all four van windows down and the radio off. Most of central Florida is flat scrubland and I take side roads to wind up in Wimauma. On the way I passed many more acres of the latest (legal) Florida cash crop. Solar farms.
The coast in this area is the shores of Tampa Bay. That changes on a daily basis depending on the height of the tide, and changes quite rapidly during storm surges, ha-ha. The one effect I will always detest Biden for is how he crushed all the small businesses, but particularly the mom & pop cafés. Every town had a spot you could stop for coffee, now that is all gone. Nothing but sterile franchise players left. Urbanization starts around three miles past Wimauma and soon you get to Ruskin.
Quickly finding a road to the bay, I drove down a few dead ends, but one was this small park with an observation tower. It’s the Apollo Beach Nature Preserve and the only thing I found worth seeing. It’s on the mouth of a river, just a few acres with no services. I got some footage from the top of the tower, but you’ll have to wait. It reminded me of Texas, how once you get twenty feet off the ground, there is a nice refreshing breeze.
Amusingly there was a retired and very talkative ex-boat captain at the top. He pointed out downtown Tampa and St. Pete’s, many miles away on the horizon. He described the fishing shoals and where he used to catch sharks. The signage warns against swimming or even wading in the water due to tides. He told of three people who drowned two years ago just fifty feet from the shore, a mother, her baby, and the guy who tried to save them.
Empty Jacksonville beaches.
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Here’s the tower, yes, it was an obstacle course for me. If you are only in the area for an hour, this is probably the best deal. It’s quiet, no pets, no parties, no organized events, no loud "indie" music, and a security gate after hours, so the grounds are clean. No services, but there are restrooms. What caught my eye to the north was a massive electricity plant, then beyond that some port facilities including the bright yellow piles of sulfur I have not seen since I left the west coast.
Driving north from Apollo, I was soon in familiar motorcycle turf, so I took my old route via Turkey Creek to the highway back for a total drive of 113 miles, home by 1:30PM. Still tired from the tower, I find it sad how rapid my decline. Other than the captain, I was twice the age of anyone else who made the climb. I have some footage of the things mentioned, but most were a mile or two away from the observation deck.
I’ve seen so much of flat old Florida that the usual no longer interests me, so what did I notice. A huge mound of grey-white dirt to the northeast. I mean huge, could be the true high point in the State. I reckon it might be gypsum. A few years back the Chinese were caught exporting radioactive drywall and I heard the US was building a factory. That would make sense, there is enough gypsum under Florida to colonize Mars. At ground level, the stockpile was not visible, but do check later because I really tried for some video for you.
It’s a reply from the band looking for a “mature” bassist. Yep, they are a new startup, the sort that come and go around here. No song list means no organization, and I correctly surmised they don’t have a singer. The point there is that I had to ask. I’ll hold back a while to let their youthful enthusiasm wane. I also asked about band size and it is the old seeking to add a keyboard and second guitar later. It rarely happens and if they do, it breaks up the band over logistics. That’s a factor that Florida bands have a real set of mental blocks over, right, Hippie?
Moments after the blog counter reset for December, a new month with just 23 hits, something went haywire. Sometime in the next 25 minutes, the counter registered nearly 8,000 views. Since this is some anomaly, I’ll suspect a robot or A.I. or maybe an attack of something. This blog has no protective measures other than copyright. Am I, after twenty years, an overnight success? I would not mind being famous enough to make some money at it. And of course, the only source of new material is moi, so stealing the old posts is futile.
Nonetheless, the number of hits exactly matches the total number of posts. Am I a victim or a hero? Does it matter? Why would somebody copy or steal something that is free? Maybe we'll see.
ADDENDUM
Later, I seem to have a great documentation of climbing the tower. Here is the best representation I can cut from the video, what’s the blogworthy component here? Simple, I do not know if this is my last tower tour or not. At least all the way up, I did not have to stop and rest, yet that day is no longer far off. At the top, there is a long shot view of Tampa on the distant shore. Check back, these videos take longer to process.
Yep, the two ads on the musician’s board are the same people. I wonder if that fools anybody any more. Auditions are a ritual for me, from decades ago when I struggled to play the other band’s list to now, where music is around tenth in importance. Musical ability is now assumed before I even bother. Before dark I got out to the shed and slapped together another tool tote. My goal was to experiment build a box out of sawn lumber.
Sawn into planks, I mean. Pallet lumber tends to have splits, which I just saw into useful lengths for the least fussy box parts, the bottom plates. It seemed a shame to do this with some of the nicer pieces. My plan was to use the grey saw to cut away the cracked spot.. This did not work very well. Other wood that is just trimmed a bit works well, but not the pieces I cut nearly down the middle, lengthwise. Using the same templates, I ran into a number of snags and the resulting box was not any better looking for the expended effort.
Today’s Last Laugh is part of the growing trend in this blog to replace humorous photos with memes. Apologies to any purists, but it just became too increasingly impossible to find new material on-line. And A.I. is apt to make things even worse.
