Depending on who was counting, at least 202 riders participated in the West Palm Beach Freakbike Militia’s Halloween Choppernite XXV Oct. 28.
I was on vacation in Missouri and couldn’t make the ride, but Wife Lila, Son Adam and friends Jan Norris and Jimmy Barron filled in for me, taking notes, shooting stills and video. My thanks to them. Now that I know how talented they are, I may disappear more often.
Jan’s Favorites
The Princess’ pumpkin coach was a great winner. It was constructed by Troy Zimmerman, who “drove” it – and who was dressed as a ghoulish footman. The Princess was his daughter, Emily Zimmerman, 8.
Troy said: “It took about three weeks to make it. It’s made out of PVC pipe, heated and bent, and welded iron curlicues.” Paper mache was the covering; the coach wheels all are from bicycles, spray-painted black.
The main bike was a Penny Farthing bike that had been sitting around the Village Bike Shop and they didn’t know what to do with. It made an excellent “tractor” for the coach. Lights on the coach were electrified by a generator on the back.
Brett Strnad’s Grim Reaper
The Grim Reaper pulling the casket was a winner with everyone — except for the Southern Blvd. Bridge bridgetender.
Brett Strnad trailered a casket he made of wood and steel, and used 12-volt inverters to power the twin eco-friendly purple lights that lit up the casket. The lid was propped open as he rode with a steel rod.
The coolest part was the SCUBA tank attached under it all to power a boat horn that had the Southern Blvd. bridgetender honking in reply to Strnad’s honks, which were earthmoving-loud.
Laurie Wolfe dressed like a dead tree
A dead tree with a witch plastered to her back.
Her biggest concern was how she was going to pedal her bike with feet that looked like tree roots.
Her husband, Jerry, came as Wolfman. (Or, would that be Wolfeman?)
Alan Steele was a pirate
Alan Steele created a pirate ship out of “cheap and easy” cardboard in the front and wood behind. “Wood would have been too heavy overall.”
When you click on his shot in the gallery, note his Barbie Doll masthead.
Lynn Daniels had a lighted star helmet
Lynn Daniels had a tall, lighted star on her helmet. You could see her for a long way off. She demonstrated her good taste by riding a Surly Long Haul Trucker. Stan Kilbas, of Wheels of Wellington and the FBM’s long-time event photographer is giving her a peek at her picture in one of the shots.
Stan’s an all-round nice guy who sold Wife Lila and me our Trek Navigator 300s that started me riding again back in 2001. He has a great memory. He walked up to Lila and said, “I sold you a bike,” even though she hasn’t seen him in at least five or six years.
Michael Getzie had the brightest ride
There must be a world-wide shortage of LEDs because Michael Getzie bought them all up to festoon on his rolling lightmobile.
Everyone I talked with wondered how in the world he was able to ride with the huge pumpkin on his head.
Visit the Gallery for more
Click on any image to make it larger. To move through the gallery, click on the left or right side of the picture.
If you want to see even MORE pictures, swing over to the Freakbike Militia site and see some of Stan Kilbas’s work.
If you want to see a ride in person, the FBM is already planning its next Choppernite for December 16. Watch this space for more info.
If we messed up your name, leave a comment and we’ll clean it up. If you’re wondering what the jb_, as_ and lps_ mean, those are the initials of the photographers: Jimmy Barron, Adam Steinhoff and Lila Steinhoff.
I was walking along the Mississippi river watching the water roll by when my eye was drawn to a shiny bike with blue fluorescent rims. Next to the bike was Amy Murphy, a sophomore theater major at Southeast Missouri University.
Amy was busy having an animated conversation when I started stalking her, shooting pictures at increasingly closer distances and from different angles.
Finally, just about the time she noticed me and looked like she might consider jumping on her bike and escaping this wierdo wearing a bright lime-green cycling windbreaker under a Domke shooting vest, I flipped her a PalmBeachBiketours business card.
I waved off her offer to cut her call short and wandered around shooting some other pictures.
Looked like pepper spray city
Then, a guy walked up, grabbed her bike and started dangling it over the water. She was agitated, but not enough to break off her phone call.
Just before I started to intervene (with my hand on the pepper spray in my pocket), the guy gently dipped the bike’s tires into the Mississippi river. Turned out later that he had helped her build the bike and wanted to baptize the bike in the muddy waters.
A closer look at the Tahiti
After she wrapped up her call, we had time to chat about her bike.
She said it was a Tahiti, bought on ebay. It’s a three-speed with a rear coaster brake, nice fenders, a chainguard and a huge sprung saddle. Its upright position and step-through frame makes it look like a nice short-distance beginner’s commuter bike.
It has a nice-looking reflector mounted on the rear fender, but no taillight. I encouraged her to get a light for the back to go along with her headlight.
“I love this bike”
“It’s so hilly around here that I have to push it a lot,” she confessed.
She’s managed to make it up Broadway hill, although some trips she still has to push it. Cardiac Hill, is her ultimate goal.
It’s great to be a sophomore
After we had exhausted our bike talk, I asked her tell me a little about herself. I’m hedging my bets by attaching this video of her talking about her goals and dreams. Some day it might be worth a bunch of money and I’ll get to say, “I knew Amy Murphy way back when….” (Sorry for the noisy barge working its way upstream in the background.)
“I might be a playwright. I might be an actress,” Amy said. She worked as a waitress at Yellowstone National Park and managed to squirrel away three or four thousand bucks (I hope the IRS isn’t listening).
First sibling to go to college
After she graduates – failure isn’t an option because she’s the first of her siblings to go to college – she’ll waitress long enough to build up a nest egg to tackle Chicago, New York, Los Angeles or Portland.
“I can write. I can be a comedic actress. I will succeed. I’ll do that as long as it takes to get me a bunch of money, then I’ll just quit. I don’t want to do anything. I’m not lazy. I just want to see the world. I want to do everything there is to do in the world.”
In the short term, though, she’s focusing on getting up Cardiac Hill without pushing her bike.
Editor’s note: I’m a non-competitive cyclist. Swimming is what you do when your boat sinks. Running is what you do when someone is chasing you (and I firmly believe that even then it’s not necessary to be the fastest runner: you only have to be faster than someone who is slower).
Scott Maulsby, who works with Son Adam, is one of those guys who turns into a contest. After deciding that individual events weren’t enough of a challenge, he branched out into triathlons. When they got too easy, he signed up for his first Ironman competition. That’s 140.6 miles of biking, swimming and running.
Here’s his account of the ordeal, a video Son Adam shot and some random pictures I’ve taken of Scott at other events.
Here’s how he remembers it
It’s a post race tradition to write a summary of the race for other athletes.
——————————————
Clermont hosts The Great Floridian (Ironman Distance) triathlon. It’s not owned by WTC so it’s not an M dot… It’s still 140.6 miles… 265 started. 199 finished.
The only ‘non race’ story comes from the practice swim. Waited for some partners to swim with. An engaged couple showed up and we swam in the lake for a while. When we were done, they invited me to their wedding. Seriously. They were getting married on race day an hour before start time in their wetsuits. The RSVP card gave a few menu options. Gu or Cliff Shots. Sure enough, they got married. I think they were divorced by lap 2 of the run…
Don’t Quit
The day before the race I spent most of my time in the fetal position sucking my thumb in the hotel room. Finally went to a movie to get out of my head for a while. Then dinner with the coach and another one of his athletes. I was hoping he would bring the magic pill. He forgot to bring it. The dinner helped. Shared all my fears and by simply letting me know he had gone through the same thing before, I slept like a baby. His final words of advice: ‘Don’t quit’. That came in handy the next day.
Race morning I felt like a million bucks. It was 90 degrees but who cares. The swim was fantastic and exiting the water I was focused and strong. Saw coach in between lap 1 and 2 in the lake and that helped the mental state. The bike was a different story.
Bike course was “pure evil”
One of the few flat spots was the mounting area. That was 50 yards long and then it was up hill. All day… In the first 0.5 miles I saw at least 10 athletes fixing their bikes. Ouch. Not sure why, but I got emotional in the first mile of the bike. Tears streamed down my face. The bike course was pure evil. The wind was not our friend but every course has wind. It was the Himalayas they trucked in that hurt. They were as relentless as the clock. Not to mention that 5 miles outside of town it was like riding on I95. Cars and 18 wheelers everywhere. One nice young man was hanging out of the passenger window giving us ‘the bird’ and dropping F bombs. We all decided he was on his way to therapy.
Hard to find a rhythm
The first bike loop was rough but I was in it mentally. After the half way point I stopped at an aid station. Spent a few minutes in the Port O Sauna, lathered up with some sun block, drank some cold water and dumped some ice down my back. Leaving the aid station it felt like leaving the parking lot of The Breakers after a day at the spa. Back to the hills. Yes, it was tough going up and fun going down. The challenge was finding a cadence or a rhythm. There was none. Constantly going up or down and shifting gears. It’s tough mentally to pedal with all you have and look down to see 6.1 on the speedometer… The person that set up this course was certainly not going to win the election for Clermont Mayor.
E.T., Phone Home
On lap 2 of the bike, people started losing it. Physically and mentally. Watched people zig zagging all over the road. Walking up hills. When I passed one guy and said ‘How you doing?’ he replied: ‘E.T. phone home’. I wished him luck and thanked my coach for a flawless nutrition plan. Got tired of saying ‘nice job’ every time I passed someone so I started saying ‘Who’s idea was this?’. It caught on and by the first run lap everyone was saying it.
Happy to be off the bike and way behind on my time expectation, the run started. First lap was hot. Heart rate was high and legs were sore. Actually, the legs were still out on the bike course. No matter how fast I tried to go, the legs had met their limit. The muscles just wouldn’t fire any faster. What do you do? Adapt and re-focus. Adversity.
At the end of lap 1 on the run, I heard someone yelling my name. It was my boss and his wife. They drove up that morning and surprised me. It was really special. Didn’t anticipate seeing anyone I knew in the crowd.
Clermont’s 175th Birthday
Lap 2 it cooled off as the sun started setting. Stuck to the nutrition plan and kept the legs going. The volunteers were awesome. And the generic cola… Pure heaven although it wasn’t in the nutrition plan. Sorry coach. The chicken broth sounded good but didn’t sit well with my stomach. Eventually it got dark and lonely. There was no crowd. It happened to be the 125th anniversary of Clermont and there was a big carnival going on but once you passed through the area with the rides and the funnel cakes there was no one. Boy did a funnel cake sound good.
Wanted to cash in Obama Stimulus Miles
In the middle of the 2nd lap I had convinced myself that I could use some of Obama’s stimulus miles and skip the 3rd lap. That was the only time I started to lose mental focus. Remember what coach said. ‘Don’t quit’. From that point on, not a single negative thought. Kept the legs going. Slower than I wanted, but kept on running. Passing lots of people is unusual for me. For today though, nothing was stopping me.
The finish was uneventful. No crazy body movements across the finish line. I vaguely heard them say my name but I was already in the medical tent. The medal, ohhhh the medal. That is when it hit me. I was an Ironman. The banana at the finish line was the best banana in the history of the world. And the doctor asks you ‘how are you feeling?’ The correct answer is ‘good, thanks for asking’. The right answer was ‘ever see Tom Hanks in Castaway?’ They weigh you on some fancy scale before and after the race. I lost 0.8 pounds and 2% body fat. Validates the nutrition plan but a few burgers and some pizza will fix that…
They shouldn’t let you drive home
They should not let you drive home from an IM. I have no idea how I made it back to the hotel. Realized in the hotel parking lot that my lights were off the whole way home. Cops easily could have given me a DUIM. And yes, I stopped at McDonald’s and got a big fat burger.
I slept with the medal
At the end of the day (well, night) I wanted to kill coach as I slept with my medal. Also very confident that if the jury of my peers were all Triathletes, they would have acquitted me. On a serious note, this would not have been possible without Rich Nixon. He gets all the credit. Speaking of killing people, the bike course inventor was nowhere to be found. Someone said he was sent to Gitmo for interrogation but it wasn’t confirmed.
Maybe “one more” Ironman
Everyone keeps saying, ‘good job for your 1st Ironman’. First? Who said anything about a 2nd? Never again! Well, maybe 1 more…
The journey began 8 months ago with a dream I never thought was possible. I used to think Triathlon was an individual sport. Boy was I wrong. In no particular order I’d like to thank those that helped along the way: God, Fit2Tri, RSR, PBRR, Foxy and Co, Cycle Science, EM, LC, AB, JP, PKP, Dr. D, Dr. L, Dr. B, The Steinhoffs, Tyler, B&S, and NPB Pool Staff.
Reader Michael Getzie commented, “I really enjoy your site, just wanted to say thanks for all of the great info you provide. check out my ride on youtube, search for; frozenpeasandcorn, hope you like.”
The YouTube description says, “Covered my bicycle with 480 LED Halloween lights, Powered by 3 Sealed Lead Acid 8.5AH batteries and a 175 watt inverter.”
That’s a lot of juice. About one notch below an Iranian nuclear reactor.
I am humbled
I thought I was the brightest manmade object on the globe (we’re talking lights, not IQ).
I feel like I’m in the bag for the Lake Worth Full Moon Drum Circle and the Freakbike Militia because I write about them so much.
It’s just because it’s hard to go wrong with people riding funky bikes and people playing, as Wife Lila says, “pleasingly primal” music on the beach under a full moon.
October Full Moon Drum Circle Video
I really hadn’t planned on shooting anything, so I didn’t have a tripod; my digital recorder ran out of battery and I didn’t delete the videos I had shot of D-in-L Carly’s 5K run from the morning. On the other hand, when I saw that big, bright moon, I couldn’t resist.
Our first Drum Circle encounter was what sealed the deal for Wife Lila. She’s become a Moon Missionary (not to be confused with a Moonie, although I have a few pictures when she did look a bit like a flower child).
Follow the links above to get a taste for what we’ve seen.
The Grim Reaper pulling the casket was a winner with everyone — except for the Southern Blvd. Bridge bridgetender.
A dead tree with a witch plastered to her back.
Lynn Daniels had a tall, lighted star on her helmet. You could see her for a long way off. She demonstrated her good taste by riding a Surly Long Haul Trucker. Stan Kilbas, of Wheels of Wellington and the FBM’s long-time event photographer is giving her a peek at her picture in one of the shots.
There must be a world-wide shortage of LEDs because Michael Getzie bought them all up to festoon on his rolling lightmobile.
