Florida Trip Report, 3/8/08
Greetings from Creole Village, where it is as quiet as it is gong to be this year. Ohio has just been through a thirty-two hour winter storm/snow blizzard. I woke up in Indianapolis, where we partied with the Indiana Department of Transportation’s Entrepreneurial Development Institute, administered by Linda McHenry, esq. and Dr. W.C. Benton.
Each year I write a jingle for EDI that is based on the conference theme and this year’s song, Innovate Indiana: Are You In?, was a masterful piece of jazzy, funky rap, that I whipped up in a whole four days. Linda is the song’s commissioner and I think she’s been sailing on a cloud since 2007’s theme song, Nothing Happens ‘Till You Decide (That the Future Is Now in Indiana). ”It kicked everybody in the pants real good.
Same results with this year’s song and the EDI Party Animals swamped the dance floor on the second selection’s opening rhythms, “Say Hey! Indiana! EDI want’s to know, ‘Are you in? (Are you in?)." The fellows in the band reminded me that we did three remixes during the evening, the last being a rockin’ reggae to finish the party like it started, with everyone in the call and response choir. Sail on Ms. McHenry and Dr. Benton; ya’ll pulled it off, storm or not.
I returned from Tampa/Land O’Lakes/Lutz/Kissimmee on Wednesday, after a week of serious sun worshiping/maxing and relaxing in the hospitality of Eve Feber, comedian, sexy senior naturist and, now author of Bare Naked Humor. Eve and I celebrated twenty years of our family as entertainers. We met entertaining at Hedonism II in Negril, Jamaica after 1988’s Hurricane Gilbert.
Eve is eighty-eight and still spoiled rotten. I played for her twice at Ukuleles Bar and a Sunday spiritual service around Moss Lake at her home in Lake Como Family Nudist Resort. I had come to 2008 Superbowl South, the annual nude volleyball tourney, that is Lake Como's welcome winter break for snowbird players from around the U.S and Canada.
Eve and Ed, her young eighty-three year old companion, invited me to join them in Clearwater Beach at the beautiful Ruth Eckert Hall, to see two old comic entertainers, Joan Rivers and Don Rickles. I had never seen either before, but Joan has the raunchiest act and the foulest mouth; she dropped a couple of f-bombs even before the curtain opened. In a non-stop hour-long set to open the show, Joan stalked the stage and whomever in the audience she could view and she abused every ethnic group possible, except Blacks; unless you call musician/aledged child molester, Michael Jackson, a Black.
Joan Rivers is a very bad but funny woman. Compared to her act, Don Rickles was pale, hardly as entertaining but he sang, “I’m a Nice Guy,” between his legendary sarcasm.
But the sun rose early on Saturday morning and I maxed my sun time in the company of a like minded community. I would just describe the experience of a nude community as exhilaratingly free; a soul can wake up and not worry about closing the drapes, garden au natural, throw a book, some money and a towel in a bag, go for a walk and greet everyone with a word or a wave. Breakfast was usually an hour at the Bare Buns Cafe for a short stack of banana, pecan pancakes and crisp bacon.
The opening weekend of games was on grass courts and teams played in threes and fours; mostly men, several coed teams and plenty of sun and temperatures as the balls and bodies bounced. There is nothing erotic about nude volleyball; players of all ages and sizes dig, set, bat, spike and chase the constantly moving ball, hour after hour, game after game.
The volleyball community that I have been a part of for five or six years, although I don't play, is a group of friends that I am excited to spend time with; they are a free spirited bunch who are way more fun than your typical, tight-laced, textile person, who always resorts to self-abuse when body freedom issues are topical. ‘Nuff said; fun is where you find it!
Lake Como has a perfect hot tub facility; clean showers and a large, 104 degree jet powered soaker, that, once you can get fully in, you don’t don’t wanna’ get out of. The Lake Como community also has horse shoe and pettanque courts. Pettanque is an international game, like bocci ball, but using a small and heavy ball to throw closest to the targeted "pig" and I was welcomed onto the court by Dennis 2 (there were two Dennis’). Eve played; we made jokes about retrieving her balls from the back seat. I enjoyed the play and should invest more time in the game of pettanque, because it’s not murder on the knees like volleyball.
Bob and Carla, Eve’s next-door neighbors got married on Sunday afternoon and the event was a fashion paradise. My senses haven’t gotten overwhelmed like that afternoon since my second visit to wood sculptor David and Susan Hostetler’s Athens, Ohio home in December, 2007. David would have been inspired for months, if not years (although Susan keeps him pretty inspired by herself).
Photographing activities at Lake Como Resort has well defined rules that I intended to follow. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and forgive me, for I sinned and took more than a few pictures of all of the friends that gathered to witness for Bob and Carla. I also took interior shots of the “Ho Tow,” the 1969 Airstream trailer that Bob plans to haul Carla around the U.S. in as they enjoy a honeymoon this summer.
Although I called Patty Wagstaff and Rob Lock while I was in Florida, I never got to get into the air with either of the two members of my aviation family. I did get to spend a night in Kissimmee/Poinciana at Sola Vita Resort with Arnold and Mevelyn Estis, part of my Plain City family. George and Ethel Ware, fellow Plain City folk, join us for breakfast, before I hit the road for an eighty mile trip back to Lake Como.
Curt Zeigler, a volleyball player from Columbus, met me and a few of us Cols. boys went to see filmmaker Spike Lee speak at the University of South Florida. Afterwards we found a serious Jamaican eatery called the Jerk Hut on Fowler Street, close to the USF campus; they had chicken dishes and I had escoviche fish, baked with the head on. Ital, righteous foods, good beer and an atmosphere feeling of the real island experience.
I didn’t want to dress for the airport Wednesday morning; long pants and a shirt replacing no pants or shirt, hard shoes are less comfortable than a week in sandals. But I covered myself, loaded my bags, turned in my well-used gate pass and aimed the rental car towards the cold Midwest via Tampa International Airport. I was scraping iced windows by 6 pm. Wednesday.
Maxxed, relaxed, brown, beautifully destressed, not depressed,
Yours,
A
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