In Memorium

I went to a wake on Tuesday. I had never been to a wake before. Funerals, yes. Wakes, no.

The lady who died designed it. She also wrote her own obit. “I’ll get in the last word,” she told her husband.

It was held on Pine Island, a tiny spit of land jutting into the Gulf of Mexico north of Spring Hill, where it allegedly resides, and west of Brooksville, all of which is a world away from Tampa, a mere 35 miles away.

There was new sand on the ground underneath the house, raised on pilings, because the place is maybe a hundred yards from the Gulf of Mexico and borders a marsh. She ordered it so the guests would have pleasant footing.

There was barbeque, ham, potato salad and slaw. She ordered it. Friends brought other dishes.

There was a full bar set up on folding tables with and aluminum rowboat full of beer, soft drinks and ice behind. Again her choice.

A three-foot long photo montage chronicled pleasant times in the last decade of her life and an offering was taken before it for the hospice in which she died. The money will go for a jacuzzi. She enjoyed baths, but the hospice doesn’t have a tub.

When she entered hospice, the doctors said she might have five days. Hers was an ovarian cancer that drugs could not cure. She lasted five weeks.

Her name was Deborah Walker Bellet. Her husband is Fred Bellet, a photographer for what was the Tampa Tribune, now TBO.com, and a friend who ran the Florida Press Club for four years. I served on the board with him.

Fred read a speech he had prepared. For a bit, his father stood beside him. To his credit, Fred couldn’t get through it without tears. Neither could one of her sons, Christopher, a musician.

It is sad when you lose someone you love. It is worse when you lose a soulmate.

“She was everything I’m not,” Fred told TBO. “Everything I lack, she made up for. That made us the perfect couple.”

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the Hernando-Pasco Hospice Care Center, 12107 Majestic Blvd., Hudson FL 34667.

Ride Report

Left behind at the Palm Beach docks.

The above photo from the collection signifies nothing. It is here for continuity. This is, after all, a photo and bicycle oriented blog.

So, on with the ride report, which seems more important to most of you than any content I’ve managed to hash up.

Ride report:

Date	Miles	Total	Remaining	Percent
June 13	18.15	1072.6	1927.35	35.75
June 16	16.83	1089.43	1910.57	36.31
June 17	18.43	1107.86	1892.14	36.92
June 18	12.14	1120.00	1880.00	37.33
June 19	14.58	1134.58	1865.42	37.81
June 21	19.52	1154.1	1845.9	38.47
June 25	13.25	1167.35	1832.65	38.91

Sweatman’s

I forgot to mention that Sweatman’s is open only on Fridays and Saturdays. The rest of the time they are growing the cabbage for the cole slaw and slaughtering the pigs for the barbeque. Hell, they may be growing the rice too. I don’t know.

Sweatman’s is an hour drive from Charleston and a two hour drive from Columbia.

You may talk about falling off the bone ribs, but this stuff is perfect.

Bruce and I also went to a place on John’s Island called the “Smoke Shack”. Picture a shack in the woods. You got it. It seats about 30 people and the food is buffet style. You have my favorite pole beans, cole slaw with a North Carolina pepper dressing, macaroni and cheese, fried chicken that is done perfectly, juicy, with pepper. You have pinto beans and you have barbeque, but it is dry. Which may explain the multiple sauces.

Dry barbeque does not sauces make.

You go there for the vegetables. And the chicken is nice.

When you walk out, you know you will go back.

You look at the trees. You look at the shack.

You check out the three BMWs in the parking lot.

Come on. This is South Carolina. This is good eating.

Sloth

Sweatman's BBQ in Eutawville, SC

If there is one thing I have learned in the last month, it is that prolonged rain is directly proportional to sloth.

A month ago it started raining and it didn’t stop raining for at least a week. When you are trying to make an outdoor activity, like bicycling, a daily part of your life, this is not good. In my case, it produced no parts miles and seven parts sloth.

By the end of that rainy week, sloth had a lot of momentum going.

Things weren’t helped by the fact that it kept raining, every day, in the afternoon when I was in the habit of riding. Rain every afternoon for a second week produced no parts miles and seven more parts sloth.

Then I took a road trip to see my buddy Bruce. He and I grew up next door to each other in Columbia SC. We played baseball, basketball, and football with the other kids in the neighborhood, when I wasn’t doing yard work. We both went to the same high school and to the University of South Carolina.

He became a mechanical engineer and I a journalist. A couple of times we climbed mountains in the Appalachians with other friends. Over the years, we have stayed in touch.

Bruce is now retired in Charleston, SC. He, too, rides bicycles. But he also knows all the good places to eat in the area and this, again, produces sloth. So, although I took my Brompton folding bicycle on the trip, we never got a ride in.

We did, however, drive all over the low country finding places to eat.

One of them was Sweatman’s BBQ in Eutawville, a few miles from Holly Hill.

Sweatman’s is legendary in the barbeque world. If you guidebook doesn’t mention Sweatman’s in the restaurant section, get another guidebook.

For $9.95 you get all the barbeque you can eat. The line features light pork, dark pork, ribs, rice, hash, cole slaw, banana pudding and iced tea. They bring you white bread at the table. That is white bread as in white sandwhich bread from the grocery store in case you want to make a sandwich. No biscuits and gravy. No corn bread.

There are two kinds of mustard based sauce and the ribs are already sauced with the stuff. If you don’t like mustard based barbeque sauce, either admit that you are alergic to mustard, your religion won’t let you eat pig, or that you are so cullinarily impaired that you would pass up a Cracker Barrel for a McDonalds.

In any case, Sweatman’s engenders legendary sloth.

And sloth is happy happy. With a full load of barbeque, I’ll lay back on a couch and watch cartoons – and I hate cartoons.

So now that I am back, after a few days of sloth since I actually did a road trip, I realize that I am a month in arrears on the mileage issue and that all my friends are salivating in anticipation of me giving up on my goal of 3,000 miles.

And here is the but …

Young Matt has demonstrated that it doesn’t take a lot of days to post a lot of miles and I have half a year to go.

I’d give it up today if miles was the point and Channel Wasson would be he winner. He predicted May because nobody ever follows through on their New Year’s resolutions and he thought I would give up by May. But Channel Wasson is a bicycle dealer so he has as many light sets as he needs. And that isn’t the point.

The point is to make the ride part of my day and the contest is just so my friends will reinforce that.

And I thank you.

But you lose. In half a year, I am a third of the way. Better than I thought.

And I am inspired.

Ride report:

Date	Miles	Total	Remaining	Percent
June 12	14.03	1054.5	1945.50	35.15