Lila Perry Steinhoff Archives

October 19, 2013

St. Francis Addition

It seems like every time I come to Cape the hospitals are getting bigger.

Wife Lila thought I needed new shoes.

(The old ones were only four years old. I had to admit that the right one felt somewhat uncomfortable, but then I found the problem was a nail that had gone all the way through the sole and insole and was sticking up about 1/16 of an inch into the footbed. I tried to convince her that taking out the nail would make them perfectly serviceable for another four years, but she disagreed. For what it’s worth, my old Red Wing work boots would have shrugged that nail off like nobody’s business.)

Anyway, on the way to the shoe emporium, I saw that another big piece of St. Francis Hospital had jumped out of the ground since my last visit.

$127 Million project

When I photographed the site in February, I found a Missourian story that said this was part of a $127 million expansion and renovation project.

Earlier St. Francis stories

October 8, 2013October 8, 2013

Roadtripper Shari

Before I started this blog, I had PalmBeachBikeTours.com. Kid Matt said, “You’re always picking up strays along the road, why don’t you do bike tours?” Well, that lasted until the first time half a dozen riders of various abilities and attitudes showed up (and they weren’t strangers, they were friends and family). I decided I wasn’t cut out to herd cats, so I concentrated on writing about rides and reviewing products.

Jan got to feel cold

It looks like THIS blog is turning into a touring group. I got to introduce Jan Norris to cold weather and Old Man’s Cave in February.

Anne got to sing with Elvis

I hauled Anne Rodgers from Florida to Cape this summer. (Jan and Anne were both newspaper colleagues and bike partners).

Now it’s Shari’s turn

My first high school girlfriend, Shari Stiver, flew into town Tuesday afternoon to spend a few days in Florida before heading back to Cape with me. Wife Lila shot the photo at the top of the page of the two of us listening to Friend Jacqie Jackson perform at the Tides in South Palm Beach. The ocean and a huge lighting storm way out at sea are in the blackness behind us.

I’m not sure, but that may be closer than Shari ever got to me when we were dating.

Jessica is next victim

My next victim after Shari will be Jessica, the curator at the Athens Historical Society and Museum in Athens. She’s riding from Athens to Cape with me. She says she can’t believe half the stories I tell her about SE Missouri, so she wants to see the place for herself.

I told her Bill Hopkins will vouch for me. (I’ve already cautioned her not to stare at Mother’s arm. She’s sensitive about it since that riverboat mishap.)

I don’t have many pictures of Jessica yet. The best I could come up with is this shot of her trying to convince the cat in the window of the Athens County Board of Elections that the museum would be a better home because it provides catnip breaks twice a day.

September 29, 2013

Matt’s Birthday Century

Son Matt called Friday to ask if I wanted to do a Birthday Century with him on Saturday.

A “century” is a 100-mile bike ride in a day’s time. I’ve done half a dozen of them, but not in recent history, so I had the good sense to pass. He said his direction was going to be based on which way the wind was blowing. If it was coming from the east, he’d head to Ft. Myers, on Florida’s west coast. If from the south, his destination would be Daytona Beach to the north. As it turned out, Saturday’s winds were light and from the east-northeast, so he headed to Miami. To make the ride more interesting, he was going to do the 100 miles, then have someone pick him up. That way he wouldn’t see the same road twice.

When I did a status check with Sarah, she said she had come down with a cold and would take me up on my offer to pick him up.

He ended up on Key Biscayne, off Miami Beach, with 102.05 miles under his saddle. When I started to take his picture, he said, “Make sure the cyclometer is sharp. It’s OK if I’m fuzzy.”

Wow, that’s gray in his beard

I hadn’t noticed that his beard had picked up some gray recently. Let’s do the math: 2013 – 1975 = 38. That’s getting up there. I guess it’s about time for the gray.

On the way back, I asked him to shoot the Miami skyline when we went over the MacArthur Causeway. He remembers it well, because that’s the bridge he had to ride over four times when he, Son Adam and Wife Lila did the family triathlon in 2010. (Some of the pictures are pretty, so it’s worth following the link.)

Matt said this was the first century he’s done where he felt like he still had another 20 or so miles left in his legs. I offered to let him show me, but he opted to hop in the car.

Frank Stark ride

Frank Stark was an airline pilot who was forced to retire after quadruple bypass surgery and two heart attacks. He took up cycling as rehab and worked up to the point that he would “ride his age” every year on his birthday. One of his friends said he had a nurse riding with him in the early stages of his recovery.

Before long, the Boca Raton Bike Club started looking forward to the birthday rides. When Frank died of heart failure on a bike ride just a month short of his 71st birthday, the members established the Frank Stark Celebration Ride. I shot this one in 2009. Unfortunately, Frank’s birthday was in July, not the best month to be doing distance riding in Florida.

September 5, 2013September 5, 2013

Hurricane Frances 2004

I hadn’t forgotten Hurricane Frances, but I HAD forgotten that it was nine years ago that I was hunkered down at the office waiting for it to blow through.

This was a slow mover that was only a Category 2 storm with 105 mph winds, but it just sat on top of us and pounded away for hours.

Winn Dixie roof peeled off

I felt secure at work because the windows were designed for 120-mph winds and I designed the telecommunication area to be even stronger. The architect insisted on having laminated glass windows on the exterior of part of the area for esthetic purposes, but behind the glass, he put a gap, a sheet of drywall, a metal lath, another sheet of drywall and another air gap. He made a mockup and challenged my staff to try to penetrate it by throwing concrete blocks against it. We couldn’t, so I withdrew my request for block walls.

The building went to generator power when the winds hit about 45 miles per hour because the power lines were slapping together causing transformers to blow and surges and sags to come down the line. The big diesel was sucking down fuel so fast and the storm was moving so slowly that we were concerned that we were going to run the tank dry. (It was a 10,000-gallon tank, but it hadn’t been topped off.)

The Winn Dixie supermarket next to us didn’t come out so well. We stood in the 4th floor lobby outside my office and watched the wind get beneath the roof covering and peel it off. The repair they did after the storm must not have been done too well, because we got to see the same thing happen during Hurricane Wilma in 2005.

Neighborhood lost power

Wife Lila was in Orlando with Son Matt and family and I encouraged her to stay there. We had no power at the house (and wouldn’t for several days), and I was perfectly comfortable sleeping in air-conditioned comfort on air mattress on my office floor. If she came back, I’d have had to fire up the generator I bought after Hurricane Hugo ten years earlier.

The two-mile-drive to check out our house as soon as the winds died down was the longest two miles I think I’ve ever gone. (Until 2005 when we got hit by two more storms). I both wanted to hurry up and yet I wanted to keep from seeing if we still had a house as long as possible.

Trees and limbs down

As it turned out, we had a lot of trees and limbs down, but our house, built in the mid-1930s had stood up to the storm quite well. The apartment building across the street didn’t have our luck: a fairly large tree went through the roof.

Clean-up was NOT fun

Our side of the street had our power restored in a few days. The neighbors on the other side were fed by a different line and were dark for a week or 10 days. We “haves” on the south side stretched heavy-duty extension cords across the street to the “have-nots” so they could at least keep refrigerators and a few lights running.

Fix-a-Flat is your friend

I’m glad a had a stock of Fix-a-Flat. The streets were full of debris, nails, screws and other stuff just waiting for you to run over them.

As soon as I could, I gave my 3,000-watt generator to Matt and upgraded to a 7,500-watt one with electric start. The best thing I did was buy a kit to adapt it to run on natural gas, propane or gasoline. I also rewired the electrical panel so we could drop off the commercial grid and run the house off the generator if we were careful with our load balancing. It paid off during the next two storms.

I chased 13 hurricanes as a photographer. Let me tell you, covering somebody else’s hurricane is a lot more fun than having one chase you.