No, I'm hanging around to the end. It's one more thing. I'm strong and getty. One more thing. A couple of quick things from the most recent vacation, and then one from a vacation many many years ago that I was reminded of. So I went to Florida South Beach, Miami, and then drove down to Key West and then went up to New York. A couple of interesting things I saw. One Did you check out the video yet of the guy who riding his bike around with the tire on his head?
I did. That is clearly as described.
It's a guy, a young guy, riding a bicycle around with a giant truck tire. He's balancing on his head while he rides it around.
Yeah, that video made my neck hurt.
I can't imagine the skill it would take to be able to do.
That myself, wondering how he decided on that particular stuff.
That was my joke with my kids all along. I kept saying to various people like that, We you know, I was gonna go to law school, but I decided I'll ride around the park with a tire on my head.
You know that's it would be a real show to have that guy from the Davis Farmers Market that was doing the splits eating canned eggs with this bike riding guy.
But did this.
Guy decide, you know what really interests me is balancing truck tires on my head. Perhaps I'll walk, no jog, no skip, no ride a bicycle with a truck tyra or was it the opposite. I was like, you know what, I'm really into riding my bike with something on my head. Let's go with a potted plant. No, no, how about my pets? Now, No, that's not good out about a truck tire.
I mean, I can't even my kids and I talked about this longer than you would you would expect. But first of all, he most of people in the park. This was Washington Square Park, New York, where all the hippies hang out and there's all kinds of performance artists. It's very, very cool, and it's that way all day, every day for the past sixty years as far as I know. Wow, now longer than that, because Kerouac was writing about it in the forties, so yeah, more like
eighty ninety years. I mean, they're magicians and people with their various poems and writings and stuff, all kinds of stuff and uh, but most people have they're either selling something or they got a you know, like a hat there you can throw money into because they're singing and playing the guitar. This guy never stopped like get money or anything like that. He had a big smile on his face. He seemed to be just doing it for
his own amusements. But I was wondering, how do you get how do you start, even if you know how to do it? How do you get on your bike? Do you? I guess you hit on your bike with the tire next to you, and then you have the strength because as a big tire, you have the strength to fling that thing up and bounce it on your head before you take off on your bike. I don't even know.
Well, right then you got a mount up on your bike, I would think, and hold it with one hand till you get a little momentum going Yeah, then the physics kicks in and you can incline your head.
A such a way. Blah blah blah.
But yeah, what the trial and error had to be? You know, days weeks long?
And how does this idea come to you? You know, I bet I can take this wheel and stick it on my head and balance it.
No you can't, Yes, I can. Next thing you know you've got?
This is like this guy's thing.
I just looked him up and there's a video of him balancing a forty five inch TV on his head while riding a bicycle.
Okay, yeah, gotcha. Yeah, that's that's his jam. Balancing bigger objects than you would expect on your head, bicycling, Yeah, other things, so that I had to tell this story in the podcast because it's one of those stories that if you don't use the bad word, it's not as good. So we're walking through Key West. We were there, we're in a house. We were there for three days, and have you ever been to Key West? Duval's the main dragon. That's where all the cool stuff is and very very entertaining.
And so we're walking back from the restaurant. It's getting a little later. And I didn't do this on purpose. I would have crossed the street had I known otherwise, just because my thirteen year old You don't need to see this, But we walked by a bar where they had drag queen shows going on, and there were two enormous jet drag queens standing out front. I mean they were in heels, but I mean without heels, they looked
like they were seven feet tall. I mean they were like nine feet tall drag queens, and very attractive for their height if you're into a nine foot tall woman. But then handing out.
Little who's a dude?
Yes, yeah, yeah yeah, handing out pieces of paper to you know, come into the show. Anyway, we walked by Henry's wide eyed. We get a little further away, he saddles up next to me. He said three questions, what the.
Fuck gender bending madness?
And then finally this story, which didn't happen on this trip, It had happened on a previous trip to Key West Mallory Square, and Key West's on the very far side where you get to see the sunset every night, and they have a sunset festival. And this has been going on since Hemingway was writing about it, when you had to get there by boat, so this has been like
at least one hundred years. And they got all kinds of performance artists there too, and it's very entertaining, jugglers and music and frisbees and just all kinds of stuff and food, and it's very cool and it's every night, three hundred and sixty five days a year, unless a hurricane blows everybody away. But the last time, Joe's heard this story numerous times, but you haven't heard this story, Katie's, so I'll tell it again. My kids loved this story.
I saw an escape artist there thirty years ago, and gladys, if you could play the art. He so it's crowded. It's like probably like eight o'clock. The sun hasn't set yet, but people are already gathered and he's gonna he has people around chain him up where everybody's gathered around him, and you know, you, you, young man, here is a chain wrapping around me. However you want use this lock
to lock me up? And he does that with like fifteen different people who chain him all up and all these different chains, and people are wrapping it around his legs and between his legs and around his arms and his wrists, you know, trying to come up with a difficult way for him to get out and u and they do a pretty good job of it. So then they get him all locked up. I will now escape from this, you know from my chains, and he he starts it and it is very slow moving, very slow
moving over time. I mean, he just he's like wriggling his shoulders and like trying to move his legs and just his head and he's got these chains all around his neck in between his and and then he lays down and he's trying to I mean, and this the total time on this that I was there two and
a half hours. Oh my god. I stayed there for two and a half hours, long after everybody else had left, because people are like, there's no inner here, and there's a guy juggling flaming axes over there, So I think
I'll go watch that. And the sun sets, you know, So the sun is set, the other performance artists are starting to go away, and he's laying there in his chains on the ground, all sweaty, and I just, I mean, this is back when I still drank too, and I got a couple of beers, so I thought, I'm just I want to see how this plays out. I mean, does he just because most people would throw a few bucks in the basket and I was kind of wondering, does he just like not get out and a friend
has to come let him out? But he makes his money? Is that the drink or no, he was getting some of the chains off of him. He had this way of wriggling and everything like that his body and like he'd get a chain to drop and then another chain. He tore the end at some point, and he's just covered in sweat and he's making all these horrible noises as he lays there trying to get the chains to fall off of him. And he would stand for a while, then he would sit and he'd get in a different possession.
He dislocated his show. Somehow he got his shoulder out of the joint. You could see the ball slide down, and then he was able to then he was able to let the chains slide off of his shoulder, and then he kind of ducked his head underneath one chain. Anyway, at one point he starts vomiting. He's laying there on.
This Trust me, let's stick with it.
He's laying there on the hot asphalt in his shorts and tank top, covered in chains and sweat, his shoulder out of whack, and he's vomiting. He's just laying there. I am not kidding at all. I'm the only person left at this point. It's just me and some like street people and he's vomiting, and then he gets the other chain off his head, and then at some point he gets them all to drop off, and then he
just sits there on the graud like breathing hard. He's got vomiting his beard, and he's not looking at anybody. He doesn't look pleased, he doesn't say, he doesn't even do.
None of that.
He just he looks miserable. And I put a ten dollars bill in his basket, and I saw that was really really amazing, dude, and I walk off, and that's wow. Wow.
I mean, it was as if he was actually abducted and chained up, and his abductors had gone off to do something else nefarious and while they were gone over the course of hours blah blah blah. But indeed he did all that voluntarily.
I don't know if that was the first time he'd ever tried it and he thought that took longer than I expected.
Or oh, that was really hard.
Or if people just did a better job of chaining him up than usual. Surely every night, dude, you don't lay there, dislocate body parts and vomit so that you can make a couple hundred dollars. I don't know, maybe go back and get a degree in something.
Were you flying solo on that vacation.
Yeah, you had to be, because I mean there's not a woman I've ever known who would have stuck it out.
No, no, no, hell no, no, that's funny. I flew in a girlfriend at the time, and she was coming in the next night, and I remember thinking the same thing. I would have missed that if I'd have been with her she said, let's leave you. I wouldn't have been able to stand there for two and a half hours. And this is pre way pre cell phones and stuff, or there would be you know, tons of videos of this.
God dang it, that was entertaining. You know, I've always wondered whatever became of that guy, Like did he die one night doing that or did he keep doing it? Or did he have somewhere he decided to become a real.
Dream a system manager at the local Hurts reno car.
Yeah.
Right, Oh, my god, there's just some bones surrounded by chains, you know, under a palm tree in the oh.
That was the most entertaining thing, very slowly unfolding slowly, that I ever saw in my life.
I'm picturing you was standing up at the very end and just giving him a slow clap, like, good job, dude.
He looked so despondent, like what if I decided to do with my life?
You know, I hate to take this in a different direction because it's been charming, but I've often reassured myself or told other people that, you know, up to a certain point, obviously, the worse the experience, the better of the story. Yeah, I mean, all right, if you lose a leg, then maybe not so much, right, but you know what I mean. So if that guy had quickly eluded his chains, or after an hour or so or forty five minutes and there are five or six people clapping, that would.
Be a very mundane story.
It was the very misery of it that made it good for you too, I mean, because you had to at some point be thinking I really ought to.
Go right right, I did have the is there gonna be a payoff that's even close to worth how long I've been standing here?
Like the opposite of the concept of some sunk costs, Yeah you thought, No, No, I have sunk those costs.
I am going to sink more. I'm gonna sink as much as it.
Takes a nebriation helped because I was able to keep drinking because there's places selling beer, so I just hung around watched. I mean, they're like some of the street performers. This is a popular thing now. I talked about this when I saw these in Vegas, the guys who jump over people. They're like acrobats practically, and they get three people in the middle, and then this guy comes running really fast and he jumps and does a flip over the top of him. And I've now seen it three
different places. I wouldn't have known there that many people in the country that could even do that. Does every town have a guy who can run and jump over people and do a flip and land on his feet on the pavement. Maybe, I don't know.
It's like American Idol showed us that there's like five incredible singers in every talent in America apparently so right, exactly so the same thing with leaping over people, as it turns out, and you got just as much of a prospect of making a living at it as does the local singer.
Right, you're looking for some entertainment.
The video videos of them missing the jump over people quite entertaining.
I was going to say, that's how that part of the act Jack, I've never seen anybody miss no. But it's it's extraordinary. I mean, it's it was impressive. I've seen it a couple of times now. They run so fast and the degree of difficulty because you're landing on pavement at that speed.
Yeah, oh my god.
If you don't time that right, I suppose you decide you can't do that anymore the first time you crash and think, well, I guess I'm done with this line of work for now.
Wow, I could no more flap my wings and flyes do that. At any point in my life.
I have not seen another person escape from chains while vomiting and dislocating bones before, though that I've not seen where else.
An innovator, a visionary
Well, I guess that's it.