Archive for August, 2010

The Running of the Bulls 2010

Here’s a few photos from this year’s Running of the Bulls during Hemingway Days.

We wandered down Duval around noon on Saturday and made our way to Sloppy Joe’s to meet up with our friends Moose and Danyle. We procured a couple frosty beers and awaited the start of the festivities. If you’re unfamiliar, this is the main event of Hemingway Days, where the current year’s look-alike contestants hop on wheeled saw horses (or saw-bulls if you will) and they “race” around the block being pushed by their teams. Now most of these dudes are pretty up there in years.. grey hair and all, so there really isn’t much actual racing going on.. it’s more like a parade. But who cares, it’s fun, and not a long event, so there’s more time to wander the booths set up on Duval and perhaps feast on a turkey leg if the mood strikes.

After wandering the streets for a bit we were very hot and sweaty, and decided we needed to go to Ft Zach beach and cool off in the ocean. We hopped on our bikes, rode to the park, and hit the surf. And as these things are wont to go, not eating anything all day and drinking more than my fair share of frosty beer on the streets combined, to the amusement of my friends, with the heat to push me right into the passed out and snoring in the hammock phase of the day.  Unfortunately, however I never made it to the hammock, and just lay on the sand where I landed and took myself a little nap. Live and learn! Yeah, maybe someday..

All in all a very fun day!

Oh yeah. I Should have eaten too….	Last year’s Pappa on a stick.

Lots of art and food booths!	In the bullpen, waiting for the run.

Woah!

Where does the time go? Amazing how when you’re just livin’ life it seems to slip by unnoticed. I can’t believe it’s been so long since I posted anything here. I have photos and stuff from some really fun Duval St. events.. Lobester Fest 2010 and the Running of the Bulls that I need to throw up on here… guess I’d better get on that huh.

I don’t know what happened, it’s like I hit my one year mark in Key West and blacked out. Now it’s almost September and I don’t know where the last two months went! My son Connor was down visiting from NY for a month in there, so that probably had a lot to do with it. We went camping up in Bahia Honda state park one weekend, that was un-freaking-believably beautiful. I’ll post some shots of that too here in a bit. Most of the rest of our time together we spent on the beach or watching movies or eating. He loves visiting me because he says I’m a better cook than his mother, and he gets to eat better when he’s down here. Hey, I’ll take what I can get!

Christina and Connor both had birthdays in the beginning of August, so we had two separate birthday dinners. Christina’s happened to coincide with Lobester Fest, so of course we had lobster! Well, Connor had crab legs, but Christina and I ate the bug. We went to the Half-Shell Raw Bar over on the marina.. the food was pretty darned good, the atmosphere was steamy, and the beer was cold. Can’t complain one bit! For Connor’s birthday we went to Turtle Kraals, and had MORE lobster and crab legs. Im up in the air about Turtle Kraals’ food still. I’ve been 4 times now, and sometimes it’s really good, sometimes not so much. Maybe it’s just some things on the menu are better than others. It’s definitely no Conch Republic Sea Food though.

Other than that I’ve just been working for the man like the dog I am. This being the off-season, sales are way down, and the mood in the gallery is pretty.. I don’t know.. grim? I’m sure we’ll pull out of it, but man.. as if work isn’t stressful enough, we gotta add money woes on top. I sit at my computer and dream of the day when I can support myself off of my sculpture. Of course, this dream requires me actually SELLING some of it, but hey.. one thing at a time.

Speaking of the sculpture thing, that’s going really well. I was contacted a few months back by a gentleman in the steampunk-art world who puts on a yearly gallery show up in Connecticut. He had run across my coppersteam blog and was interested in placing some of my work in his show next year. COOL! Recently he contacted me again and wants to include photos of my sculpture in a coffee table book he’s putting together consisting of steampunk art. Even cooler! Needless to say, I’m excited about all that. I never expected to just have people come knocking on my door.

Anyways, just thought I’d better let whoever might actually read this thing know that I’m not dead or in jail. I’ll post some photos soon of the recent tropical misadventures!

Cheers!
Mike