Thunder on the Beach motorcycle Rally 2011

Sorry this post is a little late...ENJOY!!!

April 28, 2011 packed and ready to go (around 6:30am) to Thunder on the Beach motorcycle Rally

and do a short visit with my mom and dad in Port Saint Joe, Florida. Started out as a beautiful day for a ride but ended up turning cold and had the look of rain.

Made it to mom’s house around 2:00pm, lunch was ready and I ate like a pig.

More or less, just hung around the house the rest of the day just shooting the bull with mom waiting on dad to get off work around 7:00pm.


Friday morning after a big breakfast, I decided to ride to Panama City beach to check out the rally. Road down the beach checking out the bikes as I putted along,

I was surprised how few bikes there were on the streets. The rally seemed down compared to 2008, the last time for me to attend the rally. Don’t get me wrong there were tens of thousands of bikes but just not the same as 2008 rally and it was Friday.

I pulled into one of the bikini bike wash,

as this was my hangout in 2008. (Old habits die hard) and snapped a few photos of passing bikers.

After that I headed back down the beach towards the Port, and made a wrong turn that ended up being a right turn. This ended up being a little road under heavy construction but near the end there were vendors set up in several locations…

more just t-shirt places, good place to get off your bike and walk around a little. Ended getting me a rally patch, but held off on the t-shirt…at 6’5” even the biggest shirt only fits once, one wash and they shrink to half its size.


Ended up getting home with a BAD headache, not sure what happened. I guess going all day without eating or drinking in the hot sun may have had something to do with it. Ha-ha. The next morning my dad did not have to go into work until 1:30pm so I spent the first part of the day with them…score…more free food. Dad took mom and me out to lunch at Papa Joes oyster bar & grill…food was most excellent!

I had the shrimp po-boy dad had crab paddies and mom had the fresh oysters…we also had some of the biggest fried crab claws I had ever seen as an appetizer. Mmm, Mmmm good to everything…nice call pops.


After dad went to work, I headed back to the rally around 3:00pm, got to say kind of the same old same old, just not that much going on. I snapped quite a few photos of riders,

I’ll post all of them on my faceBook account, here they are enjoy….

Thunder 1
Thunder 2
Thunder 3
Thunder 4

Woke up early Sunday morning around 5:00am (you guessed it to another huge breakfast) then after saying my goodbyes I was off…Petal, Mississippi here I come…got home around 12:00pm…nice ride.


Thanks mom and dad for the great weekend and all the free food!!!

I gained (I’m not kidding) 8 pounds in four days….good eating…back on the tuna fish now…

Till next time


Big Al

I LOVE MY JOB !!!

I LOVE MY JOB !!!







If you don't laugh out loud after you read this you are in a coma!






This is even funnier when you realize it's real!


Next time you have a bad day at work think of this guy.


Bob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana.


He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs.

Below is an email he sent to his sister.


She then sent it to radio station 103.5 on FM dial in


Indiana, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest.


Needless to say, she won.


Read his letter below...


Hi Sue,


Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother.


Last week I had a bad day at the office.


I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I


thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not so bad


after all.


Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job.


As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's a wet suit.


This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this:






We have a diesel powered industrial water heater.


This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature.


It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose.


Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints.


What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wet suit.


This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi.


Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch.


So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my ass started to burn.


I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened.


The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit.

Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it, however, the crack of


my ass was not as fortunate.

When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my ass.


I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator.


His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically.


Needless to say, I aborted the dive.


I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totalling


thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression.


When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet.


As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face,


handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber.


The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't shit for two days because my ass was swollen shut.


So, next time you're having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it


would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your ass.


Now repeat to yourself, 'I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.'


Whenever you have a bad day, ask yourself, is this a jellyfish bad day?


May you NEVER have a jellyfish bad day! !!!!

Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift. 