Laree's Bash 2003 Overview

Bomber Bash 02 (Las Vegas) hadn’t even wound up by the time we began planning our 03 visit to St. Petersburg. Nearly a year later -- and countless phone calls to hotels and caterers and city rec departments and restaurants -- the Bash 03 weekend arrived and disappeared so quickly it’s hard to put it together in my head. A week ago today we sat under a sort-of-ugly gazebo in the middle of a gorgeous tropical Florida park, fascinated, spell-bound practically, as Dave and Tom Incledon answered our beginning, intermediate and advanced questions about training, bodybuilding history, strongman events and of course, that which Tom’s famous for, supplement and nutrition research.

By the time Saturday’s seminar and bbq rolled around, many of the crowd had already become tight friends. Others, arriving in St. Petersburg at the last minute, were perhaps fast friends via email before they got there, and even those who knew of no one and recognized only Dave’s name settled in quickly amid the friendliness that comes with these unusual gatherings. There’s something about being thrown together in an unknown city where all you know is that you share a passion for old-time physical culture, golden-era bodybuilding, hardcore strength and a desire for pure physical fitness and clean nutrition -- makes everyone comfortable in a crowd of uncertainty.

The real-deal Bash events (this was our third; our next is in New York City in September 2004) start on Friday afternoon with a local gym workout, en mass to include the Bombers who arrive in town early enough to share some gym space together, followed by a casual meal and maybe a movie if there’s any remaining energy.

Saturday’s are reserved for a seminar with Dave and a friend as his co-speaker, followed by hanging out, enjoying our limited time together, and, of course, eating. Sunday, those who don’t have to hit the tarmac early collect again for a farewell brunch and probably a few tears at the goodbye part.

As it’s turned out, these events end up comprising a lot more than the pre-planned gatherings. Many of the folks coming from a distance hit town a day or two early, and as the years go by, we’re learning to be more aggressive in contacting each other. This year Len Romano, our jovial St. Petersburg host, collected cell phone and hotel numbers from those who had them and became the hub of the unofficial Bash activity.

On Friday a late lunch prior to a gym workout was Dave and my first participation, but I understand our new friends started bumping into each other as early as Wednesday (on purpose as well as accidentally, although I’m pretty sure there were no car wrecks even though I was expecting stallouts from driving through deeply flooded sea-level streets).

In fact, we’ve been home for days, yet Henrik (The House) from Denmark is still touring Florida as part of his now-annual US trek. At least, he might be touring. He might also be bed-ridden as he waits out the DOMS from his training sessions with Casey Viator. Last I saw of Henrik he was chewing his nails, practically making himself sick before he even got over to Casey’s. I told him to refuse to train legs, but I’m not sure if he was in control of the bodypart selection once Casey took charge. Still, I expect he’ll be emotionally recovered in time to make the trip to New York City for Bash 04, for Henrik his fifth annual trip to the United States; he’s the envy of his European mates.

By the time Len tracked us down mid-day on Friday -- wait, actually that’s wrong. He called earlier in the day as I recall, 9:20am, and asked if we were up. That’s 6:20 California time and nope, we weren’t up and nope, didn’t want to join him and his new pals for breakfast, thanks a lot just the same. I’m not sure if they went directly from breakfast to lunch (although that’s a bit how these days seem to go); we met up with a group of 10-ish early afternoon on Friday for a deli sandwich, which we were told would be a little thin on the meat. I ordered double meat on Dave’s roast beef sandwich and he couldn’t eat it all. I guess my new friends didn’t know about the double-meat trick, although I’m sure the rest of you do.

When we arrived at the gym a couple of hours later, the staff wasn’t expecting us. Apparently the manager forgot to tell them of our arrival, carefully arranged well in advance after numerous calls to the various local gyms to guess at which gym would work the best for us. LifeStyles is a bit fancier than what most of us are used to, considering the majority of the group train in their garages, but not uncomfortably fancy. In fact, it was well equipped and handled the 30 of us quite nicely, other than only having one prone leg curl, which Dave sort of commandeered, scaring off a couple of young girls who didn’t understand his offer for them to work in with him. Or maybe they did and bailed anyway, I’m not sure.

I shot a roll of film by scampering around searching for faces I recognized. Meanwhile, Dave finished up his leg warm-up (45 minutes later) and was ready to demonstrate his new Top Squat. Perfect! I’m ready and desperately need photos of him squatting with this thing so I can update the website. Dave’s a piston on squats and I knew I’d have plenty of reps to find a good, clear shooting position.

Not exactly. Rep number one and here comes the night manager to tell me I’m not allowed to take pictures. Too late. I’ve already got a full roll, pictures of all our pals, except the one picture I truly needed: Dave with the Top Squat. Like I’ve said last week and the week before, don’t worry: I’ll get a shot next week, no problem.

By the time we hit a New York-style deli down the road, our troupe had grown by another half-dozen friends just arriving in St. Petersburg. The food was excellent, camaraderie even better once the live music took a break so we could hear each other without purging our lungs. An hour here, and hour there... the time passes pleasantly and casually, new friends become tight quickly under the Bash conditions. A dozen of our group tromped off to the opening of The Hulk’s midnight show (later graded a mediocre "C" once you adjust for the single "A" and some "Ds"); as the rest of us were leaving we were met by a few other new arrivals and began our chattering anew.

This, also, is how the days of the Bash weekend would pass, casual, nearly familial friendships, punctuated by new-arrival excitement, anxiety and childish eagerness.

We purposely stalled the beginning of Saturday’s seminar because the park was about 15 miles from our downtown hotels, and because those who hadn’t downloaded the detailed park map probably had to stop at the park headquarters for directions. (Assuming a female was in the car to insist on the directions stop; absent her we wouldn’t have been able to stall long enough for the male arrivals.) The delay until just after noon turned out to be a highlight and one we’ll include in future Bashes. People shifted from table to table, introducing themselves, taking pictures and sharing old weight-room war stories.

Just as the stories started to wind down, Rockin Ken (a karaoke show boss extraordinaire from Ft. Lauderdale) slipped mikes into the hands of Dave and Tom and turned up the volume.

Click here for the seminar download file page

Questions ranged from bodybuilding history to today’s strongman events; from superset training to low-volume HIT training; from Tom’s thoughts of his 2004 Olympic potential to Dave’s plans for the new Top Squat. Training and weight gain and weight loss provided the backdrop, but the focus was clearly on Tom and his extensive knowledge of nutrition and supplementation and the workings of the human body. Not many people have this field nailed as Tom does, in fact, nobody I’ve met. And nobody explains the details as clearly for the novices while retaining an obvious scientific base for those who want the research and references.

Three hours passed quickly as the caterers rushed back to town for charcoal to replace their broken gas valves, trauma for them as the Bashers were blissfully unaware. How the folks from Harvey’s 4th Street Grill pulled it off, I’m not quite sure, since I was barely watching. Truthfully, by then I was beginning to melt with the humidity. If you were watching the news, that was us amid the flooding Florida swamplands, temperature in the 90s, humidity at 100 most of our visit, broken only by a clear blue sky over the top of gazebo number 4 on Saturday afternoon.

The Harvey’s crew made a buffet that was outstanding in flavor, grilled steaks and jerked-chicken, cold grilled-vegetable salad, black beans and yellow rice and the traditional bbq trimmings like potato salad and cole slaw. After they broke down and trolleyed off toward town, we shoved the sherbet freezer into their spot and pulled out the spoons for a light dessert. Light, that is, for those who held themselves to one or two of the small, rich icees. Holding back was a little hard, I’m afraid, because there was a lot and when the folks from St. Pete Ice came for their freezer I was a little pushy in passing out the sorbets. The peanut butter ones went fast; cherry and raspberry did well, and so did the lemon. By the time we were down to strawberry, pineapple and cotton candy flavors we knew we needed to find another solution. Dave spotted a group of kids not far away and bingo! Ice cream problem solved forthwith.

The stragglers slipped toward rental cars, some struggling with their goodbyes knowing they weren’t able to re-join the group for Sunday brunch. The last to leave: Dave, me, Henrik and Hugo, with Hugo’s wife and son heroically waiting for Hugo to have his fill of IronOnline camaraderie.

Again a flurry of phone calls between a cluster of a dozen or so IOLers from around the world resulted in dinner at Julian’s where I’m told they shared a few heads of broccoli, a container of full-fat ice cream and the best steak some of these meat eaters had ever tasted.

The rest of us crashed, big time wipeout on the Tampa Bay.

Sunday’s brunch at the Hilton was a highlight of personality mixes and a low point in our weekend food events. I was startled at the poor selection of food for a Hilton brunch, but couldn’t talk the guys into leaving because, as it turns out, the Miss Florida contestants were staying there, flitting around the lobby along with the St. Pete cops, K-9 force and teenage cops-in-training. I got a kick out of the dogs.

We didn’t get much out of the eating part, but even then had trouble saying goodbye three hours later, after commandeering a side room and taking pictures (duplicates of the groupings from the day before and the day before that... without aggressive editing you’ll be bored silly when I compile the photos for a Bash 03 archive). At least, I thought we were reluctant to say goodbye, but now that I think of it, we were back in the lobby with the beauties, so perhaps the goodbyes had nothing to do with our delay.

Click here for Rockin's silly little brunch video clip

With more and more planes taking off from Tampa International, a dwindling crowd of about 15 collected for a final meal on Sunday evening at a popular dinner spot called The Dish. Its popularity is completely understandable and I wish for a Dish in each of our fair cities. Your choice of ingredients, as much protein of your choice and whichever vegetables you like -- and none of those you don’t like -- grilled together on a massive steel drum in the center of the room as you and your co-eaters watch, drool and occasionally join in a pounding birthday sing-along, second trips to the food bar encouraged. Truly outstanding food, after which the staff let us hang for literally hours, three at least, maybe four as the joint closed around us.

Once we really did have to leave (stools were upside-down on the surrounding tables), we emerged into a giant open-air karaoke show, and wouldn’t ya know it? We had the world’s greatest karaoke master bumping around our crew. We had to beg (a little, but this is something I do fairly well), and he eventually agreed to belt out a Johnny Rivers tune. While we waited for Rockin’ Ken’s turn at the mike, it became obvious this was a hometown group who hung together on karaoke nights. What a kick! We had three ringers with us -- Ken, Jean and Colleen stole the show; bam, bam, bam and down the steps we went into the night for a pre-final goodnight (and another final photo session supported by an agreeable security guard) as Henrik, Len, Dave and I split away from the late night rousers and strolled off, smiling and satiated by another successful Bash weekend.

If there’s another story past midnight Sunday, you’ll have to get it from the rousers who made it. Our carriage turns haywire at 12.

Click here for the next Bash 03 report