Tree Jumping

As I have spoken before, Bobby was not just a friend.  He was a good friend with a good heart and a complete lack of self control.  There was no finer gift than his friendship to me.  A close second attribute was his desire, no compulsion to try anything that looked or sounded fun.  I supplied the creativity and Bobby supplied the reckless abandon.  I would say, Hey Bobby, you know what is really cool and does not require any money?  Riding your bike off of the dock at Collier's house.  If you hit it just right, you can get great air and distance.  I'll bet with the way you pedal like a madman you could do a flip or something.  Doug went about fifteen feet on a tricycle.

Bobby:  Well, I can out pedal Doug.  Remember that day at the beach with the dead shark.  I was on it that day.

Creativity:  You were all over it, Bobby, you can't run for shit but you can pedal that banana bike.  You have a whole nother gear. 

The hook was set, Bobby would nearly bleed to death with that broken tricycle stuck in his leg.

Then there was tree jumping, I invented it.  It is a modification of the Tarzan vine swinging thing.  Basically you jump from one tree to another by climbing to the very top of a suitable Australian Pine tree and start it swaying.  This tree is very flexible.  Casuarina equisetifolia is native to Australia and is always green but it is everywhere in Florida.  This tree can grow to fifty feet or more and is very flexible and easy to climb.  

The tree in the background of this picture is perfect for tree jumping.  Near the top you can start the thing swaying back and forth and bend it over to get near a neighboring tree.  At the appropriate time, one "simply jumps" to the other tree.  Bobby, having the ability to learn from his mistakes and not being made sport of, said,  "I am not sure how to do this, you show me".  Bobby was at that adolescent age where his eyes, arms, feet and brain were growing way to fast and not at all talking to each other.  He was bigger than me even though I was older.  At any given time, every part of his body was doing something different and going in a different direction.  Today they would classify him as ADD or have him on drugs.  In those days we called it "entertainment".  I climbed the tree and started it swaying.  Since I was the greatest tree climber in these parts, I had a reputation to uphold so I really got the tree swaying.  When the tree bends  back up and slings me to the other side, I remember asking my grip to not fail me.  It took everything I had to hang on and swing my body out because in the next moment I was going to "jump" to the nearby tree.

Yes, I felt bad about Bobby landing on a shrubbery and getting the breath knocked out of him.  I told him that since this was not the first time he could not breath and he was going to be "OK", I really did not have to stop laughing.  I called him Bobby the flying squirrel and he started laughing but without any breath he just turned red and then blue.  The only other time I had seen him that blue was when he held is breath for four minutes at the Holiday Inn pool.  On the walk back home he got over being mad at me for laughing and he said, maybe we can do that again sometime!