Saturday, October 20, 2018

Evaluation & Feedback 2nd Speech-Sample PM1, "King of the Road"

This is my 14th prepared speech under Pathways. The speech was delivered at the BF Community TMC in Las Piñas City in the Oct 20, 2018 Toastmasters Meeting.


King of the Road
(Evaluation & Feedback 2nd Speech, Level 1-Presentation Mastery, Oct 20, 2018, BF Community TMC, Las Piñas City. Evaluated by Rema Manzano DTM)


INTRODUCTION

Is there anyone here who regularly exercises in the morning? What exercise do you do? (briefly interview three members from the audience)

BODY

One thing that I have been doing for the two years or so is to walk every morning, as long as the weather allows, of course. If it rains or too wet outside, I don’t. I walk with my wife who is also retired. We walk for 30 minutes or more, around a few blocks in our neighborhood. I walk, rather than run because walking is easier on the knees and bones.


The morning walks have been beneficial to us, to our physical well-being. Nowadays, I don’t get too tired easily.

SOCIAL ASPECT
Apart from the obvious health benefits, there’s also the social aspect. When we do our early morning walks, we always get greeted by neighbors and friends along the way. I would often greet back mainly by waving my hand to them.

My wife once commented on how I wave at people. She said, “You know, you look like a politician campaigning in the streets. And I jokingly told her, “Well, I’m the King of the Road!”

GREETERS
My wife and I rarely stop to chat with greeters. We prefer to finish the walking we set out to do. But those who do greet us, some of them would comment how lucky we are because we have time every day for our morning walks.

I found the comment enigmatic (word-of-the-day) because walking for us is no big deal. Then I realize they were probably right in saying to be able to walk anytime of the morning or the day.

HISTORY
At the start we just had a very leisurely stroll. We thought, there’s really no rush. So we walked slowly while looking at the greenery around us. But then, I discovered that not only was it too slow, it was taking us longer to finish our walking paths. And by the time we’re on the way back home, the sun is so high up already and getting too hot.

So I suggested, why don’t we speed-up our walking pace, and do what we know as brisk-walking? We can be more efficient that way and pump up the cardio benefit a little more.

But how to do that, I thought. Sure, we walked at a faster clip, but then, after a few minutes, it went back to the usual leisurely stroll. And then, I had a stroke of a brilliant idea! This was something I learned many years ago in college.

MARCHING TIME
Who among you here, among the guys, I mean went to ROTC marching drills? I had ROTC for 2 years. One of the things I learn is marching in time. And to do that, the drill sergeant would call some marching songs or cadence calls.


One of the marching songs we had actually had the tune of a nursery rhyme!
(sing) “The eensy weensy spider went up the water spout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out.”

That was the tune we used. But the words were nothing like that. In ROTC, we used really bad words. The words were too unsavory, even for this speech. The tune was for a marching song, not a walking song.

CONCLUSION

I’d like to end this by sharing with you what I finally chose to be my walking song. The title is “King of the Road”. It’s a classic song, a Grammy award winner from the 60’s sang by Roger Miller. Have you heard of it? It goes along like this.
(sing) “Trailer for sale or rent, rooms to let, fifty cents. No phone, no pool, no pets, I ain't got no cigarettes. Ah, but, two hours of pushin' broom. Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room. I'm a man of means by no means, king of the road.”

Toastmaster of the Day.