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Why I Joined the Navy

28 Dec

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

It all started one day when my friend, Bud, and I were complaining, to each other, about how hard it was to get the attention of the girls in town. The problem, as we saw it, was that we had too much competition. You see, we lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in the mid-50s, there were two military bases located there. Sandia Base (AFSWP) was situated on the southeast edge of town, and Kirkland Air Force Base was located on the southwest part of town. Between the two bases, the number of guys seen in U.S. Air Force uniforms, on any given day, on the streets of Albuquerque was overwhelming.

 

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We were both approaching draft age, and were worried our number would come up soon. Bud’s idea was to kill two birds with one stone; 1, we would join the branch of service of our choice (and avoid the Army draft). This would allow us to legally wear a military uniform on the streets of Albuquerque, and greatly increase our chances of attracting the girls. And 2, as it turned out, since the Navy was our choice, they had a reserve unit right there in town (much different uniform). As we saw it, we would only have to go to reserve meetings once a month (how bad could that be?). Then after the meetings, and still in our uniforms, we could hit the streets on the prowl. Great idea, right? Well, as you might have guessed, the Navy welcomed us with open arms. Just sign on the dotted line “Dummy.” Right away they issued us these swell looking uniforms. Sexy, looking aren’t they!

 

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OK, so white uniforms looked a little sloppy. It’s hard to make a skinny kid look smart in a loose fitting uniform, without the leggings, belt, white gloves, and the pretty orange scarf. Now you do have to admit, the dress blue uniform looks a lot smarter, with all that extra gear. But hey, we were just kids playing around! What did we know?

 

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The things the Navy didn’t tell us, when we signed up, was what we would have to do at those monthly meetings; like all the marching we would have to do out on the “Grinder” in all kinds of weather; the many shots they gave us, for every kind of disease known to man (some made my arm sore for a week); having to learn how to tie all those crazy looking knots, and each one of those knots had a name we had to learn; then there was the Morse Code system we had to learn, and that crazy Signal Flag Semaphore system. It was worse than high school, with even more homework! And what was worse, when we stopped at the A&W Root Beer drive-in to check out the girls, many of our friends laughed their heads off. They couldn’t believe we thought we were going to impress the girls in those silly looking uniforms.

 

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It wasn’t long after I joined the Reserves, that I met DiVoran. And what do you know? She really liked my uniforms, and thought I looked great in them. That made the whole adventure worth it. However, it didn’t take long for me to realize that this Reserve thing was not just a game that I could quit any time I wanted to. I was stuck with what I had signed up for and was going to have to see it through.

 

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Of course, I don’t think my friend, Bud, had ever intended to see it through. When he found out that the Navy uniforms didn’t get the kind of reaction from the girls he had expected, he stopped going to meetings. The next thing I knew, the Navy was looking for him. He disappeared from the area, and later I heard the FBI was looking for him. Some friend, huh? I eventually got tired of all those Reserve meetings, and went into the regular Navy, to fulfil my required active service and get it over with. And that is about the gist of this story. You’ll have to read the blog series, “You’re In The Navy Now”  for the rest of the story of where this foolish idea led me.

 

—–The End—–

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Let Us Trim That Tree

21 Dec

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

Over the years, many of the trees on our property have grown larger than we ever expected them to. It was getting so bad, that sometimes I had to duck under the oak tree limbs, over our driveway, to get to my van. Our yard man has been trying to keep them trimmed the best he could, but he is getting older and doesn’t get up and down the ladder like he used to.

 

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The other day, a tree service guy knocked on our door and wanted to know if he could give me an estimate on trimming our trees. The estimate he gave me was a little high, and I told him I would think about it. That afternoon he was back with a revised estimate. I told him I was still thinking about it, and he dropped the price to where I couldn’t refuse the deal. When I asked when they would plan to do the job, he said, “My crew is just down the street, finishing up another job, and we can start right now.” I asked him if he was sure he had time to do the job then, and he said, “Yes, it won’t take us that long.”

professional-tree-service-free-estimate

 

I learned that our tree trimming crew was just one of three teams that this company had working in our neighborhood that day. Our crew consisted of a cutter and three young helpers. The plan was to thin the branches of each tree, and raise the canopy of each tree, to give the trees a more uniform and healthier look. I don’t have to duck under the oak tree limbs now to get to my van.

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The crew worked well together. As the cutter would lop off a branch, one of the young helpers would drag the branch over to their flat-bed trailer, where another young helper would cut the branch into short sections for placement in the trailer. I couldn’t believe how fast and efficient the job went. There were several chainsaws at work, most of the time (lots of noise).

 

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All together, we had some seventeen trees (front and back) to be trimmed. The work progressed steadily, with only a couple short breaks. About halfway through the process, wood bore damage and trunk rot was found in one of the trees in the back. It was recommended that the tree be cut down before it got any weaker, and possibly fell on my model airplane “Hanger.”

 

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This created more work for our crew, which they had not planned for, and seemed to cause tension among the workers. I had commented earlier, that it looked like they might not be able to get all this work done before dark. Now it looked like they were going to need a larger trailer to carry all the cuttings. When I mentioned the need for a larger trailer to one of the young workers, he laughed and said, “Yea, bigger is right, and one with a tilt bed would be nice!”

 

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The next time I looked out front, the four of them were unloading the trailer. “What was that all about?” I wondered. “Maybe they wanted to put the big tree logs on the bottom or something?” About this time, the boss came driving up and there was a heated discussion while the unloading continued. When they completed unloading the trailer, the cutter got in his van and drove off with the trailer! That left all the cuttings laying, spread out, all over my driveway, parkway and the street. Now the three young helpers got orders to get everything picked up and stacked neatly along the parkway.

 

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The boss was still fuming when he informed me that he had to lay-off the cutter (I didn’t ask why). He was sorry, but now he would have to go to East Orlando, the next morning, to get his big truck and clean up the mess that he had been left with. I told him I was sorry to hear about his employee problem, but that I needed access to my driveway,

 

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To my surprise, the next morning two of our resident squirrels were having a field day in that brush pile. They would scurry around in the pile of oak limbs, until they found an acorn. Then they would run (with their prize in their mouth) looking for the “Perfect” spot in our front yard, burry it, and pack down the dirt with their front paws. Then it was back to the brush pile, to look for another tasty acorn. I told DiVoran, “They must really enjoy the easy pickins’, since they don’t have to climb the tree each time they go back to look for another fresh acorn.”

 

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This YouTube video will give you an idea of what the squirrel action was like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWzTd87cUyg

The brush pile finally got cleaned up and all is back to normal around the house. The trees look better and we have a much better view of our back area from our back porch. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how long it takes our trees to put out new growth heavy enough to require trimming again. So goes life!

—–The End—–

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God Has Been Watching Over Me~Part 6

14 Dec

A Slice of Life

 Bill Lites

 

For years, after moving into our new house here in Florida, I had a real problem keeping the grass trimmed along the length of our backyard chain-linked fence. With all the rain we get here, it was hard for me to stay ahead of it. One day, I decided to eliminate the grass by burning it. I poured gasoline along the fence line and set it ablaze. That did a wonderful job of getting rid of all that unsightly grass, except for a few spots where the grass was the heaviest.

 

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For some reason (I can’t remember why) I used a small bowl to pour some more gasoline on those unburned tufts of grass (of course the fire was out and they weren’t smoldering). At one point there must have been a glowing ember I couldn’t see, because fire suddenly ran from the grass up the stream of gasoline into the bowl I was holding. It happened so quick, I was startled and jumped back to get away from the fire, splashing flaming gasoline on the front of my shirt. I tried to throw myself to the ground, flat on my stomach, but that seemed to be happening in slow motion, taking what seemed like forever to get there. By then my polyester shirt had melted and would have stuck to, and caused severe burns to my chest and stomach, if it had not been for my habit of always wearing a tee shirt under my sport/dress shirts (now why do you suppose I do that?). Maybe God knew ahead of time what a foolish person I could be at times, and that I would be needing His protection from time to time.

 

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In 1987, DiVoran and I took an all-inclusive vacation trip to St. Kitts Island in the West Indies. It is located in the Caribbean, and known as part of the Leeward Islands. The resort where we stayed was wonderful and provided every amenity anyone could ever ask for: great accommodations, all the delicious food you could eat, golf, swimming, surfing, and SCUBA diving; a real tropical paradise.

 

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Ever since moving to Florida, one of the things DiVoran and I had wanted to do was to learn to SCUBA dive, but the time and money had never been available.When we saw that SCUBA diving was offered as part of our vacation package we jumped at the chance. We were among a number of the guests that were given lessons in the hotel swimming pool, and approved for “Supervised” shallow diving. The beauty of the water where we dove was spectacular, and I had a tendency to forget some of the basic safety lessons I had learned. At one point on the second day I found myself alone, waiting for the instructor to come back. A number of things could have gone wrong (that I don’t like to think about), if I had struck out on my own, but I felt God impressing me to just stay where I was until the instructor returned.

 

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Then there are the 35 years, during which God has protected me while I worked in the Aerospace Industry as an Ordnance Engineer. Much of that time was spent working with explosives, around hazardous materials, and in hazardous areas where, at other times, workers have been hurt.

 

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At this point in my life, I can’t begin to imagine how many times, over the years, God has had His hand on me (and I didn’t even know it) as I put myself in foolish or dangerous situations. He must have had other plans for my life, and how He could somehow use it to make His presence known to others. All I know, is that I am abundantly grateful to Him for His constant presence in my life and for His merciful protection all these years.

—–The End—–

 

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God Has Been Watching Over Me~Part 5

7 Dec

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

 

After we were married, DiVoran and I moved to Inglewood, CA for me to go to college. I was still using the 1955 Harley Davidson Sportster for my main means of transportation (yes, she married me even after that night at the River Bottom). One weekend my lovely new wife and I went on a “Poker Run” with the local Motorcycle Club.* On the way home, after the event, I had let DiVoran drive the motorcycle for a while. I had unconsciously been guiding the motorcycle around slow turns with my weight from the back seat. When we came upon a sharper curve she kept going straight! I reached around her to grab the handlebars, but she wouldn’t let go!! Luckily, with my hands on hers and my extra weight, I was able to get us around that turn and avoid a 200 foot flying drop to the desert floor. We stopped to get our breaths back, and DiVoran never wanted to drive that motorcycle again. There is no question in my mind that God was watching over DiVoran and me with His wings of protection that day!

 

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We didn’t live far from the university or DiVoran’s beauty shop work place, so I rode the motorcycle to school and she drove our 1950 Mercury to work. If you have ever been to the Los Angeles, California area you know what the weather can be like. The fog rolls in every evening and by morning everything is wet, including the streets. Luckily, my route to school was on neighbor streets and not very busy, like U.S.-101 or Century Blvd. One morning on my way to school a lady pulled out of a side street right in front of me. She was looking to the right as she pulled out into traffic and by the time she looked left, in my direction, she was in the middle of my lane and she stopped! I had clamped on both front and rear brakes, but on the wet street, I slid right into the side of her car. Our meeting at that neighborhood intersection, a few seconds earlier or later, and that could have been a deadly accident for me. This had to be God’s timing, as nobody was hurt, only repairable fender damage to car and motorcycle.

 

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Some days at lunch time (if I didn’t have a class) I would ride my motorcycle over to the beauty shop in downtown Inglewood, where Divoran was working, to have lunch with her. There was a wide sweeping curve on Crenshaw Blvd, just before I got to the beauty shop, that was easy on the motorcycle. This one day as I was rounding that curve I hit an oil slick; one second I was enjoying the ride around that curve, and the next second I was on the pavement sliding across three lanes into the curb. This was another case were God had miraculously arranged the traffic on that busy street, in both directions, to be clear while I was sliding across that street burning the skin off my leg and hip. Thanks to Him I only ended up with a case of Road-Rash instead of becoming a case of Road-Kill.

 

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—–To Be Continued—–

 

*See Bill’s blog “Death Valley Run”- 6/06/2012.

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God Has Been Watching Over Me~Part 4

30 Nov

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

 

It was about this time in my life that I decided I needed a car to keep me warm in the winter, so I bought a very used 1940 Chevy Coupe. The plan was to restore the car as a “Street Rod” that would catch the attention of the “chicks” at the local A&W Root Beer Stand (teen hang-out) in the Nob Hill area of the Northeast Heights, on Central Avenue (US-66) there in Albuquerque.

 

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The first thing I needed to do was to rebuild the engine. Of course, that took a lot longer than I had planned. While I was doing that, in my spare time, my trusty 1955 Harley Davidson Sportster was my main mode of transportation.

 

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I had met DiVoran in, of all places, a Basic Typing Class during our senior year of high school (as I mentioned earlier my interest in school was waning by then). You might ask, “What motorcycle “Jock” would take a typing class?” And, I would tell you, “The kind that was just looking for an easy senior year last-choice course that didn’t require homework.” That was me. As it happened, DiVoran used the same typewriter I did in the next class.

 

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As a quick prelude to this next incident, I would like to explain that, over the decades, when the wind blew from the west toward Albuquerque, some of the desert sand the wind kicked up ended up forming a “V” shaped sand dune at the edge of the Rio Grande River. This “V” shaped dune was approximately ¼ mile long and extended from the edge of the river up a 30+ degree incline to the top of the mesa. When the river was low (which was most of the time) there would be a small area, along the river, of hard dirt where the water had washed away the sand. One of the motorcycle sports, some of my school friends indulged in, was what we called “Pulling the River Bottom.”   This involved riding our motorcycles from the mesa down to the bottom of that “V” shaped sand dune to the edge of the river. Then we would get up as much speed as we could, on that small area of hard dirt, and try to get back up to the mesa. It was always a challenge, and I had participated in this thrilling ride many times.

 

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One night I took DiVoran to the River Bottom to show off my riding skills and have some romantic time in the moonlight.* Since I didn’t have a buddy seat, I sat on the gas tank and she sat on the seat with her arms around me (Now wasn’t that cozy?) and her feet resting on the foot pegs. I told her, “Hold on to me tight and try to use your knees as shock absorbers.” With the engine at full throttle, we hit 2nd gear, and the acceleration was trying to pull both of us off the motorcycle. It was all I could do to hold onto the handlebars. We hit a couple of small bumps as we started up the incline and her feet came off the foot pegs. When we hit the next bump, the seat spring sent her flying. The first thing I noticed was her arms coming unwrapped from around my waist… then I caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye going over the side and she was gone! I slammed on the brakes, stopping the motorcycle, killed the engine and ran back down the incline as fast as I could looking for her.

 

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As I approached her, I noticed she wasn’t moving and I panicked. “Oh God, I hope she isn’t dead”.   When I fell down on my knees beside her, I could hear her moaning and she was moving some. “Thank goodness!” I asked her if she was OK? (which of course she wasn’t) and she said, “I think so.” She had landed on her backside and it knocked the wind out of her. It took a few minutes for her to recover before we could walk up to the top of the mesa. Boy, was God ever watching over DiVoran and me that night!

 

—–To Be Continued—–

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God Has Been Watching Over Me~Part 3

23 Nov

From the Heart

Bill Lites

 

Sometime during my last year in high school, my friend Leon invited me and two other guys to make a weekend trip to El Paso, Texas to visit another of his friends and check out Juarez, Mexico just across the border. Leon had a job, so we left late Friday after he got off work (poor planning on our part). We were having a great time on the road south until it got dark, and we discovered it had rained heavily somewhere north of our route and now we had to cross a water-filled arroyo.

 

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It didn’t look too deep and didn’t seem to be running too fast (bad assumption anytime, but especially at night). As you have probably guessed, we got about halfway across that arroyo, but Leon didn’t keep the engine revving and the water went up the tailpipe and stalled the engine. Of course, the water was deeper than it had looked. There we were, stalled, with water piling up to the bottom of the window on my side of the car, and water starting to leak into the car. Leon was trying to start the car but it wouldn’t re-start. Then this guy tried coming across the arroyo from the other direction. Just as he got to us, the water his car was pushing moved Leon’s car sideways just enough for him to side-swipe Leon’s car as he passed (not bad with the water cushion between the cars). The guy kept on going in order to keep from getting stalled like we were.

 

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Then a semi-truck started across from the other side toward us. His truck was high enough and heavy enough to get through, but his huge bumper was pushing a wall of water in front of him. That wave of water rolled right over Leon’s car as the truck passed us. If we hadn’t had the windows rolled up, the water would have filled the car. All this time Leon was trying to re-start the engine. He finally got it started (a real miracle) and I hollered at him to keep it in first gear until we were clear of the water. We made it! (I think God must have His hands full when it comes to teenagers). We had fun in El Paso and in Juarez and by the time we headed back to Albuquerque there was no water to be seen anywhere for that 265 mile stretch of New Mexico desert.

 

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The summer after I graduated from high school, I was ready to go out and meet the world head-on and make my fortune in life. I had heard from friends that the pay was really good for “Roughnecks” at the oil fields in northern New Mexico (Can you just imagine a smooth faced 18-year old skinny kid, 120 lbs. soaking wet, trying to keep up with experienced workers on a job like this.

 

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After much begging, pleading and promising to be careful, I somehow I talked my parents into letting me go try my luck at that kind of work there for the summer.   I packed a suitcase full of clothes, strapped it to my trusty Harley Davidson and headed for Farmington, New Mexico, some 185 miles north of Albuquerque on US-580.* One day during my adventure there in Farmington (You’ll have to read the blog for the gory details of that summer adventure) I was riding down the road and came to a curve that wasn’t really sharp enough to slow down for, so I just leaned into the curve like any other. What I didn’t see was the light film of sand right across the middle of my lane.   Halfway through the turn, the rear wheel lost traction and I went down. My Harley and I went sliding down the road for several yards, and across the double line into the oncoming lane.   This was another case of no cars anywhere on the road at the time of the incident. Thank you Lord!

*See Bill’s blog “On My Own”- 8/15/2012.

 

—–To Be Continued—–

 

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God Has Been Watching Over Me~Part 2

16 Nov

A Slice of Life

Bill Lites

 

One day on my way to school, the traffic around the school was hectic and I tried to go around an older car that was double parked. Just as I got alongside of that car the driver (who obviously hadn’t seen me) started off, while edging over toward me. There was oncoming traffic so I couldn’t move away from the car. I tried to slow down and let the car pull ahead, but it was too late. My brake pedal got caught under the rear portion of the car’s running board (Google “Running Board” if you have never heard of such a thing) and flipped my motorcycle and me to the pavement under the car (luckily, behind the rear wheel).   The motorcycle and I ended up sliding down the street behind the car on the pavement a few yards. I don’t think the driver knew what had happened, because he sped off down the street. I got some minor road rash out of that experience, but was otherwise unhurt, and there were only a few small scratches on the motorcycle. It would have been a totally different story if I had ended up on the street in front of that car’s rear wheel! Thank you Lord!

 

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Another time, I was giving one of my friends a ride on my motorcycle. He was quite a bit heavier than I was, and that made it difficult to turn if he didn’t lean into the turns with me. When we got to his house, I was turning into the driveway but my friend wasn’t leaning into the turn with me. His extra weight kept me from being able to turn enough, and we sideswiped a three-foot high flagstone wall that tore my jeans and scraped a 2”x4” patch of skin off of my right leg. That incident could have ended up with broken legs for both of us if Someone hadn’t been watching over us both that time.

 

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The summer after my junior year in high school, my girlfriend’s family moved to El Paso, Texas and I longed to see her again. After getting the OK from her family and much promising, on my part, to be careful and not to do anything foolish, my parents gave me permission to make the.* I left early on a Friday morning and rode my motorcycle the 225 miles, from our home in Albuquerque to El Paso, to visit Barbara for the weekend (when her folks would be home). The trip down was long (3 ½ hours), uneventful, and I was filled with anticipation. I liked Barbara’s parents and we had a great visit that weekend. Then it was time to tear myself away from her Sunday afternoon in time to make the trip back home to Albuquerque before dark. It was during the second hour when the lack of sleep, the desert heat, and the constant hummmm of the engine that I woke up with a start, just as my motorcycle went off the road onto the gravel shoulder of the oncoming lane! Somehow I was able to get back onto the pavement, without crashing, and back into my lane. As LUCK would have it, there was not another car anywhere on that stretch of the hiway at that time (now who do you suppose arranged that?). And, as you might have guessed, the amount of adrenaline that incident produced kept me awake for the rest of the trip home.

 

 

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* See Bill’s blog “Trip To El Paso”- 9/29/2012

—–To Be Continued—–

 

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Video

God Has Been Watching Over Me~Part 1

9 Nov

A Slice of Life

 Bill Lites

It’s hard for me to remember just how God watched over me during my early years (1-5) but I know He did. I do remember playing with Patsy in the back yard of my home in Dallas, Texas sometime before I was five years old. (See Bill’s blog “The Little Girl Down The Street”). As part of our play time, we made and ate mud pies. Now I know that we both could have gotten really sick on that diet, but God had to be watching over us during that time.

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Our house in Dallas was on a corner lot, adjacent to a main thoroughfare, and I lost my toy Parachute Man when a gust of wind caught him and he drifted into the path of a car on that street (See Bill’s blog “Parachute Man”). I had been told not to go into that street for any reason, but as a six year old little boy, it took Someone bigger than I was to keep me from chasing after my Parachute Man, into the path of that car (He must have had His hand on my shoulder).

 

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During a summer retreat with my family at the Alta Frio Baptist Camp in Texas when I was six, I was bit by a Cotton Mouth Moccasin (See Bill’s blog “Snake Bit”). My dad and mother witnessed the incident as I ran ahead of them into the shallow water at the edge of the Frio River, where we were going to swim. God protected both my dad and me that day. My dad had been in the medical corps during WW I, and he immediately applied a tourniquet around my leg, scooped me up and quickly carried me back to our cabin. There he made small slice marks in my leg, with a razor blade at the fang marks, and sucked the blood and venom from the wound, before taking me to the doctor’s office (on gravel roads at least 10 miles away in a friends old Model A truck). With his teeth full of fillings, that harmful venom could have entered his system and, at the least, made him sick (was my dad’s medical training just an accident?).

 

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When I was around 15 several guys my age followed an older boy on adventure to explore an abandoned mine in the mountains near our home in Albuquerque, New Mexico (See Bill’s blog “Hole In The Ground”).   That old mine shaft had never been shored up with bracing of any kind. There was one short section of the tunnel that had caved in at some time in the past, and even though it had been partially cleared, we still had to actually crawl through that section that we skinny boys could barely squeeze through. If that section, or another section, had caved in while we were at the bottom of the shaft, the chances are we all could have died before anyone found us.

 

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One day the next year I was driving down the street on my motorcycle, in front of the local Junior High School, and happened to see my sister with her friends walking home. I hollered at them and waved as I passed them (See Bill’s blog “Keep Your Eyes On The Road”-). When I looked back at the road there was the bed of a dump-truck, stopped, in the middle of the road (no flagman, orange cones or warning signs of any kind) with men making repairs, just in front of me! Without thinking, I just reacted, throwing the motorcycle almost to the ground, cleared the edge of the truck bed, slapped my left foot on the ground, pushing the motorcycle upright again. All this happened in a split second at 25 miles per hour. There is no way I could have looked up in time and reacted that fast without His help!

 

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—–To Be Continued—–

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My First Motorcycle

2 Nov

A Slice of Life

 Bill Lites

 

When I was 12, I started delivering newspapers, on my bicycle, on an evening route near my home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was saving my money to buy a motorcycle. At the time my allowance of .50 cents a week hardly even covered the cost of my model airplane supplies. And, that paper route really didn’t bring in much of an income either.

 

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So I started thinking of other ways to make money. That was the summer I started mowing lawns in our neighborhood with the family push-mower. That helped a lot in the money department, but was really hard work.

 

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As my name got around, by work of mouth, that I was cutting lawns my business grew and I talked my parents into loaning me the money to buy a new power mower (Ref. Bill’s blogs “I Was A 12 Year Old Business Man“– Jan. 23 & 30, 2013). It took me a while to pay off that loan, but once that was done, the bank account began to grow rapidly.

 

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By the time I was fourteen, I had learned to drive, had my driver’s license, and I was scouring the newspaper “For Sale” ads for used motorcycles. I finally found a fairly nice Harley-Davidson 125cc that I could afford. Boy, did that motorcycle take a lot of the work out of my paper route! I could pick up my papers, deliver all the papers on my route and get home in half the time, and I wasn’t pooped out either.

 

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I gave up the paper route and most of my lawn business when a friend’s father helped me get a part-time job at the local Furr’s Super Market. By that time I had really lost most of what little interest I had in school (my main interest now was motorcycles), and was looking for something to occupy my time (and making money of course). The super market job was just what I was looking for. The work was hard, but the pay was great as I advanced from bag boy to checker, and my bank account kept growing.

 

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As it turned out, once the initial thrill of my “New-Used” motorcycle worn off, I discovered the machine really was a little long in the tooth, and I was anxious to see how I could get more performance out of it. Since I had learned how to rebuild my internal-combustion lawnmower engine, I started tearing down that motorcycle engine.

 

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I cleaned and polished the combustion chamber, re-surfaced the valves & seats, replaced the piston rings and spark plug, tightened the chain and polished all the aluminum cases. By the time I was finished, I had expended a lot of my hard-earned dollars for new parts and many hours of labor on that engine. And guess what? Of course it ran better, but it was still a behind the times 125cc size motorcycle and just didn’t give me the excitement I was looking for.

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By this time I had turned into a teenage motorcycle “Jock” and couldn’t look the part (Marlon Brando & James Dean) on that un-interesting looking Harley 125cc motorcycle. So, my next teenage adventure was to purchase a “New” bright RED 1954 Harley Davidson 165cc “Golden Edition” motorcycle with raised handlebars. That motorcycle fit right in with my new image, which included a traditional black leather motorcycle jacket (lots of pockets and zippers), motorcycle boots and a “Ducktail” hairdo.

 

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I enjoyed calling that 1954 Harley 165cc motorcycle my first, but the older ugly black 125cc machine was really my first motorcycle, and helped send me on my way to the big-time 1955 Harley Davidson (888 cc) flat-head KH Sportster that I really loved and drove for the next ten years.

—–The End—–

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My 2016 Mid-West Trip~Part 17

26 Oct

A Slice of Life

 Bill Lites

 

Day 17 (Monday)

I had left a wakeup call, with the motel desk clerk, for 6:00 AM, but was awakened at 5:53 AM by the loud slamming of a door across the hall. I got up and shaved, showered, dressed and had a cup of yogurt, when at 7:05 the phone rang with my wakeup call. Good thing I wasn’t on a tight time schedule!

 

1

 

I finished packing and was ready to leave the motel, for the airport, by 8:15 AM. I had made a test run to the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport the night before, so I wouldn’t fall for one of Greta’s wild goose chases this morning, and possibly miss my flight. The morning traffic wasn’t too bad, and the trip was uneventful. I didn’t want to have to roll my suitcase that long distance from the Thrifty Rental Car return to the main airport lobby, so I stopped on the “Departures” ramp long enough to use the Southwest Airlines curbside check-in (nothing like the mess I had to endure at the Orlando airport on the day I left on this trip).

 

2

All went well and I was on my way to return my rental car. Rental car return was a breeze and I even got a courtesy ride from the rental car building to the main airport lobby.

 

3

 

I had checked-in for my flight online the night before, and had printed my boarding pass, so I didn’t have to check in at the Southwest ticket counter. I stopped and had another cup of Yogurt and an apple before going through security. I couldn’t believe how easy and quick the security check was! I arrived at my departure gate at 9:15 AM.

 

4

 

Boarding for my flight to Orlando began at 9:45 AM and we were pushing back from the gate, right on time, at 10:10 AM. The one hour and 20 minute Southwest non-stopped flight, from New Orleans to Orlando, went very quickly and very smoothly until we approached Orlando International Airport, at which time the cloud cover caused considerable turbulence until just before we landed.

 

5

 

DiVoran picked me up and we headed for SR-436 to find a place for lunch. As luck would have it, we spotted a Panera’s Bread restaurant and enjoyed a great lunch while we caught up on what we each had missed during the last 17 days.

It sure was good to get home and have time to take a nap for a change. I missed a lot of those on this trip and will have to get caught up on my rest before I think about considering another trip anytime soon. Hope you enjoyed this trip as much as I did. See you next time for my next road trip adventure.

 

6

 

—–The End—–

 

 

 

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