Sunday, July 19, 2015

Bikes and Etc.



                       Bikes and Etc.



So it seems another month has zipped by since I last said hello on these pages and I know my loyal buds out there are hungry for more verbiage from you know who.  (Writers are SUCH egoists, eh?)  Time is becoming such a slippery thing for this retired ol’ dude and lately it’s even seemed slipperier. 

Nothing like stating the obvious, eh?

So what’s been going on here in our little corner of paradise?  Hmmm…?

Ok here’s maybe something to share.

As you may remember, I bought myself a “retirement present” last fall – a little something to play around with and to remind me of the proverbial “good ol’ days”.  Of course I’m talking about my orange scooter, the 125cc Yamaha Zuma.  I went to the license bureau not long after getting it and took the written test to be, in Ohio’s estimation, allowed to ride it legally.  I passed the written test handily (I studied a LOT) and then received my learner’s permit.  You have to realize that particular license was ONLY good for 12 months after issue, so I HAD to take my 2-wheel driving test on the scooter BEFORE that year was out to remain a legal scooter rider.  Sooo… 

As a lot of you may know about me, I just MIGHT have a tiny lil’ problem of obsessing about upcoming events that require something that I need to do.  I can see my wife nodding vigorously about now.  So I began to fret and fuss about the drop-dead date sitting like a giant roadblock in the upcoming autumn.  So what did I do about it?  I rode that lil’ machine all over this year!  I think I’ve zoomed over almost every street in town and lots of the nearby county roads.  I got pretty confident that I was ready to take the test, but that bad lil’ boy in the back of my head kept worrying and worrying.  “What if…?” he would say.  “Suppose you…?” he’d again holler  “And then…?” he would say.  And of course, “Oh my God…!” he’d finally howl. 

Typical me, of course.  Mountains and molehills…

So I girded my loins and scheduled my driving test. 

I arrived at the appointed parking lot at the appointed time, 8 am, and parked my scoot next to the other 4 motorcyclist’s machines who were also taking the driving test that morning – 2 were bigger bikes and 2 were dirt-bike models.  All the participants were WAY younger than yours truly. 

What a surprise, eh?

I was positioned to be the last to take the test, so I got to watch the other four rumble and wiggle and weave their way around the course as directed by the lady examiner.  All seemed to do some of the maneuvers more or less incorrectly, at least to my untrained eye.  One of the youngest guys to take the test even laid his bike down in some gravel as he was traveling too fast to make a turn.  A skinned elbow and some bent chrome were his rewards, although I found out he DID pass the test, even with the mishap!  Apparently he dumped his bike AFTER the last of his maneuvers, which he did correctly, so I guess he dumped it AFTER completing the test.  Dunno.  They did say he passed, so he was a lucky dude.  This was his second time around, so he should have known better.

The examiner told me that all the other guys had points taken off their scores that morning for various boo-boos.

So then it was my turn.  I drove up to the starting line and the examiner explained the maneuver I was to perform.  Then the next one, then the next.  Finally I was done and had scooted my way around exactly as I was supposed to.  The examiner said I had ZERO points deducted for errors, the ONLY person that morning that had did that well.  And she whispered to me that I was the only smart one, as I had brought the smallest bike for the test.  The test was WAY easier for us lil’ guys!

This old boy was very, very happy!  I got my coveted “M” endorsement for my driver’s license and have been utilizing it quite heavily ever since!

Going through this process of studying hard for the test, then passing it; practicing a lot on the scooter and then passing that test once again affirmed to me that the things you achieve that you have to work for and sometimes have to work HARD for are the sweetest.  Being handed the “M” endorsement JUST by paying a fee wouldn’t have been nearly as juicy or as satisfactory.  As the old Smith-Barney commercials starring John Houseman used to say, “We EARN it.”  Of course he was talking about money, but the sentiment still holds.  I EARNED it!

And on a maybe somewhat related subject:

My old friend Mike, another motorcycle enthusiast, (see the connection?) traveled down to my hometown the other day, a trip of around 50 miles from where he lives.  He and I used to work together when we both were employed for Alltel up in the Twinsburg, Ohio area.  He still sort of is, even though his paycheck says Windstream on it now – long story involving buyouts, mergers, acquisitions and other telecommunication business shenanigans.  I’ve been gone from that bailiwick since 2001 when I was caught in a protracted purge. 

Anyhow, over the past couple decades or thereabouts he and I and another of our fellow employees named Jeff liked to get together socially every couple months.  We’d go out on the town on a Saturday night, sometimes with some other guy friends, but almost always us three dudes. We’d have a few drinks and then maybe a few more. We’d end up going to some clubs after that and carouse around until the wee hours.

Lots of fun! 

Well, as the years passed they started catching up with us, the generally rowdy Saturday evenings eventually mellowed into a fairly sedate lunch every 3-4 months.  Mike and Jeff and I would meet somewhere convenient to us, share a meal and a few hours of conversation, catching up on our lives and who was doing what to whom back where I used to work and they still did.  It became a tradition that we all were comfortable with and enjoyed a lot.  A couple years ago Jeff found out he had contracted non-Hodgkins lymphoma.  Sometimes people with this disease are able to control it and live for many years.  Jeff was not one of the lucky ones.  They did a lot of procedures to him, but he succumbed to it last summer and it was a sad, sad time for all of us. 

Mike reminded me during our lunch that it had been a year since Jeff had passed and I sadly remarked at how FAST that year had gone by.  And although my wife Judy had accompanied me for this particular lunch, the empty chair at our table was very noticeable.

The plan was this: Mike was supposed to ride his motorcycle down to my town for our lunch this time around and meet me at a restaurant.  We would check out each of our rides – his big bike and my snazzy scooter, then both ride on down to my house.  And, of course, the day we picked for this rendezvous was a rainy one and he had to default to his pickup truck to get here. 

Luck of the draw I guess.

So we ate our lunch, glanced out the windows at the wet streets and chatted like we usually would do.  We then went from the restaurant to my house and chatted again for several more hours.  It was a very nice afternoon, two old friends chatting away the afternoon, telling their stories, telling their tall tales, comfortable in their own skins. 

And, of course, after he headed home the sun came out.