Bikers and Blue-hairs

1976 was our country's bicentennial so I decided to attend the summer long celebration in Washington D.C. I quit my job, put together a minimalist pack, and headed out of Omaha on my Triumph.

I was going through Cincinnati when I saw a British motorcycle shop. I decided to stop in and get some chain lube. While there, I got to talking with some of the guys who were hanging around. It turned out they were planning to make a trip to Bowling Green, KY the next morning to attend the National Motorcycle Drags. Their small group of British bikes was going to make the trip together with a large Cincinnati Harley group. They invited me to join them and I accepted.

All together there were about 40 bikes. The Triumphs, BSAs, and Nortons were all clean, well-maintained performance bikes. The Harley group included everything from high dollar choppers to oil leaking rat-bikes. They also had an old school bus that was driven by the wife of one of the Harley riders. It brought up the rear of the convoy and was there to deal with breakdowns.

These guys had obviously done this sort of thing before. I've seen military convoys that weren't this organized. Everyone kicked in $40 before leaving to cover tolls and gas. Any money left over was earmarked for beer when we got to Bowling Green.

You can imagine the chaos that would ensue if 40 bikes each had to stop at a toll booth and fish for change. The leader of the Harley group went through the toll booth first, counted the bikes through with the toll taker, and then paid all the tolls at one time. It was a brilliant solution.

When we stopped for gas a similar approach was used. You couldn't have each of 40 bikes put in 1 or 2 gallons of gas, go inside, pay, and then pull out. The gas station would be jammed up for an hour. Instead, all the bikes lined up at one pump, filled up, and then pulled out into the parking area to wait. When the last bike filled up, the Harley group leader went inside and paid for all the bikes.

At one gas stop, two well dressed, blue-haired old ladies walked out of the gas station to their Oldsmobile just as the bikes started filling up the parking area. Soon they were surrounded by motorcycles of all types. What happened next was truly amazing. The old ladies started walking around the growing collection of bikes, talking with the riders, and asking questions. It was almost like a couple of grandmothers had happened to run into their grandchildren at a gas station.

I marveled at the stereotypes that were being shattered.  

Hunting Season

I was on my way to Portland when I stopped at a cafe in Lava Hot Springs Idaho for lunch. I sat down at the counter next to a guy who turned out to be a park ranger. He told me it was the middle of Elk Hunting season in that area and the California hunters were a constant source of amusement.

He said that in the past, the forest service kept a bunch of mules for packing into remote areas of the park. When they were no longer needed, the mules were just turned loose. It seemed that at least once a year some hunter would shoot one of those mules.

He said his exposure to California hunters came during his first stint manning the hunter check station. Hunters that shot an elk had to have it checked to verify that it matched what they had a license to shoot.

He said, "A hunter from California checked in with what he had tagged as a cow elk. I took one look and saw that he had actually shot one of those mules. I went into the check station and asked the veteran ranger in there what I should do." The old ranger said. "Let him go. Every time he stops on his way to California he's going to brag about the cow elk he shot. Eventually someone is going to point out that he actually shot a mule. Let's not spoil that guy's fun."  

The Restauranteur

Downtown Omaha had what is euphemistically called a residence hotel. Its $25 per week rooms were home to winos, derelicts, and over-the-hill barflies. It was also home to my friend, Stan. Stan was a big gruff guy around the age of 50 who had a very low tolerance for posers and bullshitters. He lived in the hotel by choice. According to him, "It was one place where there weren't any phonies."

Omaha had a horse track called Ak-Sar-Ben that was so notoriously crooked that the sports books in Vegas wouldn't take bets on its races. Stan spent a lot of time there during the racing season.

One evening Stan and I were having dinner in the hotel's restaurant. He explained to me how he had figured out the pattern to the crooked track. It seems that they were rotating the wins through the various stables. In less than a month he had used this knowledge to make over $10,000 which was real money 40 years ago.

While we were sitting at the table, the owner of the restaurant came over and sat down with us. He launched into a long rant about what he didn't like about running the restaurant. After about 15 minutes of this, Stan had enough. He said, "Either stop whining or sell me the goddamn restaurant."

The guy said, "Give me $3,000 and it's yours." Stan went up to his room, came back to the table, and slapped down $3,000 in cash. The guy got up, gave Stan his apron, picked up the money, and said, "You've got it!"

Stan spent the next couple of days cleaning up the place and he got rid of the menus. He was making enough money off of the track that he didn't really care if the restaurant made money or not. He decided to only cook what he liked and what he liked was steak.

His new menu consisted of steak, baked potatoes, french fries, and salad. As a sop to the weenies who couldn't handle steak, he included hamburger on the menu. He located a source of top quality beef for his steaks and hamburgers and ground the beef for the hamburgers himself.

Stan hired a couple of the resident barflies to help out as waitresses and he was in business.

Stan had a real knack for grilling steaks and his were outrageously good. The hotel was only a couple of blocks from Omaha's financial center and it wasn't long before word got out. The financial center crowd was soon making the trek to his restaurant for lunch.

You could order your steak cooked any way you liked, but what you would get would be medium rare because that's the way Stan liked it. If anyone complained, he would kick them out of the restaurant and give their steak to one of his friends in the hotel bar.

Stan would also kick anyone out of the restaurant that he didn't like. It got to be like one of those trendy clubs where people try to get past the bouncer at the door. At that time it was the style for men to wear pastel colored suits. He derisively referred to them as the ice cream suit morons.

I tried to stop in there at lunch time whenever I was in town. I could enjoy a great steak while watching the pathetic ice cream suit morons trying to get the best of Stan.

Hug Monster

We've had a family tradition since the grandkids were toddlers. I would chase them around as the Hug Monster and when I caught them, I would pick them up and give them a big hug. It was something they all thoroughly enjoyed.

When our grandson, Steven, was in the first grade, I was working nights so I had time to pick him up after school. I would wait outside the classroom door with the other parents until the bell rang.

When the bell rang, Steven would take off running and I would chase him down saying, "The Hug Monster is going to get you." When I caught him, I would pick him up and give him the big hug he was expecting.

This went on every day for a couple of weeks. One day after chasing and catching Steven, I looked back and saw a half-dozen little 6 year old boys lined up by the classroom door waiting for their turn to get "Hug Monstered".

Tale of Woe

The engineering group I worked with at Cisco used some very expensive Unix-based software for chip design, circuit board design, and testing. My friend, Billy, was responsible for keeping all of this up to date and working.

To run properly, each of these programs required specific settings. Billy created individual wrapper scripts that would set program requirements and then run the executable. It was an elegant and well documented solution.

Just before Billy was to move to a completely different group, an engineer came to his office with a problem. This guy had cobbled together some hacks of his own rather than using the provided wrapper scripts. The unsurprising result was that he couldn't run the programs.

Billy listened patiently as the engineer told his tale of self-inflicted woe. When he had finally wound down a bit, Billy leaned forward and said in an almost conspiratorial tone, "It must really suck to be you." 

Suspicious Character

One spring break while attending the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, I planned to visit my friend, Jim, in Hardin IL. I hadn't finished working on my car yet, so I decided to hitchhike.

I was standing on the edge of Hwy 36 in the middle of Missouri at 6 in the morning when a Highway Patrolman stopped to check me out. He looked at my driver's license and then asked me where I was going. I told him Hardin IL and he said, "Why don't you get in the car. You might be a suspicious character that I need to check out."

I spent the next half-hour chatting with him about some of his Highway Patrolman stories until we got to the next town. He pulled over, stopped the car, and said, "This is the end of my beat so I'll have to let you out here. I guess you're not that suspicious after all. Good luck!"

Easy to Find

One evening after dinner I asked Lan what would be good for dessert. She said, "I put a bowl of cut-up pears in the refrigerator, why don't we just have those?"

"Sounds good, I'll go get them."

No matter how hard I looked, though, I just couldn't find those pears. Finally I said, "Honey, are you sure they're in here? I can't seem to find them."

Lan was getting pretty annoyed by this time and in exasperation, she came into the kitchen, walked up to the fridge, and took out the pears.

She turned to me with a thoroughly disgusted look on her face and said, "You're lucky my pussy's always in the same place or you probably couldn't find that either."

Optometrist Needed

Yesterday I had one of those really good days. There were no panics at work, I was able to actually get some things done, and the atmosphere was very relaxed.

On the way home, the traffic was not bad and the radio station, KCSM, was playing a long set of Miles Davis' "All Blues". When I got home I was in a really good mood.

I parked the car in the garage, went into the house where Lan was working in the kitchen, and said, "Hi honey. You look really cute today!"

She turned, gave me a "look", and then said, "I think it must be time for you to get new glasses."

Still Alive

A few months ago my wife, Lan, had a routine blood test that returned numbers that were out of the normal range for her liver.

Over the course of the next several weeks she had more extensive blood tests done targeting her liver. These tests were inconclusive, so her doctor then scheduled a CT scan for her. This also didn't clarify what was wrong.

Finally they gave her an MRI which showed that she had a large cyst on her liver. After several meetings with the surgeon, It was decided to remove the cyst using laparoscopic surgery.

The day of the surgery I took Lan to the hospital, got her checked in, and waited for her turn in the operating room. The surgery took about 2 hours and shortly after it was over, the doctor came out to see me. He explained what was done and assured me that everything went well.

About a half hour later a nurse came out to bring me into the post-op recovery room. Lan was lying on a hospital gurney and still hadn't completely come out of the anesthesia. I was sitting on a chair beside her when she turned, looked at me, and said, "Hi honey," And then said almost to herself, "This is really good, I'm still alive!"

She's doing fine now and is almost completely recovered.

Pressure Player

I had a load to deliver to a large Kroger's warehouse in Louisville KY. I arrived early in the morning and waited along with a dozen other trucks for the gates to open at 6:am.

Kroger's had a policy that they wouldn't start unloading any trucks until all the trucks were backed into the dock. All the drivers managed to get their trucks backed in except for a hillbilly from Arkansas. This guy had the easiest spot to back into since it was right on the end of the dock.

At the time, I had shoulder length hair and was at least 10 years younger than most of the other drivers. My long hair combined with my youth automatically pegged me as a hippy to the mostly redneck drivers who were standing around watching the guy from Arkansas.

After he had made about a half-dozen unsuccessful attempts, I walked up to his cab and said, "Look, why don't you let me back that in for you. If I can do it perfectly in one try, you owe me 5 bucks. If I have to pull up even once, you owe me nothing."

The pressure was on, so he had to agree to the deal.

I climbed up into the cab of that filthy International cab-over. The empty potato chip bags, scattered dirty clothes, and empty coke cans rolling around on the floor combined to give it the ambiance of a homeless camp.

I fished around with the sloppy shifter until I found reverse, put it in gear, and backed that thing into the dock perfectly. As I was getting out of the truck, the guy walked up to me and started reaching for his chain drive wallet.

I said, "That's OK, keep your money. Just remember this episode the next time the subject of hippies comes up."