" One thing I learned about life is ; if you do not know where you are going yu will surely get there!!  a True-ism

  I guess you figured out that I am over the half century mark...  But that does not change the truth....   So where can we start, oh ya, down in south Fla. back in the late fiftys.... 1950s for the rest of you folks.....  We will talk a  bout some road warrior tales on my bike...  Well my younger brother and I, started using our bikes more and more, as Mom had remarried a guy named Charlie, and things got worse....  So off we would go on our bikes...

Went to Jr High as they called it in those days at one school, then had to transfer to another Mirror Lake Jr High {ya it is still there} for the 8th grade.... Well Charlie had not gone past the 8th grade, figured that was good enough for us too...  Mom was an RN, so was the first of her family from South GA to go to college.... This was  back during the " Depression",  if you don't know about that, get out your history {unless you have one of the new revisionist editions} book, and check it out....  So she and my granny or  Mrs "O" wanted us to go on to college, think GOD for them....

I say all that to tell I had to have a job, you know work after school, and Saturdays..  So I got a downtown paper route...  Here I learned how to play Chess as well as the lesson of not wasting time...  We delivered the "Final Edition",which came off the press as soon as the stock market closed....  Since New York was on Day Lite savings; which was way before before the south did so...  [now some of you think these were the days right after the dark ages, and King Author's  round table, about the time the TV came out, which is correct... So there were only a few of the Yankee states that played the day lite saving game then]  During these waiting hours I learned to play chess, got pretty good at it if I must say....  played tournament chess years later when I was in the Navy..

Back to the bike story....   Well as you may know, it gets dark sooner in the winter months, and the rains come in Sept, and Oct...  It is the end of the Hurricane season, you know...  So by the time I got through throwing the papers it was dark....  So on this particular night it was raining, which is not a good thing on a bike...  But someone had to do it so there I was making 2 cents a paper...  Heading out Central Avenue right past 4th St...  Which is a four lane with parking on both sides...  six lanes total.....  Who would expect to see some" Igmo" double parked [Which is where they just stop in their lane beside the parallel parked cars] in front of a Walgreens.....  I was mainly looking down due to the driving rain in my face, and would glance up every so often.... 

 I saw the tail lites, but thought that he was moving....  Wrong ....  So about the time I got to within about fifty feet, and realized this " Igmo" is not moving it was too late to change lanes, so I locked up the brakes.... and DUH.... went over on my left side, sliding down the street, at about 10 MPH with the bike lay-ed down in front, of Lucky me....  Slid on the wet pavement, right up under his bumper and the foot guard sliced a neat gash in the gasoline tank....  Since it was raining the fuel was not as noticeable, and there was no fire...  Again Lucky for me!!

Well I had to pry and pull the handle bars out from under the bumper....  My side hurt from the twenty foot slide down the street... Yet the Ole guy in the car just sat there; he never got out, once I was back up on the bike and ready set to head off again, he did roll the window down about an inch and ask if I was "ok".....   Of course I was sore, wet, and very fortunate that the whole thing did not expolde...  [Don't think he ever got his car started]  Just another chapter in what you go Through as a road warrior...  

More later...  Stop back by as we look at more on my Unusual pathway of life...

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