Friday 11/9/07

Greetings to all. For your pleasure and perhaps edification, enjoy the following list of "close calls" that ended as "blessings and graces."

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I was motorcycling southbound outside Logan, Utah, on a paved county road. On my right was a pickup truck parked at a stop sign, as if ready to enter the highway.

As I got closer I saw an elderly man behind the wheel, reading a book. Presumption (a bad idea in motorcycling) took me, and I decided he was reading, not driving ... he was no hazard to me.

As I got real close, this old guy suddenly put the book down and peeled out, right in front of me.

My choices were to run into the truck or go for the borrow pit. I picked the latter. The front wheel dropped, I lurched forward onto the handlebars. Then the front wheel rose sharply when it hit the fill path next to the culvert. The handlebars came up to meet me. My feet slid backwards off the pegs. Up on the entry road, the front wheel went down again. The bike and I were level for a nano-second.

Quickly we ran off the other side, down into the borrow ditch again. I saw the handlebars close-up once more. Then I saw the barbed wire and burned-off fence posts.

Eventually we ground through the roadside flotsam, kicking up beer cans and tumbleweeds. Still in motion, I rode that puppy back up to the shoulder and stopped.

No flat tire. No blood. No bruises. No damage to the motorcycle whatsoever. Last I saw, the old man was motoring off north, oblivious to all of this.

It was a grace I survived. Just one of many such close calls.

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Laura and I were coming home from Idaho in our treasured red 1968 Ford XL 500. We had just completed the I-80 entrance ramp from Highway 30 out of Kemmerer, about a mile west of Little America.

We had changed course just slightly from southeast to east. The wind was no longer in our favor.

Suddenly we saw a huge sheet of galvanized iron, the kind used to make ductwork. It blew up out of the median and slammed into the car, just that quickly. Bang.

In the rearview mirror, I saw an ugly chunk of crumpled metal blowing off to the north. We stopped at Little America so I could change my shorts and inspect the car.

The beltline chrome strip on the driver's door had taken the brunt of the blow. Underneath, there was a huge fresh gash along the transmission guard. Otherwise, no damage.

Anything could have happened. The metal could have hit glass. It could have snagged brake lines. It could have impacted steering. It could have struck the windshield.

It was a miracle -- a grace -- we survived. Just one of many close calls.

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Tomatoes spilled from a truck into our path on Pacheco Pass near Gilroy in California. (I yelled "Wheeeee" which Laura didn't think was funny.) A floor jack rolled off a truck into our path in downtown Duchesne, Utah. A cabbage trailer tipped over right in front of me between Watsonville and Salinas, California. Oh, and the road was slick with morning dew.

I tipped a motorcycle over in a curve on Red Mountain Pass. The bike and I slid around the curve and the bike suddenly righted itself, me astride it, heading downhill in the correct lane of traffic. Again, no damage.

A wind gust blew us in our '68 right into the path of a motorized oil derrick north of Green River, Wyoming. The wind reversed itself, and blew us back into the correct lane just as the truck rumbled past.

Just this side of Norton, Kansas, we were homebound in the '68 when the highway dropped into a draw. There was a blizzard down there in the draw. We were blinded.

The car went off the road into a snowbank. There was a little damage -- when a kindly trucker hooked on and pulled us out, the exhaust system got bent on hardened roadside drifts. But we weren't hurt, and went on into Oberlin for a good meal and a warm night's sleep.

Weather stopped us eastbound at Evanston, Wyoming. Our '69 Mustang had a set of chains in the trunk. I pulled off the road and lay under the car installing them. I could have reached my hand out to touch the tires of trucks going by.

Laura spotted for me, and when we thought a truck wasn't coming, I got out, and back into the car. We got to Rock Springs and gave up travelling for the day -- though it was only noon.

I banged my motorcycle into Laura's in downtown Brighton once. I was trying to keep from being run over by a guy with a jacked-up Nova. Bent my bag guard. No one tipped over.

At midnight, atop Rabbit Ears Pass, Tom and Laura and Brad and Mary Jo rode wet and cold, heading for Steamboat. Brad was in front, and he saw the rockslide. He honked and yelled and waved, and all four of us rode around the swirl of rocks.

Then we all looked back, to see what we had lived through. Whew.

When we looked forward again, there she was. The prettiest young deer in the world. Right in front of us. We missed somehow, and she ran off down a cliff and into the woods. At the motel an hour later, we all hid our heads under our pillows.

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Here are some recent blessings which have come to us: The Tempo and the '56 F-600 both have new tires, ready for winter; the cat has his rabies (3yr) and distemper shots; leathercraft classes are up and running; The mobile homes have been winterized; There's a new "membrane" roof installed on one of the fourplexes, ready for winter or spring; New Tandy inventory is in stock and paid for; and we have a brand new computer that is only slightly more of a problem than the old one it replaced.

Perhaps many of our "close calls" are behind us.

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Word of the week: Oxymoron. It's from the Greek! Oxys, sharp, and moron, dull. It's defined as a figure of speech in which opposite or contradictory ideas are combined, such as thunderous silence, sweet sorrow.

Here are some of my own: Military intelligence; benign tumor; politically correct; solid gold. Submit yours! ! ! A prize will be awarded for the best one.

Next week's word: Hiatus.

Gripes? Complaints? Whines? or Comments? Adoration? Puppy love? Feel free to express yourself in the comments!