For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.

Motorcycle blog #5 -- The Ozarks circa 1979

If you've taken my "Shy Person's Guide" class, you've heard the story about the woman who told me I had used "the worst opening line ever" on her. Happily, I recovered from the bad start and ended up going on a date with her, which went quite well, thank you. We ended up staying in touch after that ski trip, and shortly after I got my new Yamaha XS-750-SF, I decided to ride down to visit her.

Her name was Kaye, and she was the head groundskeeper at the State Capitol in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Yeah, I know...I had never really given any thought to the fact that a Capitol would require a groundskeeper, either, but I was to learn many things during this trip. For example, did you know that at that time, Lousiana had the largest percentage of illiterates of any state in the country? (The reason Kaye knew that was that not a single person on her staff could read or write. And yeah, the head groundskeeper had a staff of some twenty people. Heck, she might still be doing it for all I know. Oh, and yeah, she could read -- quite an intelligent lady, despite the seemingly contrary evidence that she was willing to be seen in public with me. College degree, and all that -- but I digress.)

My new Yamaha was gorgeous. Bright red, and tricked out with all the accessories; Windjammer fairing, matching saddlebags, two-tier semi-bucket seats, quilted backrest, highway footpegs, and of course, cruise control. It was an oh-so-smooth three-cylinder powerhouse with shaft drive and a 4.1-gallon gas tank. When I bought the thing, I felt compelled to give up my BÖC-logo blue helmet and get a sparkly red one to match the bike. I even had a "visibility jacket" -- a eye-searingly brilliant yellow, with the word "Yamaha" tastefully displayed down the natty vertical "racing" stripe. Even with my plastic-wrapped sleeping bag bungeed onto the backrest, I must say that I looked cool.

I decided that the trip would be on no particular timetable. I'd cruise down through the Ozarks, pop over to visit a college buddy in Galveston, then boogie on across to Louisiana. I'd get there when I'd get there. If I saw something interesting along the way, I was going to stop and check it out. I felt exactly like the guys in "Easy Rider", well, except for the stupidity, the drugs, and the heads-getting-blown-off parts.

The trip out of Kansas and over to Arkansas was wonderful. Most Americans think that Kansas is all barren flatlands, and a good section of it is, but the southeastern corner of the state is a paradise of lush rolling hills; the kind of thing that us free-riding biker types just love.

One of my favorite things about being a cyclist is the bond you have with all the other bikers on the road. Sure, the Harley guys think that those of us on "rice-burners" were somewhat lacking in the patriotism department, and we in turn felt that the Harley guys were somewhat deficient in the "recognition of technological excellence" department. (Harleys are much improved these days, by the way. But back then, they had a tendency to underperform, leak oil, and break down regularly.) And the guys who rode British or Italian bikes were looked upon as being just a bit off-center, much the same as people who like Bob Saget are viewed nowdays. But every single biker you passed on the road -- regardless of his/her machine's origin, regardless of whether he/she was pro-helmet or pro-brainsplatter, and regardless of personal passions for or against piercings & body art -- every single biker would wave at you as you rode past. Every biker I met at rest stops, regardless of whether he was wearing an accountants-only green polyester leisure suit or the pelts of jungle animals he'd personally killed with a monkey wrench, would chat amiably and offer to help you with navigation, tourist tips, and zen-based motorcycle maintenance. Despite portrayals in popular movies ("Every Which Way But Loose" comes to mind), bikers are outstanding people.

The ride into Arkansas passed without incident. But once I got into the Ozarks, it began to drizzle. "No problem," I thought, "I've got rain gear" (see motorcycle blog#2). I pulled over and suited up.

OK, it wasn't real rain gear -- that was too expensive. Instead of buying one of those yellow rubberized sea captain outfits, I improvised. I had a green one-piece coverall -- you know, the kind that Texaco grease monkeys used to wear, where it said "MELVIN" above the pocket. I had purchased this thing for a couple of bucks from the discount rack at JC Penney's, sprayed the hell out of it with ScotchGard®, and had successfully stayed dry within it on a couple of ski trips. Now, ScotchGard® is a fine product, and it repels water like Gilbert Gottfried repels decorum; but it cannot overcome the inherent limitations of low-thread-count fabric. It worked well enough in a light drizzle, but my afternoon Ozarks drizzle quickly turned into a good old-fashioned toad strangler of a gullywasher.

The Yamaha didn't care. The drive shaft was fully enclosed, and the air intake was tucked out of harm's way. I knew the bike could handle it, because I had once ridden through a flooded intersection where the water came up over my knees with no harm done. And at first, I just enjoyed the ride. I figured that I could make it to Hot Springs with no problem. And the winding mountain road was so pretty...

As I rode, though, several things crossed my mind. I began to make mental notes: 1) Spraying water repellant on a crappy coverall is no substitute for a high-quality rubber suit. Upon return to Wichita, check into used HazMat suits, or at least some made-for-bikers rain gear (including boots). 2) Next trip, remember that a little straight line on a map that seems to represent a half-hour drive at 55mph, might actually represent several hours worth of exhausting negotiation of hairpin turns, encounters with road-hogging Winnebagos, and challenging slalom courses made from the corpses of road-kill armadillos. 3) Since I'm already soaked, do you think peeing in my pants would make me warmer?

Finally, I dripped into Hot Springs around 10pm. I was cold, tired, and fed up with discomfort. My original plan had been to camp out that night, but hell with that – I was getting a motel room and taking a long, hot bath.

The first motel I saw looked like something that even the cockroaches would avoid, but I stopped anyway. The turbaned desk clerk informed me that not only was the dump hideously expensive, but they only had showers…no tubs. I moved on.

I soon discovered that I had the misfortune of cruising into Hot Springs on the very same night as the start of the National Port-A-Potty Convention. Every single non-toxic motel room in town was booked to some guy who sells plastic toilet condos. Heck, these convention guys probably carried their own sanitizer, so maybe even the filthiest rooms in town were taken. Seemed to be true -- by the time I went back to the first sleazy craphole I’d visited, they didn’t have any rooms, either.

I was tired, and cold, and I just wanted to find a place to crash. But since nothing was available in Hot Springs, I got back on the bike and rode on. The rain had stopped, and I figured that there was some microscopic chance that I could survive long enough to make it to the next town.

About a mile out of town, I spied a small park. Good enough, I decided. Since my sleeping bag had been double garbage bagged, it ought to have been dry. A bath would have been so nice, but screw it. I needed to get out of my sopping coverall.

I found a picnic table in a remote corner of the park, and unrolled my sleeping back on top of it. I hung my wet clothes on the bike handlebars, put on a dry pair of underwear, took out my contact lenses, wadded up my extra T-shirt for a pillow, and crawled into the sleeping bag. I was still cold, and not particularly comfortable, but I was soon fast asleep.

My slumber did not last long. The sound of voices made me sit up on the picnic table. I tried to see where the noise was coming from, but without my contact lenses, all I saw were vaguely monstrous shapes silhouetted by incoming car headlights. I felt sure that I’d stumbled upon a lair of Omega Man zombies or something, and that within moments, they’d be feasting upon my sweet and tasty brains. I fumbled in my pack for my trusty Boy Scout knife, popped it open, and gripped it like I’d seen James Coburn do in “The Magnificent Seven”.

After about 20 minutes, my not-yet-eaten brain finally caught on to the fact that the park’s other occupants were completely unaware of my existence. In fact, they seemed to be nothing more sinister that a group of high-school kids celebrating the outcome of some sort of sporting event. Due to the volume with which they spoke to each other, I suspected that massive quantities of alcohol were being consumed.

I tried to go back to sleep, but didn’t have much luck. Each time the party sounds began to fuse into background noise, there would be a whoop of shrill laughter, or the clang of a poorly-aimed beer can ricocheting off a trash can. I amused myself by trying to think of really creative curses to cast upon these wretches and their offspring and their parents and their pets and…

After a couple of hours of hearty partying, the teens got back in their cars and left to violate uncounted traffic regulations on their way to their respective homes. I finally was able to return to dreamland. I floated into slumber with visions of warm beaches, beautiful women, and soothing music. In my dream I could hear the gentle sounds of waves lapping at the shoreline, wispy breezes nudging puffy clouds, and harmonious flutes paying homage to the serenity of nature. It was a slumber land of total peace and good will…if it weren’t for that infernal banging and growling –

Banging and growling? Huh? I woke with a start and realized that my isolated little park was indeed a popular place. It had been invaded again.

With my 20/300 uncorrected vision, it took me a while to figure out what was going on. But by listening carefully over the sound of my pounding heart, I was finally able to determine that the local trash cans were being thoroughly searched by a pack of wild dogs. Not the African kind, of course, but more the Cujo kind.

There were several hundred of them, all snarling and drooling and panting, with their razor sharp fangs glinting in the moonlight.

...Uh, OK, there wasn’t any moonlight, and there were probably only a half-dozen dogs or so, but it still got my adrenaline pumping. As they came my way, I imagined their feral canine thought processes; “Hey, look…on that table! Ah, here’s some fresh meat – a little stringy, perhaps, but still more satisfying than all those empty beer cans.” I began to prepare for a bloody battle, with my own thoughts racing. “They might tear me into tiny pieces before it’s done, but I swear that the steel of my Boy Scout knife shall give a good accounting of itself, by Crom.”

Sure enough, the pack soon had my table surrounded. My nearsighted eyes darted back and forth, trying to assess the threat from my blurry foes. Even this close, I couldn’t tell whether they were some sort of rabid Ozark devil-wolves or just a bunch of Aunt Claudia’s backyard mutts who’d strolled away home – but I knew they weren’t just harmless little Chihuahuas or wiener dogs. I couldn’t actually see any foam dripping from their lips, but I had no trouble at all imagining it in copious quantities.

Then it was over. Whether it was due to a signal from the lead dog, Jedi mind control from a helpful Obi Wan type hiding among the trees, or the fact that they just didn’t think I’d taste very good, the dogs all just wandered off to search for better grub among the remaining garbage. I think one of them might’ve peed on the back tire of the Yamaha before he left, but I’m not even sure of that. But it looked as if I’d survive the night.

I did go back to sleep, but it sure seemed like a short time before the sun was up, shining me awake. I briefly considered trying to roll back over and get some more shut-eye, but figured that with my luck, the local Ladies Quilting Club would be rolling into the park at any minute, clanging their utensils as they whipped up a nice breakfast of ham and biscuits. I got up, put on some clothes, wadded up the still-damp Texaco outfit, and tossed it into the saddlebag. In less than 3 minutes, I had my contact lenses on and the sleeping bag once again wrapped in Hefty bags.

The 750 fired right up, and I didn’t look back. I didn’t care or have any idea how far I’d travel that day, but I knew I didn’t want to stick around Hot Springs any longer. I twisted the throttle and jumped back on the highway.

About a mile down the road, I saw a rest area overflowing with trucks carrying plastic outhouses. I’m not sure how it smelled, but I was pretty sure that those guys had gotten more sleep than I had.

The most disappointing thing about the entire night’s ordeal was when I found out how agonizingly close I’d been to a night of comfort and bliss. Exactly one-half mile beyond the rest area, I encountered a brand new mammoth motel complex -- abounding with “Vacancy” signs. There was a Holiday Inn, a Travelodge, and a Ramada – right next to each other. Not only did they have inexpensive rooms with sumptuous jet-equipped bathtubs, but they had free HBO and Cinemax. I thought about stopping for breakfast, but decided that I didn’t want to explain why I had tears in my eyes. I rode on.

As you may have guessed, the rest of my trip contained other adventures, but those shall have to wait for another time.

Stay warm and dry, my friends.
Terry

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.

Motorcycle blog #4 -- The Middle Years circa 1972

It's one thing when my stupidity endangers my own life...but quite another when I almost get my best friend killed.

Mickey had a girlfriend. Her name was Gail, and she was beautiful. And even though I really enjoyed spending time with Mickey, I was certainly happy to support his romance with Gail. After all, I liked her too -- hell, everybody did -- and I also enjoyed her entire family. So when Mickey asked me to help him with a "romantic date" project, I enthusiastically agreed to support it.

He had a tandem bicycle, and the idea was that he and Gail could go for a romantic picnic aboard the bicycle built for two. Sounds good. But the problem was that Gail lived in the town of Bel Aire, which was about 20 miles away, and neither of us had a bike rack that would hold the tandem.

I know what you're thinking -- "Not a problem. Simply invite Gail over to Mickey's house and begin the ride from there." Sure, that's a completely rational and logical idea...so of course, we never thought of it. Instead, we decided to explore alternatives for getting the big bike over to Gail's house.

Our resources consisted of a 1971 Ford Pinto with a stick shift (black -- Mickey called it "Bucky"), and a twenty-foot long hunk of rope. The solution was obvious.

We tied one end of the rope around the rear bumper of the Pinto, and the other around the steering column of the bike, just below the handlebars. I'm not sure what logic we used, but I was selected to drive the car while Mickey perched atop the bike to steer it. I was quite inexperienced with handling the Pinto's stick shift, but apparently Mickey thought being on the bike would be more fun than being in the car.

Twenty feet may seem like a fairly long rope, but by the time we tied the knots the bicycle was only a dozen feet behind the car. Still that may seem like a lot, until you think about tailgating on the highway. Yeah, did I mention that we were going to Gail's house via the Interstate? And that Mickey would be helmetless, barefoot, and wearing shorts?

It was rough figuring out how to accelerate the car gently enough to ensure Mickey's comfort. I probably burned a few years off his clutch's lifespan, but we managed to get going. We negotiated the neighborhood without incident, and made it up the freeway on-ramp with no problems.

In fact, the entire journey down I-285 was a lark-and-a-half. I didn't exceed the speed limit, but there were still a few cars that we passed. I loved seeing the looks on their faces as a guy on a bicycle went cruising by them in the fast lane. Mickey was grinning like a monkey, and happily waved at all the cars. He even pretended to pedal, so that it would seem he was under his own power. People would point and wave, and everyone seemed to be having a great time.

It didn't really ever occur to either of us that anything unexpected would leave Mickey as nothing but a greasy smear across hundreds of yards of pavement. If I braked suddenly, he was fender paste. If there was debris on the highway, he'd be catapulted like a French castle's cow. If a tire blew, he'd be a bloody tumbleweed, leaving Schwinn components and little Mickey bits all over the Kansas landscape. But we didn't think about any of that.

Until we got to Bel Aire. The trip had gone smoothly, and I had shown unexpected mastery of the intracacies of shifting, braking, and accelerating. But about a block from Gail's house, we had to make it around one more corner -- and it was one too many.

The tow rope somehow snagged the end of the bike's handlebars, jerking the wheel hard over to the right. Fortunately I was still watching in the rear-view mirror, and I stopped right away...but not until after the bike had done a couple of manuevers it was not designed for. The fork was crumpled, the frame was bent, and poor Mickey was a bloody mess. Thank God none of his injuries were serious, but it was evident that the picnic date was going to have to be cancelled.

I really don't remember much about what happened after that. I know that we got Mickey the appropriate first aid, and I assume that we somehow got the mangled Schwinn over to her house as well. The Pinto wasn't hurt at all, and other than the horrible mental scars, I didn't suffer any damage, either.

I don't recall if Mickey and Gail ever got to go on the romantic bike ride. I do know that they broke up during our Freshman year, over something incredibly stupid. I'm pretty sure that if they'd have stayed together, Mickey's life would've turned out far better than it did -- but after a few bad years, he's doing great now.

As for me, well, there was one other time I took a bicycle up to highway speed -- but that was during a triathlon and it was on a racing bike coming down the mountain on highway 24 into Manitou Springs. I had on a helmet and gloves, and had practiced many long hours for just such an event. I also eventually mastered the stick shift, and even bought a Pinto of my own.

Did the great highway bike ride influence my decision to buy a motorcycle? I'm not sure. But I do know that I have a couple more interesting bike stories to tell.

Stay tuned, my friends.
Terry

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.

Motorcycle blog #3 -- The Early Years circa 1966

Sometimes I really wonder how I've managed to live this long.

When I was a kid, every kid in the neighborhood had a bicycle -- and rode it everywhere. We rode down to the creek to catch crawdads, over to the pool for a swim, and down to the playground to, well, play.

Mine was a red Hawthorne 24-incher. (I think it came from a Western Auto store.) It had a lamp on the front fender, a reflector on the back, a wire basket bolted to the handlebars, and an industrial strength kickstand that rarely got used. Gears? We didn't need no steenking gears. One speed, baby -- the faster you pedal, the faster you go. Top speed around 15 mph. Cruising range limited only by the boundless energy stored in youthful legs.

I actually learned to ride on my sister's J.C. Higgins "girl's" bike. Though it was embarrasing to be seen on a bike without that fork-to-saddle crossbar, it was actually easier to ride. (To me, it seemed silly for the boys to have that bar and for the girls not to -- we were the ones who had delicate body parts located right in that bar's impact zone. Though my understanding of female anatomy was vague at best, I was pretty sure that they'd be able to handle a crotch-bar impact better than we could. When questioned on the subject, my dad explained that the girls' bike design was originally conceived so that females could ride bikes modestly while wearing a dress. "Dad," I said, "that's stupid. When's the last time anybody's seen a girl riding a bike in a dress? C'mon, man, this is the Atomic Age -- get with the times." In response, I got the standard raised-eyebrow look that silently says "why do I have to put up with this insolent no-nothing punk?" -- a look that I have since incorporated into my own parental repertoire.)

Once I got my Hawthorne, I rode it everywhere. Those old single-gear fat-tire beasts were built like tanks, so no one felt any obligation to be gentle. When one arrived at his destination, he'd simply leap off the bike and proceed with business, ignoring the crashing sound as the bike fell to the earth. As we got older and more experienced, we began to try to disembark at higher and higher velocities. The unwritten requirements of "coolness" demanded it.

Following the logical progression that kids instinctively understand, we eventually made our way to the playground at Peterson Elementary School -- they had horizontal bars. If you rode under the bar, grabbed it, and let the bike go, well, it would be spectacular.

[Side note: In those days, we called the horizontal bars "monkey bars". We also used the name "monkey bars" for those tooth-chipping collections of steel pipe that formed a giant geodesic cube. Ah, the memories of watching the attractive kids learning the rudiments of romance while perched high above the playground -- while us dorky kids were so desperate to show off that we found new and exciting ways to injure ourselves on the very same equipment. Man, those were the days.]

I suppose that our playground bicycle sessions were educational in some ways. We learned about the basic laws of physics. Oh, maybe we didn't use terms such as "friction", "drag", or "kinetic energy", but we did figure out that the faster you went, the further your bike would travel on its own after you grabbed the monkey bars. We marked lines in the sand to indicate the current "world record" riderless bike travel distance. Then we'd try to go even faster.

Though I didn't know the scientific term for it at the time, I was about to get up close and personal with the concept of "angular momentum". I carefully calculated the correct distance to the bar, and rode the bike back to that point. (Too close and you wouldn't be able to get up to top speed. Too far away and you'd get tired before you got there.) I solemnly waved to the imaginary crowd, took a deep breath, and took off.

I had measured perfectly. I reached the bar at the precise moment I hit top speed. I grabbed the bar with both hands and the bike zipped off without its rider. I was later told that the bike went on as if it were still being steered -- straight and true. It rolled until it finally ran out of steam, then it seemed to sigh, pause for a second, and then gently topple over on its side. My buddies cheered for the new never-to-be-broken Beamon-like record.

Unfortunately, I missed it. I had grabbed the bar, all right, but the velocity I had hit with caused my legs to keep going. Just like a gymnast doing a giant loop, I felt my feet go up over my head until they were nearly vertical. Then I lost my grip on the bar.

I'm still not sure why I'm alive today. As I lost my grip, my body stopped rotating. It felt as if I were frozen in space for a millisecond, with my feet directly above my little pin head. Then I started down.

I hit directly on the top of my head. All I can say is that it's a good thing that kids have flexible skeletons, cuz I surely should've broken something. As it was, though, I managed to survive without permanent disability. (Well, OK, my neck still gets stiff sometimes, and I have trouble remembering things like, well... you know, stuff.) I sat there mumbling until my buddies came over. "I think I wanna go home," I said.

I had a headache for a few days, but otherwise was back to normal right away. And I'm pleased to say that my bike was unharmed, and provided many more years of stellar service. (It was finally "retired" when we bought Mike Pearce's old Schwinn 10-Speed, which ended our family's one-speed era once and for all.) But my horizontal bar-grabbing days were over.

Not my involvement with stupid bike stunts, though. I'll tell you about it in the next blog.

Play safe, my friends.
Terry

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.

Motorcycle blog #2 -- The Trip to Topeka circa 1978

I was in love. She was a brown 1976 Kawasaki KZ400 with new tires and a back rest. I'd just bought this sweet girl a few days before, and was anxious to put 'er to the test of the open road.

I had almost purchased a motorcycle once before. When it became obvious to my dad that it would be easier for all of us to deal with my college experience if I had my own transportation, he briefly flirted with the idea of buying me a bike rather than a car. It'd be a lot cheaper, both in initial cost and in recurring expenses. We even went so far as to test ride a piece-of-crap used euro bike that some guy down the street had sitting in the yard with a "For Sale" sign on it. I wasn't allowed to drive it, but I got to ride around the block while hanging on to my dad's waist. It was fun.

Two reasons we decided to go with an automobile: reason #1 was that our used euro-crap test ride was a little squirrely, since the rear tire was grossly underinflated -- didn't bother me, but I think it reminded my dad of what his mother had constantly repeated, which was reason #2. She said, and I quote, "Them things should be called 'murder' sickles, cuz they'll kill ya as dead as a polecat in bear trap." I didn't really understand the analogy, but the message of two-wheeled danger apparently had gotten through to my dad. I'd have to wait until I had my own job, and my own apartment.

Finally, I did, and the KZ400 was sitting right out front, buffed to a high shine. After somehow managing to survive the ride home from the dealership, I was eager to get all my accessories together and go for a longer trip. Let's see, I had a helmet and..., well I guess that was all I needed. Oh, wait, yeah, the license plate. Picked that up at the DMV and was ready to rock.

Well, not quite. The dealer had not provided nuts and bolts for attaching the license plate. I rummaged through my apartment's junk drawer and found rubber bands, Elmer's glue, a couple of thumbtacks, and an expired coupon for a Lime Mr. Misty. No nuts, no bolts.

I could go to the hardware store...or I could improvise something quickly, get on the road, and go to the hardware store on Monday. Yeah, that's the ticket. My old swim team (the Wichita Swim Club) was participating in a meet in Topeka, and the lovely Gage Park pool. A perfect destination for my inaugural road trip!

I scrounged around until I found a couple of those paper-coated wires that were used to tie the open end of a bread sack, and used them to attach the license plate to the Kawasaki. Sure, it flapped around a bit, but I figured it would hold for a trip to Topeka and back; it's all on the Interstate, fergawshsakes.

I put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, my Bob Wolf Pro tennis shoes (cheap Adidas knockoffs), my hippie-stompin' motorcycle ridin' purple mirror sunglasses, and my special hand-decorated Blue Öyster Cult logo motorcycle helmet. The tank was topped off, the tires were properly inflated, and the sun was smiling down on me in a promise of a most excellent adventure. One kick and the bike was humming. Within minutes I was heading north on I-35.

I felt great! The breeze tickled my mustache and the hairs on my legs as the wheat fields zipped by in all their amber waving glory. I'd heard the old joke about the happy biker who had bugs in his teeth, but I smiled anyway. I was having the time of my life.

Wow. When I had driven this road in a car, I'd only gotten a hint of the scent of the oil fields, but now I was experiencing the full body of their aroma. As I passed the cattle ranches, I inhaled deeply, savoring eau de cow in a way that simply is not possible from within one of those pitiful 4-wheeled contraptions. I felt as if I were a part of the landscape, rather than just a steel-wrapped cocoon slicing through it on an oblivious mission to get from Point A to Point B. I was quickly learning how wonderful it was to be a biker.

The Fabulous Flint Hills were spectacular. I passed Emporia in great spirits. Halfway to Topeka and feeling fine. Oh, sure, there was a little tingle in my fingers from where my hands had been pounded numb from vibration, and there was a nascent cramp in my gluteus region, but it was only minor stuff. Well, maybe I was a little bit thirsty, but I didn't want to stop at HoJo's; I wanted to get to the pool to show off the KZ400 to my swimming buddies. They were going to be SO jealous.

It occurred to me that I should've used some sunscreen as my arms were starting to get a little burnt. Fortunately, there were some clouds on the horizon. I'd be OK soon.

There are three things they should tell you before they let you take a motorcycle off the showroom floor: 1) Always wear proper protective gear (which includes gloves, long pants, and boots, as well as a helmet & faceguard), 2) When it's warm, the asphalt under your kickstand will melt and the bike will fall over unless you carry an old Folgers lid to place under the end of the stand, and 3) Always be prepared for changes in the weather. Oh, and they should probably recommend against using bread sack ties as license plate bolts.

It got cold fast. Summer rain doesn't seem to be a problem when you're standing around at the local park after a leisurely neighborhood softball game. But when it's whacking your knuckles at 75 mph in the middle of Tornado Alley, it just flat stings! And of course, as it got darker I had to take of my groovey sunglasses in order to see the road...so I was getting little ice picks jabbed into my face and eyeballs as well. Within seconds, my shirt was soaked, my arms and legs were covered with goosebumps and my teeth were chattering, bugstains and all.

At the first opportunity, I pulled over under a bridge. I got off the bike and walked around in an attempt to warm up. "Hmmm," I thought, "wonder what happened to my license plate?"

It was really kind of neat, listening to the hot motorcycle engine ping as it cooled, and to the rain and wind as they did their best to encroach on my little sanctuary. I felt much better without the pinpricks of raindrops stabbing me at high velocity...but I was still cold. In fact, I soon realized, I could get hypothermia under this bridge just as easily as I could out on the road. And with the sky looking as if there'd be no end to this storm for a long, long time, well...

I got back on the bike. At first I tried going slow, to minimize the pain from raindrop impact. I estimated that it reduced the pain by 20%, but increased the expected trip duration by 100% -- you do the math. I gritted my teeth and cranked the throttle. The sooner I got to Topeka, the sooner I'd get relief.

There isn't much more to tell about the trip. I pondered many things; the likelihood of death, the fact that I'd sing like a canary if ever tortured, and the eternal question of whether they made handlebar grips that didn't translate every single vibration directly into carpal nerve damage. Did I ever think that I could stop and try to flag down a 4-wheeled Samaritan? No, dammit, I'm a tough-assed biker dude. (Well, either that or a pitiful imbecile whose brain had frozen and ceased to function. Your call.)

Well, finally, the Topeka toll booth rolled into view. If I'd have been able to stop shivering long enough, I'd have heaved a deep sigh of relief; I was going to live! I put on my turn signal for the exit ramp, and prepared to gently let off the throttle.

But I couldn't! My hand seemed to be frozen in the 75 mph position. And worse, my other hand was frozen in the "no way in hell am I going to be able to operate the clutch" position. There was a brief moment of fervent prayer, followed by a longer moment of Curley/Shemp "woo woo eeee beee bee" chirping, and then finally, some microscopic motion from the hideously deformed monkey paws that were masquerading as my hands. With a full-arm spasm I was able to release the throttle, and with a matching spasm on the left I was able to throw my entire forearm over the clutch lever and pull it toward myself. With my toe pressing on the rear brake, the bike began to slow down. Due to my Frankensteinian arm position, I didn't have complete control of the handlebars, but thank goodness, the Kawasaki was a stable little beast. I finally got the thing stopped.

I stood beside the toll booth for several minutes, working with my hands to try to breathe life back into them. Tried stuffing them under the armpits, flailing them wildly about, and finally foresaking my last remnant of macho pride, stuffing them into my pants. After several minutes of public embarrassment, I was finally able to mount up and continue on to meet my swimming pals.

I'll confess that my memory is hazy about the rest of it. I'd imagine I crawled into the swimming tent much like a Foreign Legionaire crawling into the oasis after spending three weeks in the Sahara (well, except that I was frozen rather than freezing). Someone took pity, and helped me hobble to a motel room. I do know that I stood in a warm shower for a full 50 minutes before enough life returned to my body to allow coherent thought and deliberate movement. I'm not sure what I did about dry clothes, but somehow, I was able to survive the weekend.

And believe it or not, the ride back to Wichita was frightfully pleasant. The only problems were some hand stiffness, minor buttocular cramping, and the constant fear of being pulled over for failure to have a license plate.

Shortly thereafter, the sleek Kawasaki was forced to endure adoption of embarrasing appendages -- dual saddlebags. No, they didn't look cool, and didn't enhance my image as a hippie-stompin' hardcore badass biker dude...but they were a great place to store jackets, raincoats, gloves, water bottles, and yes, extra nuts and bolts.

Ride on, my friends.
Terry

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.

I broke my ribs.

The two bottom ones on the right side. Same ones I busted in a motorcycle crash back in 1980. Kinda puts a dent in my enthusiasm for completing the great home run quest, if you know what I mean. Twisting motions cause great agony, and even though the bulging muscles in my massive upper appendages may suggest superior home run power using nothing but the arms, the fact is that I unconsciously tend to rotate the torso when I swing the bat. Habit, I guess.

So the dinger quest is on hiatus. I promise an update when the blasts continue.

Anyway, back to the saga of the broken ribs. I shall begin by providing some history.

I got my first motorcycle in 1978. I had recently started my first "real" job, and was wallowing in my newfound wealth. I didn't see any point in spending my income on frivolities, such as furniture, cooking utensils, or stylish clothing -- and I already owned a nice color TV and a low-mileage Ford Pinto with a bitchin' racing stripe. So, what the heck, I thought, let's join the hip world of two-wheeling macho men. Maybe chicks would like me if I was a bad-ass biker dude. Couldn't hurt, eh?

I went to Duckwalls and asked the clerk if they had any "motorcycle-ridin' hippie-stompin' sunglasses". They fixed me up with some purple-mirrored wireframes that hid my eyes and looked like a sunset reflection off an oil slick. Perfect. Time to go chopper shoppin'.

Now, a lesser man would be slowed down by not ever having ridden a motorcycle nor having studied the concept in any way, shape, or form. In fact, I'm not sure I'd ever even spoken to anyone who had ridden a bike -- but that didn't stop me. The first shop I went to had a lovely used low-mileage brown Kawasaki KZ-400 at a reasonable price. (What's "reasonable" when you haven't done any research at all? Uh, well, whatever's on the price tag, I guess. Hell, I've got a job...no worries.)

I wrote a check, signed the papers, and was handed the keys. The salesman rolled it out the door and waved goodbye. Of course, I had to stop him before he got back inside the store. "Uh, sir," I said. "How does it work?"

After the obligatory stunned moment of silence, he showed me how to start it up and how to shift gears. He was kind enough not to say it, but I could read in his eyes that he was praying I'd at least get out of sight of the store before I torpedoed myself into the back of an AMC Gremlin and exploded in flames.

I rode off the lot with my 1970's hair flowing in the breeze, sunlight reflecting off my glasses and blinding bystanders. Surprisingly, I got the hang of shifting gears fairly quickly. The idea of "1 down, then 4 up" didn't make any sense to me...but I accepted it and was pretty smooth right from the start.

What I didn't get was the idea of cornering. The darn thing didn't steer like a bicycle at all. I felt bad about it, but there were a couple of times where I really didn't have any choice but to drive through someone's yard as I didn't quite negotiate a turn. Instead of stompin' hippies and impressing chicks, I was apologizing to little old ladies for putting tire tracks through their posies.

Somehow I made it home alive. I parked the bike, got a buddy to take me back to the store to pick up my car. While I was there, I bought a helmet that looked like the sparkly blue bowling ball I'd used when I'd rolled my lifetime high of 180. I used some reflective sticky-back tape to decorate the helmet with a Blue Öyster Cult symbol (for safety, you know), and I was ready to ride. (Well, ride around the apartment complex parking lot, anyway.)

I got better. I felt confident enough to ride the Kawasaki to Topeka that weekend for a swim meet (but that's another blog). In a few months, I felt confident enough to succumb to the urge for MORE POWER, and I bought my Yamaha XS750SF. That's when I started crashing.

Many other Yamaha memories shall eventually be covered in these pages, but this blog is about rib injuries, so I'll skip the country road crash with stitches and the grand "one day before the wedding" blood all-over-the-streets fiasco. The event I'm concerned with here was not nearly so dramatic.

I was riding to work at the Boeing Military Airplane Company. It was a full daylight, dry road day. Traffic wasn't too bad. I'd like to be able to say that my mishap was caused by an out-of-control semi truck driven by an incoherent Jan Michael Vincent, but the truth is that I simply turned a little too sharply and hit an inconspicuous patch of dirt. The realities of friction coefficients being what they are, my tires obeyed the laws of physics and relinquished pavement contact duties to other parts of the bike and its hapless occupant. Biff.

I didn't slide far. There didn't seem to be any blood, and there was nothing but minor scratches on the Yamaha. I'll confess that I did sit in the middle of the intersection for a few moments, probably with a puzzled look on my face. In situations like that, you always ask "How did that happen?", "What did I do wrong?", and "Did any hot girls see me do that?". Then you suddenly realize that people in minivans want to drive across the exact spot of pavement upon which you sit, so it would be best to move on. I stood up, grabbed the bike by the handlebars and stood it up. As I did that, a million points of light exploded in the right side of my abdomen. After a more-or-less appropriate amount of cursing, I said to myself, "Hmm, must be bruised. I'll be sore for a couple of days".

Ha. Turns out that I had indeed cracked the ribs, and would be in pretty much constant pain for the next several months. Therefore, you can imagine how depressed I was last week when I felt that exact same pain in my side.

No, I didn't dump my bike this time. I was running late for my drive to karate class, and I needed to get the cats in the house since no one was going to be home until late. Well, Annie came right in when she heard the fridge open, but Max was too far away. I went outside, and quickly found him in the neighbor's yard. Folks say that cats won't come when you call, but Max did. Well, almost.

He sauntered up to the fence between the yards. He acted like he was going to cooperate, and I started thinking that maybe I'd make it to class on time after all. But wait, this is a CAT, isn't it? He just sat there looking at me from the other side of the fence, tantalizingly close, but not quite close enough to grab with ease.

As I said, I was in a hurry. I leaned over the fence and bent down to put my hands on him. So far, so good. But I couldn't really pick him up from this unleveraged position -- so I leaned onto the fence rail and used it for a fulcrum. As a method of gaining leverage to pick up the cat, it worked fine. As a demonstration of compatibility with skeletal integrity, it was woefully inadequate. I heard (or perhaps just felt) a small "crack", and instantly knew that I should've just let the stupid cat stay out all night.

Yeah, I got him in. And yeah, I made it to karate class on time. And yeah, I did crack the ribs. Ouch. (In fact, I have said "ouch" -- or one of its less-polite synonyms -- an estimated 47,000 times since the incident.) Yes, I know that the doctors say I should rest, relax, avoid deep breaths, and drink plenty of beer...but I am continuing to attend karate class, swim practice, and other non-sedentary activities. Will my behavior slow the healing process? I dunno...probably. Will my injury last as long as it did after the motorcycle crash? Well, duh! -- I'm 20-some years older now; I'd guess I'm gonna feel it for decades to come. Hell, I'll probably become a weather-predictin' old coot -- "Big storm a'comin'...mah ribs sez so, by gum." And over the next few months I'll grimace every time I move my torso. Oh well. That's the way it is, I guess.

I no longer have a motorcycle. I could get rid of the cat, I suppose, except then some other danger would surface to take his place. Maybe I'd hurt myself putting on a too-tight pair of socks, or become a victim of an electric toothbrush on a rampage -- I don't know. But I'm not going to worry about it. I'm just going to go out and get a new pair of groovey mirrored sunglasses, and go from there.

Have a healthy day, my friends.
Terry

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit http://www.shyperson.com/.

Way back before Kevin Costner built his first cornfield ballpark, us kids who lived in Kansas tended to become fans of the baseball team that received the most radio coverage. This was before the KC Royals came into existence, and WAY before the advent of the Colorado Rockies, so there was no shame or stigma in rooting for a team from another state. It seemed that the media granted the most coverage to the Yankees and the Dodgers, so most of us picked one or the other to become the object of our fandom. I don't remember for sure, but I suppose I formed my opinions based on how my dad felt about the subject. Nevertheless, whether it was my dad's opinion or not, I remember having the distinct impression that the Yankees were good and the Dodgers were evil. It was also OK to root for the Giants, because Willie Mays was on their team, and he was great. (I'm pretty sure that I thought he played every position on their team.)

Anyway, I was a Yankees fan. We listened to games on the radio. Mickey Mantle became my baseball hero, followed closely by Roger Maris. Their pictures made it into the newspaper, so we knew what they looked like, but we had to create mental images of the other players. I assumed that Whitey Ford was an albino, naturally, and that Yogi Berra wore a necktie and was smarter than the av-er-age Berra. During the season of the Great Home Run Record chase, my friends and I all followed the season with great interest.

Maris got the record, of course, and it became the dream of every neighborhood kid to be the one to break Roger's Record.

After the season, one of the breakfast food companies started printing baseball cards on the backs of their cereal boxes. We ate a LOT of cold cereal that year, and I ended up with several Maris and Mantle cards, complete with those mind-boggling home run statistics. (Of course, the back of the card was the featureless grey cardboard that inhabits the inside of all cereal boxes, but they were still better than the bubble gum cards because a) we got them for free, and b) we didn't have to deal with that crappy bubble gum that was usually so hard it would shatter into bright pink artery-severing shards. -- OK, they weren't really free, but our parents paid for the cereal, which amounted to the same thing in my fiscally limited world.)

Those cards became the inspiration for a noble quest; my brother and I decided that we would spend the summer trying to break Roger's Record.

Even as grade-school Kansas boys, we were sophisticated enough to realize that we weren't going to have a shot at it if we used the same parameters as the big leagues. We were much shorter than Mr. Maris, for one thing, we didn't have access to a major league ballpark or major league pitching...and there were compelling reasons not to use a hardball. Our "backstop" consisted of backyard fence made from 1 x 4 redwood slats, which would shatter if hit by a "real" baseball. And besides, none of us really wanted to deal with hardballs -- they hurt if you got hit by one. Tennis balls were easier to see, easier to hit, and if we lost them, we could probably find a few extras embedded in the bushes surrounding one of the local tennis courts.

For the pitchers "mound", we used a spot parallel to the concrete step leading to the back door of our house. (That step also served as first base, on those occasions where we got enough kids together to actually play a game. Usually it was just me and my brother, and maybe one other kid.) The outfield ended at the Dotzour's fence -- anything that went over that fence was considered a homer.

My brother had actually played some little league ball, and had considerably more advance baseball skills than I -- but I was two years older, which left us on more-or-less equal footing for our home run derby. (Herbert the Pervert and some of the other neighborhood kids also kept a tally, but since they didn't live at our house, they got considerably fewer at-bats.)

We'd take turns pitching to each other. Each batter would be allowed 3 outs, and then we'd switch. Since we had no fielders, judging outs became a matter of the honor system. Strike-outs were obvious, of course, but for any wimpy grounders or lofty pop flies, we generally had no trouble agreeing on whether or not our imaginary fielders would have gotten to it. We'd also switch as soon as somebody popped one over the fence.

Home runs were a mixed blessing. Certainly we became excited at adding to our season HR total, but the problem was the reason the Dotzours had a fence. They had a dog in their back yard. The dog seemed to be pretty well-mannered, but we were never absolutely sure that our next trip through their gate wouldn't be the one that triggered a Cujo response. If we were pretty sure no one was home at the Dotzour's house, we'd just jump over the fence, which cut down the time in-yard, and greatly enhanced our chances of slipping past the dog's awareness.

The summer proceeded beautifully. We played ball on a regular basis, but there were many other things to do. We spent an awful lot of time at the Harvest Park swimming pool, catching rays and irritating the lifeguards. We took bike rides into the uncharted and undeveloped subdivisions springing up around our neighborhood. We played "kick the can" with the neighborhood gang, caught crawdads in the creek, and dug holes in the vacant lot behind Kenny Zeh's house. The home run lead changed hands several times, but as the summer wound down, we realized that we were going to have to really buckle down to break the record before school started.

I really don't remember what happened, but nobody broke the record. Perhaps we lost interest, perhaps we were unable to schedule enough ballplaying time. Perhaps we just weren't very good long ball hitters. There could be many reasons, but I think I'll stick with blaming my brother for not giving me enough good pitches to hit. Yeah, that's it; not enough good pitching.

Still, the summer was not without its accomplishments. We did manage to kill all of the grass around our home plate area. We broke at least one window, lost several balls to the infamous "ball-eating bush", and probably drove the Dotzour's dog into early senility by interrupting his naptime. And even though we used tennis balls for our quest, we missed enough pitches that the cumulative impacts ended up breaking the slats of the redwood fence anyway.

I suppose it could be argued that we failed from lack of focus -- we didn't stick to our process with enough fortitude to achieve the goal. It could also be argued that our quest was merely an exercise in fun for a couple of silly little kids trying to emulate their sports heroes. But I don't think either of those viewpoints applies. You see, neither my brother nor myself has forgotten the pursuit of that record. We're both quite a bit older now than Maris was when he set it, and I suppose you'd have to update the target to include Bonds, anyway -- but we still haven't given up. We haven't failed yet, because we aren't dead yet. Someday... maybe this summer, maybe the next...we're going to break that record.

No, we can't do it in the backyard of the old house in Wichita; we no longer own it. And besides, there's an extra fence there now that would be in the way. The redwood backstop is long gone, and the home's latest owner has planted a petunia bed where home plate should be. But not too long ago, we stopped by the old neighborhood and measured the distance to the fence, as well as the height of the fence. When the time is right, we'll re-create the conditions we need for this challenge, and we'll go out and get the job done. We'll tip our hats to Mickey and Willie and Whitey and Roger, and we'll get the job done.

---------Addendum----------
During a trip to visit my dad in Wichita, I drove by the old neighborhood and took a look at the dimensions of our old "field" (ie, I stepped off how far it was from our "home plate" to the Dotzour's fence. It was a rough estimate, since other people live in those houses now and I didn't want to go into their back yards, but I was probably within a handful of yards.

Then one afternoon, Pat and I went over to a local ballfield and measured off that same distance. Then, adding on another dozen feet or so to reflect the distance the ball would have to travel to clear the imaginary fence, we laid out a rope in a semi-circle at the appropriate distance in the outfield. We concluded that if we hit a fly ball and it landed on the far side of the rope (low line drives wouldn't count), it would be equivalent to blasting the ball into the Dotzour's yard. Anything that didn't make it would count as an out. We would take turns pitching to each other, and switching batters after 10 outs had been made. We allocated the entire afternoon and evening to the project, hoping that we might be able to hit 62 or more in a single day.

Turns out it was a piece of cake! We were knocking round-trippers on every third or fourth swing. I started strong, building up a bit of a lead, but Pat finished first. By the time we quit, barely over an hour later, we had each broken Bonds' record, and had left Mantle and Maris in the dust.

So why were we SO much more efficient as adults than we had been as kids? Good question. It was a combination of factors: we both were just bigger, stronger, and more coordinated, thanks to years of weight lifting and sports participation. We were both better pitchers, and thus gave the batter a much better chance of hitting a dinger. Maybe the bats were better or the balls bouncier. But mostly, I think it was just confidence; after playing on real fields for years and years after our summer record chase activities, the distance we had to hit just didn't seem all that far. We expected to mash the ball, to crush each and every pitch. And we did. It was a most satisfying day.

(But wait...I'm not sure we factored in the altitude. I wonder if the thinner Colorado air made the balls fly farther? Oh man, that's gonna haunt me. I think we're gonna have to do it all over again. Sigh.)

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.

Yesterday, I made an appointment to return to the dentist to get a new filling. Or at least that's what I think I agreed to. The dentist actually said something more along the lines of "we need to do a minor restoration on the amalgam in number 29, with a medial lateral occlusion watch on the bicuspid hyperspacial transmogrification clavin...", or something like that.

I don't know what the hell they were talking about. Nothing in my mouth hurts at this point, so what's up? They told me I've been doing a good job with the brushing and the flossing and the cavity-fighting, and all that. But nonetheless, they scheduled me to come back in a month to have this "work" done. Well...OK. I guess.

Actually, I trust this dentist. He's a good guy, and his staff is very friendly and professional. And from past experience with him, I'd expect this appointment to be quick, efficient, and relatively painless. It's just that I'm not really fond of construction projects taking place inside my mouth.

I swear I'm not an anti-dentite, but... there have been times over the years when I've had murderous thoughts about members of this noble profession. The first dentist I can remember was probably a really swell guy, but I hated him. Getting my brother and sister and I loaded into the car for a trip to Dr. Rush's office was probably like, well, it was like pulling teeth. Oh, sure, this guy's waiting room had all the amenities -- a pile of building blocks for kids to play with, tattered copy of Green Eggs and Ham, and stacks of those delightful Hi-Lights magazines.

Remember Hi-Lights? My favorite section of the magazine was the Hidden Picture challenge, where they'd create a dorky drawing of a mutant boy riding a bicycle, and then sneakily place other objects around the picture as if they were part of the scenery. For example, one of the boy's shoelaces might form the shape of a fish hook, and a potted plant may contain a leaf hiding the Graf Zeppelin. There was sure to be a comb lying among the herringbone wallpaper pattern, and a Buck Rogers-style pointy-nose rocket ship lurking among the bicycle's spokes. It was always fun... unless some thoughtless bastard had used a pen to circle all the hidden objects. (Invariably, these morons would also circle a part of the drawing that contained NO hidden objects, but what do you expect...they're morons. I always hoped that people who drew in public access magazines would be punished by receiving gratuitous fillings -- sans novocain.)

This dentist's office had that smell that was probably partly from nightly hosings of antiseptic cleanser, and partly from vinyl furniture outgassing caused by overexposure to UV rays. But to me, it always smelled like cremation. When those 40-billion-RPM drills started whining, they just HAD to be generating enough heat and friction to vaporize teeth, jawbones, and any other nearby part of the poor victim's head. I mean, how do we know they weren't grinding away gum tissue -- we were doped to the gills on various concoctions from the dreaded "-caine" family. I figured the only reason the dentist wore a respirator mask over his mouth was so that we wouldn't hear his gleeful "Bwahh haaa haa ha!" as he watched our flesh and bone fragments being pureed into a fine organic mist.

Today's children have no concept of what it was like when we were growing up. My childhood visits to Dr. Rush all happened before the commies succeeded in fluoridating the water supply (for more details, refer to "Dr. Strangelove"). Heck, toothpaste didn't even have fluoride in it back then -- it was more or less just a mixture of ivory soap and marshmallow creme. And those inspiring posters that say "You don't have to floss all your teeth -- only the ones you want to keep" hadn't even made it to the "artists concept" stage yet. Therefore, it was pretty much expected that an annual checkup would result in the discovery of three, four, or even five cavities. My friends and I would keep score, as if the number of cavities you had was somehow a measure of your machismo. By the sixth grade, most of us had enough metal in our mouths to misdirect a compass, and to pick up Wolfman Jack on the occasional stormy night.

Since the world had not yet been through the hippie era, I still had no idea how to judge my tolerance for medications. Today, if there's even a hint that anesthetics are going to be applied, I immediately begin shouting "Small doses! Give me small doses!" I've learned that I'm highly susceptible to numbing agents -- perhaps it's due to the fact that I'm about half-numb to begin with...

Here's my story: It happened when I was about ten or eleven years old. For some reason, our parents had scheduled a family movie outing immediately after my dental appointment. Back in those days, family movie outings were rare indeed; mostly consisting of grabbing pillows, putting on our PJs and going to the Wonder-Vu Drive-In for a Dick Van Dyke double-feature. Perhaps our parents enjoyed the full shows, but we kids spent most of the time snoozing in the back seat, waking up only during the breaks so we could joyfully sing along with "Let's all go to the lobby...".

Anyway, as soon as I was released from the dentist's chair, we were actually going to the indoor theatre; the fabulous Orpheum (indoor and air conditioned!). They were showing the latest Jerry Lewis masterpiece, "Which Way to the Front?". My dad informed Dr. Rush of our timetable; and I guess the dentist figured that the faster he numbed me, the quicker the whole procedure could go. He swabbed my mouth with the jumbo mint-flavored Q-tip, then said "You're going to feel a little stick -- here -- and here -- and here -- and what the heck, let's do it here, here, here, and here, too."

I've never seen such operation-oriented enthusiasm. He was in there pounding and yanking and poking like he thought he was going to find Blackbeard's treasure buried deep in my jawbone. Eeeeeee-yeeee-EEEEEEE went the drill, and I could smell my tissues being vaporized. And despite the massive amount of narcotics coursing through my system, it HURT. But before too long, they'd poured the molten metal into the newly drilled holes and then hammered it into the desired shape. Stuffing my head full of a couple dozen cotton balls, they cheerfully told me to try hard to not swallow too much blood while I was at the movie theatre.

Then, as usual, we played out the end-of-appointment ritual -- the dental assistant brought out a little treasure-chest shaped box and allowed me to pick out a trinket, for being "such a good boy". I don't know why that was such a highlight for me, but I must confess that I always loved picking out my reward. They weren't anything special...just little erasers and cheap bracelet charms and microscopic plastic cars -- all too crappy to even be considered for Cracker Jack prizes...but I certainly cherished that moment when the treasure box opened up just for me.

Still, as I left the office, my face felt like a bundt cake, all swollen and misshapen. (Of course, it probably looked normal to everyone else, but the novocain made it feel like I was puffed up to at least three times the normal size.) I couldn't talk, and drooled continuously. But the worst part came at the movie theatre. Possibly due to the ignorance of youth, possibly due to the quarts of medications within my system, I was fabulously entertained by the Jerry Lewis movie. Though watching the same movie today elicits excruciating agony, at the time I thought it was uproariously funny.

Well, YOU try laughing out loud when your entire head is a numb as a mattress pad. It was horrible. Instead of hearty human laughter, I made Quasimodo-like noises and inadvertently flung spittle in every direction. And to top it off, for some reason, my eyes started watering profusely. So here I was, blinded, incapable of coherent speech, covered in drool, and feeling convinced that I would never again taste anything that didn't hint of cotton balls.

What should have been a joyous family outing became an exercise in misery and shame. I've never gotten over it. And to make matters worse, the numbness didn't wear off until about halfway through school the next day. My cheeks were punctured in multiple locations, since I hadn't been able to feel anything for so long. And I was embarrassed to speak in class, lest I blind the teacher with all the shiny new reflective metal gleaming inside my mouth.

Anyway, I hope my current dentist will understand, and not take it personally when I walk in to my appointment with a huge sign taped to my chest: "Small doses, please!"

Wish me luck, my friends,
Terry

---

PS. I guess I should include short comments about the one reasonably pleasant dental experiences I've had. It was when I had my wisdom teeth removed. I only had three of them for some reason -- probably a mutational side effect of commie water supply tampering -- but they were "impacted", which means they were buried under gum tissue. This meant major surgery, with the cutting and the bleeding, and screaming, and...

It was the coolest thing. First they injected me with Valium® and Demoral®, and then they stuck a rubber dam in my mouth. This "dam" was a thin latex sheet that actually had holes in it for all my teeth, and completely covered the rest of my mouth. I could still breathe, swallow, and keep my tongue moist during the entire hour and a half procedure. The surgeon just merrily worked away, while I sat in a drug-induced happy-zone, dreamily humming Johnny Cash songs to myself. Though the procedure involved actually smashing the offending teeth into tiny bits, and then somehow sucking up the shards, I was only peripherally aware of either the excavation or the vacuuming. I don't know if they used a hammer, or if they used miniature sticks of dynamite, but I do remember that the surgeon looked totally exhausted at the end of the operation. But I was still on a giant buzz. He asked how I felt; I was later told that I said "I tell ya, life ain't easy for a boy named Sue."

On the way home, we needed to pick up some milk, so we stopped by the grocery store. My wife turned her back for a moment, and then spent the next several minutes trying to figure out where her husband and grocery cart had disappeared to. They found me with my face in the ice cream freezer singing something about a "burning ring of fire". Though she eventually got me home safely, I understand that I didn't make a coherent remark for at least the next two days. And while I must say that the effects of the Valium and Demoral were far more pleasant than those of the novocain, I still think the experience adds evidence to the fact that I'll still need my "small doses" sign when I go in for my filling, don't you think? :) T.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.

In April of 1981, I was assigned to be a part of Martin Marietta's "Micrographics Research Team". Our charter was to determine the best method for the Denver-based aerospace company to archive its engineering drawings. The current system consisted of making full-size blueline copies of the drawings, and locking them in a vault. But since creating these copies was expensive (closer to the old mimeograph process than to modern computer printers), the space required was immense, and retrieval was labor intensive, the company was looking for a more modern method. Our team was to review the various microfilm and microfiche vendors to decide upon the optimal method. The basic concept was that we would photographically shrink the drawings onto some sort of film (PCs, scanners, and hard drives had not yet been invented...) and then later be able to use some sort of robotic computer system to retrieve any drawing from the film archives.

I was the "engineering" representative. I was the greenest of tenderfoots (tenderfeet?), and could contribute nothing to the project...but somebody from engineering had to go, and I was the most expendable. It turned out to be a very sweet gig, indeed.

The first trip we took was to the 3M headquarters in Minnesota. We flew the 3M corporate jet, a study in luxury and pampering. The six of us had 2 flight attendants to share, and they had been instructed to keep us happy. (OK, not that happy, it wasn't "coffee, tea, or me", or anything. They were quite professional, but still very nice. They were still called "stewardesses" in those days, and physical beauty was still a job requirement. As a single 25-year-old, I was impressed.)

I sat next to a guy named Fred Korfhage. I forget what department he was with (Contracts, maybe?), and don't know much else about him, other than the fact that a couple of years later he fell out of a tree, landed on his head, and forgot everything about his life up to that point. Anyway, Fred was about my age, and was fun to talk with. The stewardess appeared with a huge tray of shrimp. She set it down in front of us and went off to fix drinks. When she returned a few minutes later, one of the guys in the row behind us asked if he could get some shrimp, too. She looked at the empty tray in front of me and her jaw dropped. "That tray was for everyone to share!" she said. Fred and I said we were sorry, but how were we supposed to know? We'd never been on a corporate jet before. Sheesh!

The 3M execs treated us very well, and we had a good time. I assumed that someone from our group absorbed some of the technical information that we'd eventually need as part of the decision making, but I didn't worry too much about it. The only thing I retained was the knowledge that I'd gotten one hell of a deal on 3M cassette tapes by buying them at the employee store instead of at K-Mart.

The next trip was to Orlando, Florida. Martin had a sister plant down there, and they'd already implemented a micrographics system for their drawing archives. Theirs used punch cards with a 35mm negative attached within a little window on the card. The giant IBM punch-card reader machine could sort and retrieve the cards with astounding speed. I assumed that it was also capable of going berserk and spewing cards at the attendants like a paper-loaded firehose -- but I never saw any evidence of this. Still, every movie that featured a punch-card sorter machine contained a scene about this type of berserker spewing, so I just knew it was possible.

At this young and innocent stage of my life, I was still too naive to look for hidden motivations behind corporate decisions. I assumed that this trip was simply the next logical step in our committee's well-planned project. It wasn't until much later that I began to suspect that the timing of the Florida trip to coincide with the very first space shuttle launch might be something other than coincidence.

We finished our business Thursday afternoon. The launch was Friday morning. We drove down to the Cape, secured some sweet beachside locations, and watched the sun rise over the sands.

I took pictures of everything. To this day, I've never been able to photographically capture a more spectacular sunrise. The orange ball on the horizon provided a fiery backdrop for the beach reeds, the gulls...and the news and security helicopters. The temperature was mild and everyone was in a good mood. We were probably 8 or 9 miles away from the launch pad, but we could see a tiny nib that we knew was the shuttle gantry. NASA had placed a giant countdown clock just down the beach from us, so we knew precisely how long it was until liftoff.

When I'd worked at Boeing, I'd been allowed to go aboard the 747 that piggybacked the shuttles around the country. It was a vast, empty space, since everything that wasn't flight-essential had been removed to reduce weight. And, since Martin built the shuttle's huge external tank, I had been exposed to a lot of information about the shuttle during my current job. You may not remember, but for the first couple of launches, the tank was painted white, making the vehicle gleam like some sort of pristine alien obelisk. (They later discovered that the paint provided no benefit, and added a buttload of weight to the craft, so they simply stopped painting the tanks. That's why they're reddish-brown today.) We knew the details of the two astronauts' mini-bios, and we knew how many heat-resistant tiles were glued onto each stubby-looking wing. We were hardcore fans of the space program, just about to witness the Space Program's greatest moment since the Apollo program had ended so many years before.

Alas, it was not to be. One of the sensors indicated a problem with the fuel cells, leading to launch postponement.

Well, since we couldn't watch a spectacular performance by man's latest technological achievement, we did the next best thing; Disney World.

Fred and I decided to take a guided tour, since tour participants got to cut in some of the lines and hear the real "behind-the-scenes" scoop. Sounded like fun. Plus, we could probably find a way to charge it to our company expense accounts...

Our guide was a delicious young lady named Janice. Though forced by the job to wear an unfortunately bulbous drum-major-type hat, Janice managed to charm everyone with her sweetness, quick wit, and vast knowledge of all things Disney. Fred and I sometimes had to shove the family types aside in order to maintain our proximity to our charming guide, but we were smooth enough to do it so that Janice was unaware of our maneuvering. By the time we'd seen haunted houses, animatronic pirates, and all those annoying small world singing dolls, we'd managed to get ourselves noticed. Janice confided that her father was the Art Director for the entire complex and was quite well-off. In fact, her whole family was having a fabulous water-ski day at the family's private lake on Sunday, and she'd be delighted if we'd attend as her guests.

Hmmm. An all-expenses-paid day of water skiing at a private lake with an incredibly cute rich girl...should we do it? Hmmm.

I'm not sure I've ever been more tempted in my life. But, if you came right down to it, there might come a time in the future where such an opportunity might re-appear. But there will NEVER be another first launch of the space shuttle. Sadly, we declined.

Years later, I ran into Fred at another company function. I said, "Freddy Baby, do you remember the hot babe who invited us to her lake for some private water skiing?" Fred said, "Dude, I fell out of a tree," and then wandered off.

Anyway, the launch wasn't until Sunday, so we decided to head to the beach on Saturday. Another member of our task force had grown up at the ocean, and enthusiastically volunteered to teach us to surf. His name was Gary, and he started the day with an impressive demonstration of Frankie Alalon-like skills among the waves. Cowabunga!

With my extensive swimming background, I figured that I'd have a pretty good head start on any type of aquatic activity. "Gimme the board, man," I said, and then paddled out beyond the breakers.

I was pleased to see that I could out-paddle the native surfers, which gave me confidence for the upcoming trial of my ability to hang ten. As soon as I got out to the right distance, I stood up on the board, shot underneath the curl of the gigantic wave, zipped back and forth just in front of the blue crush, and skimmed to the shore amid cheers from thousands of spectators.

OK, I'm lying. I unceremoniously fell off the board on my first attempt. I took a watery face plant on my second. I also spilled my third, fourth, fifth, and... well, you get the idea. To this day, I have absolutely no idea how anybody could ever stand up on one of those slippery bastards. I have the utmost respect for the amazing balance that surfers must possess, and I completely understand why Frankie was able to seduce a babe like Annette.

I spent the rest of the day body surfing, building sand castles, and attempting to flirt with the beach bunnies.

About mid-afternoon, I began to suspect that I had missed a few spots when I'd applied my sunscreen. Being a young, macho guy, I wasn't about to ask Fred or Gary to slather sunscreen on my back, and since I didn't know anyone else there, I did the best I could in self-application. And sure enough, there were telltale signs of pink starting to form on the unreachable Bermuda triangle in the middle of my back. Strangely enough, I was also getting pink on portions of my belly. Hmmm, I could swear I got that spot...

By evening, I was in full-blown agony. In addition to my back and belly (you could see the finger outlines showing exactly how far I rubbed the sunscreen), the tops of my feet were flaming red. I couldn't lie down (either front or back). I couldn't wear socks. And I was beginning to suspect that there was something wrong with my eyes, as well.

Trust me, you DO NOT ever want to suffer from sunburned retinas. ALWAYS wear sunglasses when you're at the beach. (Or skiing for that matter.)

I did not sleep well that night. I took pain killers, and soaked myself in various lotions. I couldn't open my eyes, but tears continually poured forth from under closed lids. If my whimpering kept the others awake, they were too polite to comment. But I felt absolutely miserable when it was time to head back to the beach to set up for the launch.

Fred led me around like a blind man (though I've never seen a real blind person who was as helpless and dazed as I was). He more-or-less dragged me to the beach, and pointed my head in the general direction of the launch pad. I had my 35mm camera, which I blindly held aloft in hopes of accidentally capturing the Columbia's leap from the bounds of Earth.

We weren't able to get as close as we'd been on Friday; Fred said it was probably about 10 miles away. But we'd still be able to see the flames and hear the roar...we hoped.

And so did over a million other people. The beaches were jammed with humanity for miles. By launch time, there was not a single spot along the road that didn't contain a spectator's car. There was not a square centimeter of beach that didn't contain a hopeful American who'd gotten out of bed early to be a part of history. Over a million excited souls all waited shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers who felt like brothers. All those eyes were pointing in the same direction, and all those hearts beat with the same emotion. All those lips were uttering the same prayers to whatever gods they believed in.

And you could feel it. The collaborative emotion became a focused, tangible thing. Perhaps my other senses were heightened by the temporary loss of my sight -- but I don't think so. I truly believe that each of us felt the same powerful thing. Perhaps we couldn't describe it (either then or now), but it was so strong that the mere memory of it continues to bring tears to our eyes decades later. "Godspeed, Columbia, " we whispered. "Go, baby, go!"

We saw the light before we heard the roar. Seeming to happen in slow motion, the barely visible craft rose majestically off its throne and levitated on a plume of gorgeous white smoke. Even at 10 miles away, the sound reached us with physical force. As we were slapped with the crackling snarl of the blast, we added to the volume with our own involuntary cheers. Over a million voices raised in a gleeful shout from the very depths of humanity -- no one who was there could ever forget it.

Peering through barely slit eyelids, I could see the Columbia climb skyward. I snapped photo after photo through the tears that poured from my injured eyes. Tears of pain, yes, but far more tears of joy. It was as if the entire million were joined in one thought, using the sheer force of our collective will to lift the shuttle toward the heavens.

I have no idea what I was shouting, but I know that my throat was hoarse for days afterward. As I squinted, I noticed that the ship was too far away to see, and then I couldn't even see the flames. The column of smoke dispersed slowly, a ghostly reminder of the spectacle we'd just witnessed. As the plume lost its shape, I gradually became aware of thousands of jabbering voices as people returned to individual consciousness.

The feeling of consolidated human thought was gone. But I remember thinking about how powerful that prolonged moment had been. It felt as if the force of human will could accomplish anything...if it was all concentrated on the same effort to bring about collective good. It felt as if there really was a God, and His power could be focused by people who believed in reaching for the stars. The tears I had cried represented the purest joy from the heart of humanity.

I cried again when Columbia died.

The brave souls killed by its disintegration deserve to be mourned by the entire planet. I am greatly saddened by their loss.

And I think of what Columbia represents to me. As the world sits on the brink of war, I think back to that soaring elation I felt as Columbia leapt into the skies for its maiden voyage. I think of how, for that one glorious moment, a million humans forgot about our troubles and united our minds to support the concepts of exploration, bravery, knowledge, and accomplishment. For one moment, I was bonded to each of those other souls in the light of love and joy, looking upward toward a future full of hope.

Bless you, Columbia. May your spirit live on.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.

OK, I'm finally ready to talk about the Space Shuttle Columbia. I was there when she took off on her maiden voyage in April of 1981. America had not had a space launch for quite a long time, and I was certainly privileged to be among the folks lining the shores across from Cape Canaveral when the shuttle program first took to the skies.

Here's how I happened to be there: In the late summer of 1980, I was working for the Boeing Military Airplane Company in Wichita, Kansas. The job was OK, and I really liked the people I worked with...but despite having lived there most of my live, I hadn't really bonded with the city of Wichita. So, when I was invited to Denver to participate in a friend's wedding, I decided I'd use the trip to scout out other locales.

I'd be staying at the groom's apartment, and my only obligations were to show up for the rehearsal dinner and the wedding itself -- commitments totalling no more than a few hours altogether. That left plenty of time for sightseeing in Colorado. At that time of year, such a trip positively screamed to be done 'a la motorcycle'.

My Wichita roommate was also a rider. We called him "Harp", and though he had this irrational prejudice against comfort on a 'cycle, he promised me that he'd be able to handle the long drive on his drive-shaft powered Suzuki. My bike was a Yamaha 750DX, also a drive-shaft machine, with comfy swept-back handlebars, a cushy bucket seat, and a fully outfitted Windjammer fairing to keep the wind out of my face. I had a stereo (with speakers and/or helmet-mounted headphones), a backrest, footpegs, and cruise control. With the ultra-smooth 3-cylinder Yamaha engine, I could ride all day in absolute relaxation...while Harp was hunched over his gas tank, with a wind-battling death grip on his ridiculously square handlebars, spitting out the bugs that so dearly love to commit suicide on the highways of western Kansas.

The ride to Denver was wonderful. I had Blue Öyster Cult on the headphones, beautiful blue skies overhead, and miles of amber grain waving at us as we passed. It seemed that we met friendly bikers at every rest stop we made. And let me tell you, there are very few sights as inspiring as that first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains as they seemed to magically solidify in the distance. After ten hours on the road, we were still invigorated with the excitement of the gorgeous drive as we pulled into our Denver destination.

The rehearsal dinner was a spectacular event. It was in a fancy restaurant sitting near the top of the Denver skyline. Now, I'm not generally into fancy meals -- after all, with my unsophisticated taste buds, it just seems like a huge waste of money. But I enjoyed watching the groom-to-be, and had a great time interacting with his family. The only problem was that it was obvious to everyone that the bride was a flaming bitch from the bowels of hell.

Well, obvious to everyone but Steve, the groom. Actually, I think he knew, but was afraid to do anything about it because a) he was afraid no other woman would ever marry him, and b) he was afraid the bitch-bride would cut off valuable parts of his anatomy if he so much as looked at her crosswise.

It sucks being the best man at a wedding that you know is bound for failure. Your dear friend is about to plunge himself into the abyss of a marital nightmare, but you feel as if you have to support him. "Yeah, she's great," you say, while secretly hoping that there will be a large scale pipe organ disaster that will cause the bride to be decapitated in some sort of spectacular Dr. Phibes-like way. You want to scream, "RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!", but instead you meekly hand him the ring that will forever symbolize his pain and misery.

(Yes, the marriage did end badly, six months later -- with one of those awkward boyfriend-in-the-closet moments. And though I'm not sure how this relates, you probably should know that I had similar feelings a bit later when I was best man at Harp's wedding. Another six month marriage punctuated with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The good news is that both of these gentlemen have since found the women they were meant for, and are wallowing in oceans of marital bliss.)

After the wedding, Harp and I posed for some photos, looking spiffily tux-clad, astride our motorcycles. Then we changed and headed for the mountains.

The first stop was St. Mary's Glacier. Just up the road from Idaho Springs, St. Mary's is a snow & ice field that never melts. It's stuffed into a rift between peaks, and features a perpetual snow slope leading down to one of the most beautiful mountain lakes you will ever see. We put on our snow suits and hiked up the side of the glacier, just for the pleasure of leaping over the precipice and cascading down the slope on our butts. Human sledding at its finest. What the hell, we figured, and did it again.

After butt-skiing, we got back on the bikes and took off again, with no particular destination in mind. We planned to find a rest stop somewhere and spend the night snuggled in our respective sleeping bags. But we were enjoying the ride so much, we didn't want to stop. As the sun went down, we were treated to a sunset that brought new meaning to the phrase "purple mountain's majesty", and later saw the moon rise into a starkly pristine sky. At one point, we stopped at a roadside pullout overlooking a little mountain lake. We were at just the right angle to see the moon reflected off the water's surface, and I remember thinking that if God were going to build a house on earth, he'd surely choose Colorado as his building site.

Though the ride was truly awe-inspiring, we did finally begin to tire out. Harp and I decided that we'd pull over at the next rest area and crash for the night.

In hindsight, we were obviously too picky about which rest area we would settle on. Too small. Bathroom too smelly. Too many creepy trucks with "Ax Murderer On Board" placards in the windows. Let's move on.

As we left the mountains and headed back down Highway 50 heading for Kansas, it started to rain. We each owned some half-assed rain gear. Harp's was a yellow slicker jacket to cover his torso and a couple of hefty bags to lash onto his legs. Mine was a one-piece Texaco-style grease monkey coverall that had been liberally coated with Scotchgard®. Of course, we were both soaked through to the bone inside of 15 minutes. It's dark, we're not equipped with visor-mounted wiper blades, and we're creating a pretty fair wind-chill factor by travelling 65 miles per hour. We're pulling over at the next turnout, no matter what.

A KOA "Kampground" sign lit up the night like the proverbial grail-shaped beacon. We pulled in. It was around 2am at this point; there was no attendant on duty. We picked a couple of covered picnic tables and promptly fell asleep, still wearing our clownish and sopping rain gear. We were too tired to even mess with sleeping bags.

At about 5:45, we both woke up and realized that we were supposed to pay for having used the kampsite. As young, motorcycle-riding rebels with microscopic bank accounts, we decided that our soundest strategy would be to hit the road before the park attendant came 'round asking for fees. After all, we hadn't really spent the whole night there...

Though the KOA had actually been in the state of Colorado, it was in the eastern part, which is really indistinguishable from Kansas. As our ride resumed, though, we found ourselves crossing the border in short order. Even though it was 1980, the sign still said "Welcome to Kansas, Home of Debbie Bryant, Miss America 1969". (Later, they changed it to a more generic "Home of Beautiful Women", and still later, the somewhat perplexing, but still vastly more appropriate "Land of Ah's".)

Within 5 miles of crossing the border, my front tire went flat. Fortunately, I was able to limp into the bustling metropolis of Larkin, KS. We grabbed some OJ and donuts from a greasy spoon where the waitress smelled like damp fungus, and the silverware had last been washed when LBJ was in office. By the time we finished breakfast, the gas station had opened, and I was able to get the tire patched. Back on the road.

The next indignity was a speeding ticket issued by a state trooper whose pantleg creases could slice tomatos. By the time I was finished writing a check for about 15 times the amount that was actually resident in my account, the sun had risen to its full summer fury. I rolled up my shirtsleeves and pantlegs to relieve some of the stifling heat.

And, of course, no more than two minutes later, the newly bare flesh of my leg met the tail end of a slow moving bumblebee as my bike was going about 70 mph. Let me assure you, you do NOT want to have a bumblebee stinger plunged into your body at highway speeds. Thank God I didn't crash, but I'm sure they could hear me screaming all the way to Topeka.

I stopped as quickly as I could, and used my nail clippers to tear a bloody gash in my leg as part of a heroic attempt to remove the poison-tipped insect carcass. After a prolific bout of gory hacking and mighty cursing, I was finally able to contemplate getting back on the road. Leaving a dotted trail of hemoglobin on the highway, I was seriously looking forward to the end of the trip.

It was now over 104°F. Time for the wind to pick up. I was surprised to learn that while a breeze supplies a cooling effect when the temperatures are below 80°, it acts to intensify the perception of heat once you reach a certain level of hellish heat. What had been a pleasant ride while we were in the mountains, now resembled a guided tour through Satan's own blast furnace. I began to suspect that heavenly powers were at work, trying to communicate this simple message: COLORADO IS WONDERFUL. KANSAS SUCKS!

I finally reached my apartment in Wichita. I had forgotten to cancel newspaper delivery, so there was a pile on my doorstep. I picked them up and headed inside, grumbling about how I should be in Colorado rather than this sub-tropical stink zone. The first priority was to take a long-overdue leak (hmmm, maybe that's what they mean by "Land of Ah's"...) Then I returned to the kitchen to "catch up" on what had happened while I was gone.

I picked up a newspaper at random, and flipped it open to a randomly selected page. As I read the contents of that page, I knew that I had indeed been receiving a message. the ad in the paper said, "YOU SHOULD LIVE IN COLORADO." OK, I thought...you've got my attention.

It was a double-page ad for Martin Marietta, wanting to hire engineers to work in the Colorado offices of their aerospace company. They had a recruiter in Wichita who would be accepting calls the next day. Needless to say, I wrote down the number.

When I called the guy, the first thing he said was, "We're looking for engineers. Are you an engineer?" I told him I was not. "Well, I'd like to talk to you anyway," he said. Hmmm. I figured they must be desperate.

After talking with the guy for an hour, I realized that while we had indeed talked a little about my employability, we had spent a much larger segment of our time talking about our enthusiasm for running. I knew what races the guy had coming up, what his fastest 10K time was, and what type of running shoes he wore. What I wasn't so clear about was whether I had said anything that would merit a call-back. But sure enough, two days later I got a call from George Dallas, who was in charge of Martin's engineering procedures group.

"So, Terry," he said, "you write procedures?" Yup. "I assume you're an expert with MIL-STD-100, then, right?" Huh? Never heard of it. "Well, then you must be working compliance with DOD-STD-1000, right?" Uh, no...sorry. "Experience with schematics?" Nope. "Drafting practices?" Well, I took a drafting class in the eighth grade. All I really remember is that a kid named Ronnie threatened to beat me up if I didn't show him how to find the 3-inch mark on a ruler. (No, I'm not kidding.)

"Hmm," George said, "I was kinda hoping for some experience with standards." He took a deep breath. "Oh, well, when can we fly you out to meet with you in person?"

Like I said, they were desperate. But the bottom line is that a couple of plane flights, a screening of "The Empire Strikes Back", and two weeks later, I was packing up all my earthly possessions to move to Denver to start my new job with Martin Marietta.

OK, so I still haven't talked about why I was in Florida to watch the Columbia take off on the first ever space shuttle mission. Stay tuned for the next blog.

Happily corresponding from Colorado,
Terry

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.

The President's State O' the Union address made it clear that there's a-gonna be a war soon.

Makes you think about the extreme levels of commitment and courage one would have to possess to be a member of the military. My brother served as an officer in the Marine Corps, and I couldn't be more proud of him for doing that. As for me, well, I thought about joining the Army at one time, I didn't do it. (See my blog of 1-17-03 for details.) I support and admire the brave folks in the service, but for some reason, it just wasn't meant to be for me.

Why? Well, maybe it has something to do with growing up. Back then, we had no video games, of course, so learning military strategies by blowing the heads off of electronic orcs and splattering Nazi blood pixels across your computer screen were not available options. We had to use imagination...and plastic army men.

I never had a GI Joe. Joe was cool because you could bend him into all sorts of positions. My buddies who had this "First-ever Action Figure" never seemed to put him in fighting stances, though -- he was more likely bent into scandalous and embarrasing poses with Barbie (if he was lucky) and sheep (if he was not). Needless to say, witnessing these unlikely contortions did not advance my developing personality toward a military career.

We didn't have very many plastic army men, so when it was time to create imaginary battle scenarios, we had to recruit plastic cowboys, farmers, and jungle animals. They weren't all the same size, so in hand-to-hand combat, giant plastic Zorro could handle 5 or 6 bayonet-carrying plastic soldiers without working up a plastic sweat. And though "Grill" the gorilla was actually smaller than Zorro, he was a freaking ferocious gorilla -- so he could shred through the army as if they were tissue paper.

Grill was my favorite plastic toy. I hadn't ever seen a real gorilla at that point, so I didn't realize that his body proportions were closer to an NFL lineman than to an actual jungle denizen, but that's OK. He stood upright with one arm raised menacingly, with his face perpetually in a molded snarl. It was much more fun to imagine him leaping from a tree to dismember an unsuspecting soldier than it was to mentally plot elaborate human battle campaigns.

Perhaps it was because of the toys...or perhaps it was simply an indicator of my own mental orientation, but my playtimes became more and more oriented around monster attacks than around war games. Heck, with his cape and hat, Zorro could easily be seen as an Alien Spaceship Commander. Monsters from the jungle, berserk maniacs from space -- well, the Army men had no chance.

It might have been recognition of my non-earthly orientation, or it could have been an attempt to bring me back to reality -- but Santa Claus showed up with a different kind of toy the very next Christmas. I received a complete "Cape Canaveral Launch Pad Set". It had a large plastic sheet with labels showing heliports, launch pads, blockhouses, and even parking lots. It had 101 pieces, including a couple of jet planes with spring-loaded missile launchers (the kind that could "put your eye out"), and a helicopter with a spring-loaded propeller blade. The 'copter could actually fly a couple of feet if you wound up the launch spring tight enough. Unfortunately, its flight-capable lifespan didn't last long, because in our quest for longer flights, we wound the spring too tight. Sproing! More opportunities for ocular dismemberment as tiny shards of shattered spring went zinging across the room.

The set also contained a phonograph record imprinted on a paper-thin sheet of plastic. (For younger readers, a phonograph record was a prehistoric ancestor of the CD. You played it by placing it on a rotating platter and sticking a needle into the spiral groove that contained bumps for reproducing the music. No lasers. No G-shock buffers. But they were quite able to reproduce sound. Or at least until the dust bunny that collected behind the needle became too large, causing the needle to skip. Or until repeated refusal to return the record to its protective paper sleeve rendered it so full of scratches that it sounded like a crackling campfire.)

Anyway, my "floppy" Cape Canaveral record contained tracks such as jets flying by, fire trucks responding to a landing mishap, and, of course, the sounds of an actual launchpad countdown. Even though the countdown was delivered in a valium-induced monotone, there was nothing more exciting than hearing that "Five...Four...Three...Two...One" chant. The cat would run hissing from the room as my brother and I contorted our mouths to make the loudest possible blast-off noises, unintentionally flinging spittle across all of Cape Canaveral, and onto the drapes, lamps, and wallpaper.

Some days, the launches would go flawlessly. On others, the hapless space vehicle would never make it into the sky; led by Grill the Gorilla, hordes of plastic masked swordsmen, riflemen, and farm animals would swarm onto the launch pad. Accompanied by more mouth-made sound effects, the battles would rage until every building and vehicle at Cape Canaveral lay overturned and embedded in imaginary flames.

These scenarios led my imagination toward dreams of space travel and alien encounters, and probably greatly influenced my becoming a writer. Still, as I've grown up, I've had just enough experience in the real world to have a sense of what's at stake in the Persian Gulf right now. I know how devastating real war can be. Unlike Grill and Zorro, real soldiers don't have the ability to rise up after being shot...they can't just go back in the toy box to attack the bad guys again the next day. Unlike my plastic soldiers, the real ones have families who care, and loved ones who suffer during each moment they're not at home. Unlike the buildings of my Cape Canaveral set, real buildings, vehicles, and lives can't simply be turned over and set upright to restore things after a battle.

It's too bad we can't enlist plastic gorillas to fight our battles for us. We can't. Yet at the same time, we cannot ignore the threats to our land that renegade maniacs may mount against us. As I hear the stories of how our brave servicemen and women are marching off to hostile lands, I find myself wondering what toys these folks played with when they were kids. It would be interesting to speak with them, and to ask what games they played, and how their toys influenced their current choices.

And if I had such a conversation, there would be one more thing I'd want to say... I'd say, "Thank you," to those courageous souls. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Terry

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women (or any of Terry Heggy's other writing), please visit www.shyperson.com.

This story takes place in the year 0002 BD (Before Dating). I was about 20 years old, and still completely clueless about what sorts of wonders were available to those lucky men who actually had the nerve to ask women for dates. Oh, sure, I had looked at Playboy, so I had some idea what delights were available to satisfy one's lust -- but was still a long way from any personal experience in that area.

Needless to say, no women had ever seen me naked.

Well, they were about to get their chance.

It was the summer of "streaking". It had become somewhat fashionable to run around naked, preferably at well-attended public events. Woodstock and free love were still fresh enough in people's memory to give a modicum of legitimacy to this pastime -- but I think everybody really knew what it was really about... disrupting events and making a spectacle of yourself. Some sort of such behavior has always been the moral obligation of young adults everywhere. The Ray Stevens song had not been released yet, so the "sport" still had a bit of life left in it.

Well, I may have been nerdish, socially-impaired, and clueless about women, but I knew an opportunity when I saw one. No one would ever know who I was, but by performing a streak, I could somehow make a statement about my uniqueness, creativity, and individuality. (How? Don't ask me...but it seemed to make sense at the time.) Who knows? Perhaps by making this bold gesture, it would somehow set me on a trail toward social legitimacy. Perhaps being seen naked by a horde of bystanders would propel me toward a life which could even include successful dating. Perhaps I'd feel so empowered by my courageous public display that I'd overcome my deadly fears of women, and might even ask one to go out with me.

Hey, a guy can dream, can't he?

Well, after weeks of planning, I had my streak planned down to the last detail. The KU Women's Synchronized Swim Team was giving their annual water show at Robinson Natatorium. It was "Parents' Weekend" for the sororities, which meant that the house would be packed with proud moms and pops who'd come to watch their lovely daughters perform. For a $2.00 admission fee, you could watch girls with slicked-back hair and noseplugs gracefully submerge in time with Perry Como songs, and then burst upside-down from the water to wave their pointed feet in the air. It was very beautiful, very athletic. There were colored lights and everything.

There was even one number where the young ladies would be assisted by the stalwart young men of the swim team. The boys didn't have to be graceful; they just had to do an occasional Vanna White waving gesture, and then lift the girls up at the proper moment when the music crescendoed.

"Wait a minute, Terry," you must be asking..."Weren't you on the swim team? Why didn't you participate in the water show?" Ah, if you had known me then, you would not have needed to ask. Not only was I socially impaired, but I wasn't all that great in the "feats of strength" department. Oh, sure, I could swim reasonably well, but all I had to do was pull my own skinny frame through the water. While the thought of putting my hands on a sexy woman's hips and lifting her over my head was indeed an appealing proposition, alas, it was not meant to be. I might have been able to lift a six-year-old, but sadly, there were none on the college synchro team. Sigh.

So perhaps I harbored some sort of grudge because I was unable to participate. Perhaps I chose that venue because I knew a lot of the people there, and could therefore count on multiple reports of the impact I made. Perhaps it was because the pool was right next door to the dorm I was living in, and I could get home quickly if something went wrong.

The day before the show, I spoke with the guy who'd be running the spotlight. Pat was a great breaststroker, and was easily strong enough to have participated in the water show, but he had chosen to help behind the scenes. "Dude," I said, "right when they start the Frog Prince number, shine the spotlight at the side door."

"Whafor?" he asked. "You'll see, man. You'll see." He still looked puzzled. "Just do it, man," I said. He nodded, in that sort of goofy way that breaststrokers do when they're still trying to figure out what the hell you're talking about.

The fateful night arrived. I grabbed my streaking gear, a spare pair of shorts and an extra T-shirt and then headed over to the pool. I stowed the extra clothes under a bush near the pool exit door, where they'd be easy to grab and put on after my performance. Then I walked around to the other side of the building and proceeded to wait until the proper musical cue could be heard from within the pool.

I was nervous. I couldn't see very well. (My eyesight was pitiful, but I'd left my glasses in the dorm room, cuz I didn't want to have to mess with them during my run.) I put on my face-covering stocking mask first, so no one would know who I was when I started stripping. It was a classic red and black ski mask, with eyeholes and a mouthhole. I suppose it was designed to keep you warmer by keeping your nose covered, but on a warm evening like this, all it did was make everything smell like wool. And even though it had eyeholes, they weren't quite big enough -- so I had no peripheral vision at all.

I stripped off my shirt and dropped my shorts. That's when I heard a noise behind me. I turned around and saw a guy and a girl, probably just walking home from a late class together. "Far out," the guy said, "are you a streaker?"

"Yeah," I replied. "And I kinda need to get going."

"Far out," they both said in unison.

It was time. As soon as I heard the Frog Prince music, I yanked open the pool door and did a dramatic leap onto the pool deck. Pat was alert and immediately hit me with the spotlight. I could hear the collective intake of breath from all those scandalized moms, and a few "lookitthat's" from the guys in the crowd. The watershow stopped dead.

I jogged as casually as I could, trotting from one end of the pool to the other. I waved at the crowd, and even took a moment for a kind of shuffling bow. As I reached the far door, I even heard a smattering of applause from somewhere in the crowd. I pulled open the door and sprinted outside.

Though I had done a leisurely jog across the pool deck, I was hauling ass as soon as I got out the door. Next -- rip the stocking cap off. Under the bush for the clothes (shorts on first, naturally), then blast around the building to pick up the clothing I'd shed at the start. Then, since there seemed to be no panic, no alarm, and no police sirens, I turned and walked slowly back toward the dorm. My heart was pounding at about 200 bpm, but my pace resembled an average joe out for an evening stroll. No one watching would have any clue that I had been the masked streaker who had scandalize the oh-so-proper water show.

I later learned that after a few minutes of murmuring within the pool area, the music was re-started and the show continued as planned. No other disruptions happened, although one of the guys did muff a lift. I guess it was pretty comical, since he dropped the girl onto the next guy, who then dropped his girl and started a domino effect all the way down the line. I was sorry I missed it.

About two hours later, I did saunter over to the "wrap" party. All the swimmers were there, as well as a goodly number of the parents. I was curious to hear the gossip about the mysterious stranger who ruined their show. I figured I'd spend the evening lurking around and eavesdropping, with a possible knowing snicker thrown in here and there.

But it didn't work out that way. As soon as I walked in the door, everyone turned toward me and started clapping and making catcalls. "Good job, streaker dude", someone said. "Hey, where's your mask, butthead?", said another. "What the hell's wrong with you, Heggy?", etc.

Wha? How'd they know? I asked one of my buddies. "C'mon, man," he said, "we've all seen you run during our dryland workouts. You got that weird, bowlegged, spazzy hand nerd shuffle. Nobody else runs like that." Uh, gee, thanks for the thoughtful form analysis.

Needless to say, I left the party quite early. The good news is that I received no disciplinary action for my little deed. And, in fact, it probably did serve to enhance my popularity, at least briefly. No dates resulted...but at least none of the girls made fun of my anatomy either. I'm not sure if there was any lasting impact on my life as a result of my well-viewed public nudity, but at least it gives me something I can tell the grandkids, eh?

I think we're all glad that fad's over, aren't we? Oh, well, it was fun while it lasted.

But next time you attend a water show on parents' weekend, think of me for a little bit, OK? Thanks.
Enjoy! Terry