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.
Special Effects – Why I’m Bleeding After Jumping Off the Roof, Part 2 ~1973
Read Part 1 (below) First
This may come as a surprise to readers who have never made their own movies, but…sometimes parts of the same scene are shot on different days. At the major studios, the effort to match the shots from different days is called “continuity”. It is someone’s full-time job to microscopically observe every shot and make sure that if the drink is in the actor’s right hand in shot one, it darn well better be there in shot two, also.
For a kung fu film, it’s more about making sure the dead guys haven’t rolled over between cuts. If one of the henchmen went down face first in the Messner’s flowerbed, then he’d better still be eating posies when we finish the shot next week.
This is harder than you might think. When we made “The Tiger and the Dragon”, we were never sure if we could get the actors to come back after lunch, much less after a two-week vacation. In fact, we ended up cutting Chris Bogue out of the film completely, even though he had the most menacing snarl of anyone on the team…but he couldn’t make it to the set often enough.
We solved most of our continuity problems by having all the henchmen wear our swim team T-Shirt. I don’t know who designed the shirt, but I can pretty much guarantee that they aren’t working in the fashion industry today; alternating horizontal red and gray stripes made the wearer look like a sunburned bumblebee. But at least everybody on the team had one. Are you playing a bad guy? Put on your team shirt.
(In later films, we tried to stick with the same sort of technique. When Doug Smith played James Bond, we made sure he wore the same shirt in every scene. The only problem we ran into was when we filmed the first half of the climactic fight scene in August, but were unable to film the rest until December. If you look closely, you’ll notice that at the end of the fight, Doug is wearing the same James Bond shirt, all right, but he has a half-dozen undershirts on beneath it.)
Anyway, this story is about how I got my bloody ribcage wound in the scene right after I jumped off a 30-foot roof to land on Rickey Harris’s head. Here’s how it happened:
Our swim team coach (the amazing Bill Spahn) had left town to go to the National Championship meet with Mike Ulffers and Robin Messner. Normally, when Bill was absent, one of the assistant coaches would fill in for him. If they were all busy, then Ulffers got the assignment. But when they were all gone at the same time, Bill turned the workout over to the person who was not only the next best swimmer, but was also the oldest. You’d think he’d also be the most mature, but…
We’re talking about Roger Neugent, here. One of the most delightfully unique individuals I’ve ever met, Roger is not only an incredibly talented athlete, but also a free-thinking philosopher who was never afraid to challenge conventional wisdom. Either that or he was some kind of brain-damaged weirdo. (I prefer the first explanation, but considering that he once jumped out of a fifth story window holding a fire extinguisher – when there was no fire – has led some people to the second conclusion. But I digress…)
When Roger was put in charge of the workout, you knew that our standard workout format would go out the window. We had filmed the roof-jumping scene a few days earlier, and were scheduled to finish shooting over the weekend. On this particular day, though, we weren’t thinking about the film; we were just looking for something fun to do at swim practice. Roger came up with a dandy idea.
Ever an observer of detail, Roger noticed a couple of things about the pool. One, that the pool deck was nothing more than a long, smooth, stretch of concrete…and two, that the gate at the end of the pool deck was large enough to pass an automobile. The next step was obvious…car skiing!
Roger drove his ancient Buick onto the deck. It was a beat-up pile of cerulean junk that he affectionately called the “Blue-Ick”, but it ran well enough. Somebody found about 35 feet of rope, and we were in business.
One end of the rope was held by a kid riding shotgun in Roger’s car; the other by a kid on a kickboard in the pool. Roger would drive from one end of the pool to the other, and the kid on the kickboard would enjoy the best surfing experience he could possibly get within the confines of an Olympic-sized pool. We took turns, and everybody got a chance for a serious thrill ride.
We thought the only danger was that the kid being towed needed to watch out for the pool wall, since the car was pulling from a significant angle. We were careful to coach everyone on how to avoid a collision with the wall. But we didn’t think the kid in the car had anything to worry about. But he did.
Naturally, I was the one who discovered the problem. It was my turn to hold onto the tow rope from the passenger side of the Blue-Ick. Wearing nothing but a Speedo, I didn’t have much protection when I lost my grip on the rope. There was a soft buzzing sound as the whizzing rope buzzed its way along my side until the entire length had been left behind on the deck outside the car. The kid we were towing was yelling about being gypped out of his ride, and I was bleeding all over Roger’s car. Serious ribcage rope burn.
Well, if you know anything about teen-agers, you know that if it didn’t require hospitalization, it wasn’t serious enough to stop the current activity. But we weren’t stupid; we figured out that the rope-holder was actually a flaw in the system. Solution? Tie the rope onto the door handle. OK, who’s next?
I jumped back in the pool, figuring that a good dose of chlorine would heal that gash right up. And it was a big enough pool that the blood didn’t really tint the water much at all. No worries.
But for the next couple of weeks, I had a big, red, welt across the side of my body. Even if we’d have had makeup (which we didn’t), it would’ve been hard to disguise the wound for those shirtless close-up kung fu scenes we needed to film. Time to improvise.
When we returned to the Messner’s house to film the remaining fight sequence, we hastily wrote up a scene where I entered the front door of the house. The camera does not follow me in, but the audience can hear the sound of an attack with some sort of weapon. When I come out of the house, I’m dripping blood from the wound in my side. We never explained what happened inside, and no one ever asked.
We used a product called “Vampire Blood”, which I believe was left over from the filming of “The Return of Nocto, the Boy Vampire”. It was a bit too bright to be believable, but hey, I’d just jumped off the dang roof, so deal with it, OK?
(A couple of years later, Doug and I started a project called “Hit Man”. It was a true splatter-fest, so we needed gallons of blood. The Vampire Blood product was too expensive in those quantities, so we did some experimentation and learned how to make realistic blood out of food coloring and Karo Syrup. It was sweet and tasty, too.)
There are no longer any signs of my car-surfing wound; I’m all healed up. Roger was never again allowed to coach unsupervised. And we did get the rest of the fight scenes shot before the rainstorms moved in. But that is another story.
Moral of the story: Surround yourself with creative people, and there will never be a dull moment.
Live a full life, my friends.
Terry
Wednesday, July 09, 2003
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.
Special Effects – Why I’m Bleeding After Jumping Off the Roof, Part 1 ~1973
For most of my life, I’ve been considered to be “the Creative One” in just about any group I’ve been a part of. I’m usually the one who’s asked to come up with wild ideas and bring them to life. I’m usually expected to provide the humor, the “outside the box” thinking, and the skewed perspectives – while the others in the group provide the grounded and stable viewpoints. But not always.
When I’m with my son Tanner, I’m obviously outclassed. The kid is brilliant, and oozes creativity out of every pore. He’s one of those rare people who’s creative with words, with music, and with images all at once. But I’ll rave about him elsewhere…
The situation I’m speaking of today is my collaboration with Douglas R. Smith, also known in Hollywood as Gillatino Bertolucci, and Dougimontis, the Philosopher.
Doug and I made movies together when we were in high school and college. And there was never any doubt who was the creative force behind our projects; Doug was (and still is) a genius.
My job within our duo was to gently nudge Doug back to the planet earth when necessary. You see, Doug is a genius…but he sometimes has some trouble with a concept most of us know as “reality”. He came up with ideas, all right, but he regularly failed to consider how much they were going to cost, and how many innocent bystanders were likely to be injured as a result.
Our first project was the kung-fu epic titled “The Tiger and the Dragon”. Doug had made movies before (most notably working with Lee McCroskey in the fabled “Nocto, the Boy Vampire” series), and I had spent considerable time as the cinematographer for our family’s posterity documentation. (In other words, I shot some of our home movies. I took over the duty when I noticed that everything my father shot used a technique known as “pan across everything as fast as you can”, which meant that everything passed by in a frenetic blur. He explained the technique to me; “Film is expensive. If I pan really quickly, everything gets recorded on at least one frame, and we save tons of money.” Well, OK, but it guaranteed that relatives, neighbors, friends, and people we didn’t even know would run for the hills when we pulled the projector out of the closet.)
The plot of “T&D” was modeled on Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon”. In fact, most of the character names were pulled directly from the film, as well as a good percentage of the dialog. The story had our hero avenging the death of his best friend, who’d been killed by a mob boss after winning a ping pong tournament. I played the lead, Doug’s brother Steve played the boss bad guy, and Doug was his head henchman. All the other characters were played by our teammates from the Wichita Swim Club.
Most of our stunts were simple karate fights, with the actors’ lack of martial arts skill disguised by clever camera angles and tricky editing. But we had two extra-special stunts; 1) a police inspector falls off a 10-story parking garage, and 2) I jump from a 30-foot roof and crush the skull of one of the bad guys.
Guess what? Both stunts were Doug’s ideas.
The first one wasn’t too hard. We weren’t going to show the actual fall – he just went over the edge and the camera moved to show his splattered corpse 10 stories below. The “edge” our cop leaped from actually only dropped him about 4 feet – he had to duck after the jump so that we wouldn’t see his head floating there as he was supposedly plummeting. But it looked exactly like the edge for the establishing shot. It was simple, but was pretty effective.
We got some pretty funny looks from spectators as we set up the shot. Our cop (Lee McCroskey) had to lie in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the circular ramp while we filmed from the top of the building. Since we didn’t have walkie-talkies, he had to remain perfectly still with his arms and legs “dislocated” and an “extremely squashed” look on his face until we took the elevator down to where he could hear us shout the All Clear.
Lee did a great job as a corpse, but it wasn’t until we got the film developed that we discovered that he’d looked over his right shoulder when he jumped on the ledge during the establishing shot – but over his left in the close-up where he jumped off. Oh well, on our limited budget, we just had to cut it in and hope no one noticed.
(One other flub crept into this scene. Before he jumped from the building, Lee was supposed to turn and run from the evil henchmen who had been waiting to ambush him…but he fell flat on his butt as he turned. We just kept rolling and told him to get up and get moving. He did it well; it looked natural. But my brother, who was playing one of the henchmen can be seen in the back of the frame, rolling on the ground, laughing at Lee’s clumsiness. Due to Lee’s on-screen magnetism, though, no one in the audience noticed.)
OK. I admit that I had no problem when Doug suggested that Lee fall 10 stories to his death. But when he said that I should leap onto a guy’s head from a 30-foot rooftop, well, I balked.
I calmly explained that he was out of his friggin’ mind, but Doug wasn’t listening. “No, look,” he said, “we can fix it in editing. You only have to jump off the 15-foot roof peak. It’ll look like you went off the top. No problem.”
“Nobody’s gonna buy that,” I said. “It’ll look fake, and besides,” I added, “I ain’t jumpin’ off no 15-foot roof, either!”
“You gotta,” he said. “It’s the only way to sell the stunt.”
“Leave it out. It’s gonna make us look stupid.”
“No, we gotta do it.”
Deep breath. I looked at the house* again. It had 3 peaks to the roof – the center was the 30-footer, while the ones on the ends of the house were about half that high. Still, even the lower peaks were high enough to seriously injure anyone stupid enough to jump off. We didn’t even have a bunch of pillows, or a pile of leaves; much less a professional stunt cushion. If I were going to jump, I’d land in the yard. And the rest of the movie would go unfilmed while its star sat in a hospital bed with his leg in one of those casts with wires holding it up.
I’ve never been a particularly brave or adventurous person. I explained to the crew that the jump was simply too dangerous, and I wasn’t going to do it. Well, my brother was listening to this exchange. “Oh, it’s not so bad”, he said. Then he climbed up on the courtyard wall that attached to the lowest point of the roof. A minute later, he had jumped off the 15-foot peak.
“See? No injuries. No problems.” Crap. If my stupid little brother can do it, then I’ll look like a total dipwad if I don’t do it. Fine. I started the climb.
First we took the establishing shot of me standing on the top peak, where it was obvious how high I was. Then I walked over to the lower peak. Doug zoomed in so that no one could see that the roof continued to go upward just behind me.
To this day, I don’t know what possessed me to think we needed a test run. Doug looked through the camera and gave me the thumbs up. I jumped.
It hurt. Bad.
But the camera hadn’t been rolling. Gotta do it again. Taking a deep breath (and using part of it to curse my stupid little brother’s bravery), I mounted the roof again.
Of course, Doug was right. The scene was a big hit in the movie. Practically everyone who’s ever seen the movie comments on how cool it was that I jumped off that really high roof and landed on that guy’s head. That one scene transformed the movie from an amateur effort into a pretty good little film.
So how did I land on the guy’s head, you ask? Well, with a little help from editing and camera trickery. We filmed the shot with me standing on Ricky Harris’s shoulders. The camera started at Rick’s shoulder height and then tilted upward quickly. On a stationary screen, it appeared that I’d come down…fast. We cut that in right after the shot of my jump, and followed it with a shot of me stepping off of Ricky’s crushed body.
As an homage to Bruce Lee’s big fight in “Enter the Dragon”, I wasn’t wearing a shirt (It had been ripped off by the effeminate bouncer henchman played by Dave Feld. Feld wasn’t effeminate at all, but she didn’t show up for our vocals dubbing session, so we dubbed his lines with our best stereotypical limp-wristed lisp. The audience loved it.)
The next scene was supposed to begin the final fight sequence leading up to the climactic meeting with the mob boss. But we had to explain the bloody gash across my ribs first. Stay tuned.
Terry
*The house belonged to the Messners. Robin was one of the best swimmers in the world, and I was madly in love with her at the time. (I thought her mom was pretty hot, too, but that's another story.) Robin's dad is Roe Messner, who is most famous (or infamous) for dumping Robin's mom in order to marry the former Tammy Faye Baker. But that was later...at the time of this film, Roe was still around the house in Wichita. It was a great house, and it was awfully nice of their family to let us stage murders in the yard and jump off the roof, etc.
Special Effects – Why I’m Bleeding After Jumping Off the Roof, Part 1 ~1973
For most of my life, I’ve been considered to be “the Creative One” in just about any group I’ve been a part of. I’m usually the one who’s asked to come up with wild ideas and bring them to life. I’m usually expected to provide the humor, the “outside the box” thinking, and the skewed perspectives – while the others in the group provide the grounded and stable viewpoints. But not always.
When I’m with my son Tanner, I’m obviously outclassed. The kid is brilliant, and oozes creativity out of every pore. He’s one of those rare people who’s creative with words, with music, and with images all at once. But I’ll rave about him elsewhere…
The situation I’m speaking of today is my collaboration with Douglas R. Smith, also known in Hollywood as Gillatino Bertolucci, and Dougimontis, the Philosopher.
Doug and I made movies together when we were in high school and college. And there was never any doubt who was the creative force behind our projects; Doug was (and still is) a genius.
My job within our duo was to gently nudge Doug back to the planet earth when necessary. You see, Doug is a genius…but he sometimes has some trouble with a concept most of us know as “reality”. He came up with ideas, all right, but he regularly failed to consider how much they were going to cost, and how many innocent bystanders were likely to be injured as a result.
Our first project was the kung-fu epic titled “The Tiger and the Dragon”. Doug had made movies before (most notably working with Lee McCroskey in the fabled “Nocto, the Boy Vampire” series), and I had spent considerable time as the cinematographer for our family’s posterity documentation. (In other words, I shot some of our home movies. I took over the duty when I noticed that everything my father shot used a technique known as “pan across everything as fast as you can”, which meant that everything passed by in a frenetic blur. He explained the technique to me; “Film is expensive. If I pan really quickly, everything gets recorded on at least one frame, and we save tons of money.” Well, OK, but it guaranteed that relatives, neighbors, friends, and people we didn’t even know would run for the hills when we pulled the projector out of the closet.)
The plot of “T&D” was modeled on Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon”. In fact, most of the character names were pulled directly from the film, as well as a good percentage of the dialog. The story had our hero avenging the death of his best friend, who’d been killed by a mob boss after winning a ping pong tournament. I played the lead, Doug’s brother Steve played the boss bad guy, and Doug was his head henchman. All the other characters were played by our teammates from the Wichita Swim Club.
Most of our stunts were simple karate fights, with the actors’ lack of martial arts skill disguised by clever camera angles and tricky editing. But we had two extra-special stunts; 1) a police inspector falls off a 10-story parking garage, and 2) I jump from a 30-foot roof and crush the skull of one of the bad guys.
Guess what? Both stunts were Doug’s ideas.
The first one wasn’t too hard. We weren’t going to show the actual fall – he just went over the edge and the camera moved to show his splattered corpse 10 stories below. The “edge” our cop leaped from actually only dropped him about 4 feet – he had to duck after the jump so that we wouldn’t see his head floating there as he was supposedly plummeting. But it looked exactly like the edge for the establishing shot. It was simple, but was pretty effective.
We got some pretty funny looks from spectators as we set up the shot. Our cop (Lee McCroskey) had to lie in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the circular ramp while we filmed from the top of the building. Since we didn’t have walkie-talkies, he had to remain perfectly still with his arms and legs “dislocated” and an “extremely squashed” look on his face until we took the elevator down to where he could hear us shout the All Clear.
Lee did a great job as a corpse, but it wasn’t until we got the film developed that we discovered that he’d looked over his right shoulder when he jumped on the ledge during the establishing shot – but over his left in the close-up where he jumped off. Oh well, on our limited budget, we just had to cut it in and hope no one noticed.
(One other flub crept into this scene. Before he jumped from the building, Lee was supposed to turn and run from the evil henchmen who had been waiting to ambush him…but he fell flat on his butt as he turned. We just kept rolling and told him to get up and get moving. He did it well; it looked natural. But my brother, who was playing one of the henchmen can be seen in the back of the frame, rolling on the ground, laughing at Lee’s clumsiness. Due to Lee’s on-screen magnetism, though, no one in the audience noticed.)
OK. I admit that I had no problem when Doug suggested that Lee fall 10 stories to his death. But when he said that I should leap onto a guy’s head from a 30-foot rooftop, well, I balked.
I calmly explained that he was out of his friggin’ mind, but Doug wasn’t listening. “No, look,” he said, “we can fix it in editing. You only have to jump off the 15-foot roof peak. It’ll look like you went off the top. No problem.”
“Nobody’s gonna buy that,” I said. “It’ll look fake, and besides,” I added, “I ain’t jumpin’ off no 15-foot roof, either!”
“You gotta,” he said. “It’s the only way to sell the stunt.”
“Leave it out. It’s gonna make us look stupid.”
“No, we gotta do it.”
Deep breath. I looked at the house* again. It had 3 peaks to the roof – the center was the 30-footer, while the ones on the ends of the house were about half that high. Still, even the lower peaks were high enough to seriously injure anyone stupid enough to jump off. We didn’t even have a bunch of pillows, or a pile of leaves; much less a professional stunt cushion. If I were going to jump, I’d land in the yard. And the rest of the movie would go unfilmed while its star sat in a hospital bed with his leg in one of those casts with wires holding it up.
I’ve never been a particularly brave or adventurous person. I explained to the crew that the jump was simply too dangerous, and I wasn’t going to do it. Well, my brother was listening to this exchange. “Oh, it’s not so bad”, he said. Then he climbed up on the courtyard wall that attached to the lowest point of the roof. A minute later, he had jumped off the 15-foot peak.
“See? No injuries. No problems.” Crap. If my stupid little brother can do it, then I’ll look like a total dipwad if I don’t do it. Fine. I started the climb.
First we took the establishing shot of me standing on the top peak, where it was obvious how high I was. Then I walked over to the lower peak. Doug zoomed in so that no one could see that the roof continued to go upward just behind me.
To this day, I don’t know what possessed me to think we needed a test run. Doug looked through the camera and gave me the thumbs up. I jumped.
It hurt. Bad.
But the camera hadn’t been rolling. Gotta do it again. Taking a deep breath (and using part of it to curse my stupid little brother’s bravery), I mounted the roof again.
Of course, Doug was right. The scene was a big hit in the movie. Practically everyone who’s ever seen the movie comments on how cool it was that I jumped off that really high roof and landed on that guy’s head. That one scene transformed the movie from an amateur effort into a pretty good little film.
So how did I land on the guy’s head, you ask? Well, with a little help from editing and camera trickery. We filmed the shot with me standing on Ricky Harris’s shoulders. The camera started at Rick’s shoulder height and then tilted upward quickly. On a stationary screen, it appeared that I’d come down…fast. We cut that in right after the shot of my jump, and followed it with a shot of me stepping off of Ricky’s crushed body.
As an homage to Bruce Lee’s big fight in “Enter the Dragon”, I wasn’t wearing a shirt (It had been ripped off by the effeminate bouncer henchman played by Dave Feld. Feld wasn’t effeminate at all, but she didn’t show up for our vocals dubbing session, so we dubbed his lines with our best stereotypical limp-wristed lisp. The audience loved it.)
The next scene was supposed to begin the final fight sequence leading up to the climactic meeting with the mob boss. But we had to explain the bloody gash across my ribs first. Stay tuned.
Terry
*The house belonged to the Messners. Robin was one of the best swimmers in the world, and I was madly in love with her at the time. (I thought her mom was pretty hot, too, but that's another story.) Robin's dad is Roe Messner, who is most famous (or infamous) for dumping Robin's mom in order to marry the former Tammy Faye Baker. But that was later...at the time of this film, Roe was still around the house in Wichita. It was a great house, and it was awfully nice of their family to let us stage murders in the yard and jump off the roof, etc.
Wednesday, July 02, 2003
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.
Park Board, Part 3 – Moving up to the Wichita Swim Club 1970
(Start by reading Part 1 and Part 2)
Once I achieved dominance in the Park Board summer swim league, it was time to move up to the next level. Mickey, Rick Dillard, and Steve Odle had already joined the Wichita Swim Club, and they convinced me to sign up as well. I’ll never forget my first practice there. It was in an outdoor pool, but the pool was covered by an enormous canvas bubble, held up by a couple of huge fans constantly blowing air inside. Entry was gained through a revolving door at the end of an outdoor corridor from the dark and bare concrete locker room. Since it was wintertime, the walk from the locker room to the revolving door could be a severe test of toe toughness, as you gingerly avoided the icy patches along the walkway.
There was no point in wearing your glasses; about halfway through the revolving door they’d fog up so badly that you’d totally saturate your towel if you tried to clean them off. Sometimes, the fog inside the bubble would be so bad that you couldn’t see more than 1/3 of the pool. Fortunately, on my first night there, the visibility was pretty good. It wasn’t hard to find the coach…he carried a clipboard, and his booming voice made it clear who was in charge.
His name was Doug Sidles, and I later came to have a great deal of love and respect for the man. That first night, though, I was simply eager to show him the awesome conditioning that I’d gained through my years with the mighty Harvest Park team.
We chatted for a few minutes. He asked me my race times, and what sorts of workouts I had been through. I told him, confident in the knowledge that our HP workouts were far more grueling than anything those wimps at Westlink or Country Acres ever had to put up with. Doug nodded knowingly and pointed to lane 5. “Start here,” he said, and then walked away to answer another swimmer’s question.
I eased myself into the water, and started to introduce myself to my lanemates. Then I realized the mistake. I was a 15-year-old male in the prime of my swimming career, and these people in Lane 5 were 11 and 12-year-old girls! I raised my hand. “Uh, Mr. Coach, Sir,” I pleaded. “Um, I think I’m in the wrong lane.” But it was too late – the set was starting.
“All right”, I grumbled to myself. “I’ll swim with these Barbie-loving toddlers. We’ll resolve this after the set.” Let the swimming begin.
In about two minutes, it was obvious to everyone in the pool that I had been right about not belonging in that lane – those little girls were killers! There was no way I could keep up with them. In moments, I was standing in the shallow end of the pool, bent over double gasping for air…while girls too young for training bras were streaking up and down the pool, lapping me without effort.
I almost quit right there. I could easily go back to Harvest Park and continue my dominance of what I could now see was a clearly inferior league…or I could stay here and have every ounce of my masculinity stripped away, pounded to a pulp, and discarded in the fog of the great canvas bubble.
But I had my pride. I resolved right then and there to work as hard as I could – to give every last effort I could to the task of improvement. I swore an oath to myself; “By all that is Holy in this world, I swear that I shall overcome all adversity and shall shirk no challenge until I have finally, once and for all, achieved my goal. By all that is Great and Powerful, I shall not rest until I have moved up to the lane with the 11-year-old boys!”
It took some time, but I got better. By the end of my career with WSC, I could routinely keep up with boys who were only 2 or 3 years younger than me. And with the exception of the girl who was leading the lane that first night, I eventually was able to swim faster than the others I'd met that evening. (The 11-year-old who was leading the lane turned out to be Robin Messner, who was ranked in the top 3 in the world only two short years later. I was never able to beat her in anything.)
Ed Poley had been right; there was an entire other swimming realm out there. The Park Board league had been fun, but WSC had real swimmers, and attended real meets. Some of those experiences will be chronicled in other chapters. But for now, I’ll leave you with a footnote to my Park Board swimming career.
About a year after I joined WSC, I attended a meet at Harvest Park, to cheer for my old teammates. My brother was swimming the 200 free, and I prepared to yell my support from beyond the chain link fence. But this was the Park Board Championship meet, and Harvest Park was only a few points behind the hated Westlink Pool team. My brother needed to win the 200 in order to pull our team ahead.
There were no rules against substitutions, so I put on my old green & white striped suit, changed the name on my brother’s entry card, and headed to the starting blocks. (Well, OK, the Park Board didn’t use starting blocks – you’d just curl your toes over the edge of the gutter – but you know what I mean.)
Perhaps it was just a natural product of a teenage growth spurt, perhaps the fact that Doug Sidles was an excellent coach. Or maybe it was the motivation I felt from being humiliated by that snotty pack of tiny little ass-kicking girls at WSC…but whatever the reason, the obvious fact was that I had improved a lot. I won the race, and had even gotten out of the pool and started to dry off before any of the other competitors had made the turn for their final length. As I walked from the pool deck, I smiled and waved at the crowd of spectators, who were whispering among themselves about rumors of a mythological place called the Wichita Swim Club.
I said my final goodbye to Park Board swimming that day, and returned to resume my role as a little fish in a bigger pond.
Many more swimming stories are yet to come. Some are actually entertaining.
Stay tuned, my friends.
Terry
Park Board, Part 3 – Moving up to the Wichita Swim Club 1970
(Start by reading Part 1 and Part 2)
Once I achieved dominance in the Park Board summer swim league, it was time to move up to the next level. Mickey, Rick Dillard, and Steve Odle had already joined the Wichita Swim Club, and they convinced me to sign up as well. I’ll never forget my first practice there. It was in an outdoor pool, but the pool was covered by an enormous canvas bubble, held up by a couple of huge fans constantly blowing air inside. Entry was gained through a revolving door at the end of an outdoor corridor from the dark and bare concrete locker room. Since it was wintertime, the walk from the locker room to the revolving door could be a severe test of toe toughness, as you gingerly avoided the icy patches along the walkway.
There was no point in wearing your glasses; about halfway through the revolving door they’d fog up so badly that you’d totally saturate your towel if you tried to clean them off. Sometimes, the fog inside the bubble would be so bad that you couldn’t see more than 1/3 of the pool. Fortunately, on my first night there, the visibility was pretty good. It wasn’t hard to find the coach…he carried a clipboard, and his booming voice made it clear who was in charge.
His name was Doug Sidles, and I later came to have a great deal of love and respect for the man. That first night, though, I was simply eager to show him the awesome conditioning that I’d gained through my years with the mighty Harvest Park team.
We chatted for a few minutes. He asked me my race times, and what sorts of workouts I had been through. I told him, confident in the knowledge that our HP workouts were far more grueling than anything those wimps at Westlink or Country Acres ever had to put up with. Doug nodded knowingly and pointed to lane 5. “Start here,” he said, and then walked away to answer another swimmer’s question.
I eased myself into the water, and started to introduce myself to my lanemates. Then I realized the mistake. I was a 15-year-old male in the prime of my swimming career, and these people in Lane 5 were 11 and 12-year-old girls! I raised my hand. “Uh, Mr. Coach, Sir,” I pleaded. “Um, I think I’m in the wrong lane.” But it was too late – the set was starting.
“All right”, I grumbled to myself. “I’ll swim with these Barbie-loving toddlers. We’ll resolve this after the set.” Let the swimming begin.
In about two minutes, it was obvious to everyone in the pool that I had been right about not belonging in that lane – those little girls were killers! There was no way I could keep up with them. In moments, I was standing in the shallow end of the pool, bent over double gasping for air…while girls too young for training bras were streaking up and down the pool, lapping me without effort.
I almost quit right there. I could easily go back to Harvest Park and continue my dominance of what I could now see was a clearly inferior league…or I could stay here and have every ounce of my masculinity stripped away, pounded to a pulp, and discarded in the fog of the great canvas bubble.
But I had my pride. I resolved right then and there to work as hard as I could – to give every last effort I could to the task of improvement. I swore an oath to myself; “By all that is Holy in this world, I swear that I shall overcome all adversity and shall shirk no challenge until I have finally, once and for all, achieved my goal. By all that is Great and Powerful, I shall not rest until I have moved up to the lane with the 11-year-old boys!”
It took some time, but I got better. By the end of my career with WSC, I could routinely keep up with boys who were only 2 or 3 years younger than me. And with the exception of the girl who was leading the lane that first night, I eventually was able to swim faster than the others I'd met that evening. (The 11-year-old who was leading the lane turned out to be Robin Messner, who was ranked in the top 3 in the world only two short years later. I was never able to beat her in anything.)
Ed Poley had been right; there was an entire other swimming realm out there. The Park Board league had been fun, but WSC had real swimmers, and attended real meets. Some of those experiences will be chronicled in other chapters. But for now, I’ll leave you with a footnote to my Park Board swimming career.
About a year after I joined WSC, I attended a meet at Harvest Park, to cheer for my old teammates. My brother was swimming the 200 free, and I prepared to yell my support from beyond the chain link fence. But this was the Park Board Championship meet, and Harvest Park was only a few points behind the hated Westlink Pool team. My brother needed to win the 200 in order to pull our team ahead.
There were no rules against substitutions, so I put on my old green & white striped suit, changed the name on my brother’s entry card, and headed to the starting blocks. (Well, OK, the Park Board didn’t use starting blocks – you’d just curl your toes over the edge of the gutter – but you know what I mean.)
Perhaps it was just a natural product of a teenage growth spurt, perhaps the fact that Doug Sidles was an excellent coach. Or maybe it was the motivation I felt from being humiliated by that snotty pack of tiny little ass-kicking girls at WSC…but whatever the reason, the obvious fact was that I had improved a lot. I won the race, and had even gotten out of the pool and started to dry off before any of the other competitors had made the turn for their final length. As I walked from the pool deck, I smiled and waved at the crowd of spectators, who were whispering among themselves about rumors of a mythological place called the Wichita Swim Club.
I said my final goodbye to Park Board swimming that day, and returned to resume my role as a little fish in a bigger pond.
Many more swimming stories are yet to come. Some are actually entertaining.
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.
Park Board, Part 2 1963 thru 1969
(Start by reading Part 1)
The practices were chaotic. No lane ropes. No particular skills displayed by either the participants or the coaches. We mostly just tried our best to get away with the minimal effort. But our tans improved with each day.
Then we had our first local “Park Board” swim meet, which was a three-way competition between Harvest Park and the two other local park pools. I entered the 25-meter freestyle; one length of the pool, as fast as my little arms could crank. There was no strategy, no finesse, and no particular athletic ability in evidence. But I won my age group
I was hooked. That blue ribbon was cool. I wanted more.
For the next 6 years, swimming was my primary activity during the summer. Oh, sure, I played some baseball. I rode my bike. I watched “Major Astro” in the afternoons. And as all young boys do, I fought with my siblings as much as possible. I considered all these pastimes equally, at first. But when I got hit in the eye socket by a rapidly-thrown hardball when trying to play catch with Mark Dotzour, well, I decided that swimming was probably the sport I wanted to concentrate on. Much less dangerous. Or so I thought.
But tragedy struck at the next swim meet. A kid in the heat before my event apparently had a seizure during his race and sank to the bottom. All I knew at the time was that I had to wait in the hot sun for a very long time before my race was called to the starting blocks. It wasn’t until later that we heard about the extensive efforts to revive the little boy, and how those efforts had ultimately failed. He didn’t make it.
Everyone in the league was saddened and sobered by the loss. Though none of us at Harvest Park knew him personally, our entire team was urged to pray for his family, and we did. But we also retained the optimism of our youth – something like that could never happen to me! We just got back in the pool and started training for the next competition, not even noticing how all the parents now watched with a new and different set of eyes.
Our main rivals within the Park Board league were the Westlink Pool team (from the opposite end of our subdivision), and the team from Country Acres, which had formerly been the westernmost suburb – until the upstart Westlinkians started moving in. It was typically a battle royale between the HP and Westlink teams, with Country Acres settling for a few table scraps. Westlink had these nasty-looking Speedo team suits covered with vertical red and white stripes. Our team cranked the fashion barometer up to an entirely new level; we had green and white stripes on our Speedos…PLUS, we had these nifty round hand-sewn patches that said “HP” (also in the same gawdawful leaf green color). Each suit patch was a stiff circle, about 3 inches in diameter – which meant that the smallest kids could barely move their legs without getting “patch burn”. Some even developed a special kind of Frankenstein walk to avoid being emasculated by the rigid, disk-like symbol of team pride that they proudly displayed near such a sensitive area of the anatomy.
In my age group, the Westlink relay was powered by Mickey Canaday (who later became my best friend) and a cocky bad-boy named Skip Bunker. Harvest Park depended on Herbie and a powerful kid named Dean Parker. The races were always close, and though we lost our share of them, we were learning how to compete with enthusiasm and dignity.
Though my memory is a little hazy regarding the chronology of coaches we had, a few stand out: Steve Miller because of his freckles, jaunty visor, and later, the speculation whether he was the same guy as the rock star who did “Big Ol’ Jet Airliner” – Brad Tompkins because of his awesome butterfly and the number of times his name appeared on the record board at Friends University – and Ed Poley, who could swim 50 meters underwater without a breath.
It was Ed Poley who told us tales of the mythical Wichita Swim Club. It was housed in a facility far, far across to the other side of town, shrouded in mystery and awe. From its hallowed lanes, he told us, swimmers achieved National Rankings and Olympic Berths. The swimmers of WSC had muscles so huge that they had to have their T-shirts custom made. They could swim 50 miles butterfly while carrying VW buses on their backs. Their lungs were so powerful that they could inflate weather balloons with a single breath. “If you work hard enough,” he said, “you could someday swim with these great warriors of the water.” You could almost hear the orchestra crescendo as he spoke.
We kept working. From the time I was 13 until I turned 15, I was consistently in the top 2 in my age group. I swam the “distance” race…the 200 freestyle. The only person who could beat me consistently was Bill Larsen, and he didn’t show up for all the meets. After Bill and I, the field dropped off dramatically. I had reason to be confident, since I knew I’d always be in the hunt for the top place. I never disparaged my competitors, but we all knew that I’d taken my place among the elite. I had achieved a small degree of stardom.
It was time for a growth experience, which I’ll share with you next.
Terry
Park Board, Part 2 1963 thru 1969
(Start by reading Part 1)
The practices were chaotic. No lane ropes. No particular skills displayed by either the participants or the coaches. We mostly just tried our best to get away with the minimal effort. But our tans improved with each day.
Then we had our first local “Park Board” swim meet, which was a three-way competition between Harvest Park and the two other local park pools. I entered the 25-meter freestyle; one length of the pool, as fast as my little arms could crank. There was no strategy, no finesse, and no particular athletic ability in evidence. But I won my age group
I was hooked. That blue ribbon was cool. I wanted more.
For the next 6 years, swimming was my primary activity during the summer. Oh, sure, I played some baseball. I rode my bike. I watched “Major Astro” in the afternoons. And as all young boys do, I fought with my siblings as much as possible. I considered all these pastimes equally, at first. But when I got hit in the eye socket by a rapidly-thrown hardball when trying to play catch with Mark Dotzour, well, I decided that swimming was probably the sport I wanted to concentrate on. Much less dangerous. Or so I thought.
But tragedy struck at the next swim meet. A kid in the heat before my event apparently had a seizure during his race and sank to the bottom. All I knew at the time was that I had to wait in the hot sun for a very long time before my race was called to the starting blocks. It wasn’t until later that we heard about the extensive efforts to revive the little boy, and how those efforts had ultimately failed. He didn’t make it.
Everyone in the league was saddened and sobered by the loss. Though none of us at Harvest Park knew him personally, our entire team was urged to pray for his family, and we did. But we also retained the optimism of our youth – something like that could never happen to me! We just got back in the pool and started training for the next competition, not even noticing how all the parents now watched with a new and different set of eyes.
Our main rivals within the Park Board league were the Westlink Pool team (from the opposite end of our subdivision), and the team from Country Acres, which had formerly been the westernmost suburb – until the upstart Westlinkians started moving in. It was typically a battle royale between the HP and Westlink teams, with Country Acres settling for a few table scraps. Westlink had these nasty-looking Speedo team suits covered with vertical red and white stripes. Our team cranked the fashion barometer up to an entirely new level; we had green and white stripes on our Speedos…PLUS, we had these nifty round hand-sewn patches that said “HP” (also in the same gawdawful leaf green color). Each suit patch was a stiff circle, about 3 inches in diameter – which meant that the smallest kids could barely move their legs without getting “patch burn”. Some even developed a special kind of Frankenstein walk to avoid being emasculated by the rigid, disk-like symbol of team pride that they proudly displayed near such a sensitive area of the anatomy.
In my age group, the Westlink relay was powered by Mickey Canaday (who later became my best friend) and a cocky bad-boy named Skip Bunker. Harvest Park depended on Herbie and a powerful kid named Dean Parker. The races were always close, and though we lost our share of them, we were learning how to compete with enthusiasm and dignity.
Though my memory is a little hazy regarding the chronology of coaches we had, a few stand out: Steve Miller because of his freckles, jaunty visor, and later, the speculation whether he was the same guy as the rock star who did “Big Ol’ Jet Airliner” – Brad Tompkins because of his awesome butterfly and the number of times his name appeared on the record board at Friends University – and Ed Poley, who could swim 50 meters underwater without a breath.
It was Ed Poley who told us tales of the mythical Wichita Swim Club. It was housed in a facility far, far across to the other side of town, shrouded in mystery and awe. From its hallowed lanes, he told us, swimmers achieved National Rankings and Olympic Berths. The swimmers of WSC had muscles so huge that they had to have their T-shirts custom made. They could swim 50 miles butterfly while carrying VW buses on their backs. Their lungs were so powerful that they could inflate weather balloons with a single breath. “If you work hard enough,” he said, “you could someday swim with these great warriors of the water.” You could almost hear the orchestra crescendo as he spoke.
We kept working. From the time I was 13 until I turned 15, I was consistently in the top 2 in my age group. I swam the “distance” race…the 200 freestyle. The only person who could beat me consistently was Bill Larsen, and he didn’t show up for all the meets. After Bill and I, the field dropped off dramatically. I had reason to be confident, since I knew I’d always be in the hunt for the top place. I never disparaged my competitors, but we all knew that I’d taken my place among the elite. I had achieved a small degree of stardom.
It was time for a growth experience, which I’ll share with you next.
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.
Park Board - Part 1 – 1963 thru 1969
I grew up in the suburbs. Some folks may not consider Wichita, Kansas to be a big enough city to justify having designated suburbs, but this was the early 1960s – every town in America was on a lateral expansion bandwagon. Thanks to America’s postwar prosperity and the collective triumphs of thousands of George Baileys over their respective Mr. Potters, young married couples were migrating out of the cities. For many, it was less than one generation since their families had left the farm to move into the cities, but that’s OK – it’s now the Space Age.
I mean, if American families didn’t move into suburban subdivisions, what the hell were the manufacturers going to do with all those unused avocado refrigerators and ultra-modern gas ovens? Not to mention the billions of square yards of Formica with pastel-colored Star Trek badge logos all over them…
Our neighborhood was being built to order. Each family hired its own architect, planned its dream home, and picked out an 80-foot lot of dirt to build it on. I was about 6 years old when we first visited the future Heggy home. Mom pointed to the little flag-topped wires that appeared to be randomly tossed about the yard and said, “Here’s the kitchen, and there’s the bathroom…”
Sure, Mom, I thought. We’re gonna live on a patch of dirt. Well, I suppose it beats sharing a duplex with those smelly folks and their bratty kids we were currently next to. That little neighbor boy had broken my toy vacuum cleaner with the colored balls that popped up inside the plastic dome when you pushed it. The bastard. Yeah, I can handle dirt, I guess.
The little flag wires grew into 2 x 4s, which sprouted sheetrock and electrical outlets, and before you knew it, we were moving in. We weren’t the first house in the neighborhood, but there were still plenty of vacant lots around when we occupied the home.
The subdivision was called Westlink, and there was even a big, ultra-modern wedge-shaped sign announcing this fact to anyone who drove down Central Avenue. At the time, Westlink was on the western frontier of town; take a few more steps toward the sunset and you’d be immersed in the wild territory of the untamed Cowskin Creek. The suburb was growing faster than we kids were; and it was fun to watch.
There was a shopping center with a Dillons supermarket, and a Rexall Drug store. There was an elementary school, and another one under construction. And no modern neighborhood would be complete without a couple of churches, including the bizarre A-Frame of the Westlink Baptist Church, which looked more like it belonged in the Alps than in the Great Plains. And not too long after we moved in, the big machines started digging the hole for the Harvest Park Swimming Pool.
The Harvest Park Pool was a standard L-shaped affair, with a 6-lane 25-meter section conjoined to a square diving well, which featured a one-meter and three-meter board. None of us were really sure what a “meter” was, but we were confident that we’d learn all about it in school (along with readin’, writin’, and how to duck and cover during a nuclear attack.)
Our family spent a lot of time at Harvest Park. The first swimming day of the summer was unofficially known as “burn yourself to hell” day. We may not have known how to swim yet, or how to convert yards to meters, but two things were immutably clear: 1) You would die if you got moisture on any body part during the first hour after eating (stomach cramps, you know), and 2) You had to get a good burn before you’d start to get a suntan.
That first night, we’d lube up with First Aid Cream and sit in a bathtub full of ice cubes, enduring the pain with the certain knowledge that our suffering was for a good cause. For the next three days, we’d wear white T-shirts to the pool to protect the seared flesh of our backs. (Our legs were on their own, I guess.)
We took swimming lessons each summer, and spent many pleasant evenings frolicking around in the shallow part of the pool. At 25 cents per person per visit, it soon became obvious that we needed a “family membership”. From then on, we just recited our last name as we came up to the front desk of the pool facility. Boys turned left while the girls turned right. We were required to shower before entering the pool, so naturally, the challenge was to apply precisely the minimum amount of water that the stern lifeguard would accept as a “shower”. (It didn’t take much.)
I was amazed with my Dad’s ability to swim underwater and grab our legs when we least expected. And I’ll never forget the day that my sister first swam an entire length of the pool without stopping. I was inspired to duplicate that prodigious feat myself.
I worked hard at swimming lessons, trying to catch up with my sister. My best friend, Herbie, and I would hang out at the pool at any opportunity. Herbie was a natural swimmer, and charismatically got to know the entire pool staff almost on opening day. When he encouraged me to join the summer swim team, I declined. But under his constant needling, I finally agreed to give it a try. After all, it meant I’d get to stay at the pool even longer each day.
I’ll tell you about that in the next installment.
Terry
Park Board - Part 1 – 1963 thru 1969
I grew up in the suburbs. Some folks may not consider Wichita, Kansas to be a big enough city to justify having designated suburbs, but this was the early 1960s – every town in America was on a lateral expansion bandwagon. Thanks to America’s postwar prosperity and the collective triumphs of thousands of George Baileys over their respective Mr. Potters, young married couples were migrating out of the cities. For many, it was less than one generation since their families had left the farm to move into the cities, but that’s OK – it’s now the Space Age.
I mean, if American families didn’t move into suburban subdivisions, what the hell were the manufacturers going to do with all those unused avocado refrigerators and ultra-modern gas ovens? Not to mention the billions of square yards of Formica with pastel-colored Star Trek badge logos all over them…
Our neighborhood was being built to order. Each family hired its own architect, planned its dream home, and picked out an 80-foot lot of dirt to build it on. I was about 6 years old when we first visited the future Heggy home. Mom pointed to the little flag-topped wires that appeared to be randomly tossed about the yard and said, “Here’s the kitchen, and there’s the bathroom…”
Sure, Mom, I thought. We’re gonna live on a patch of dirt. Well, I suppose it beats sharing a duplex with those smelly folks and their bratty kids we were currently next to. That little neighbor boy had broken my toy vacuum cleaner with the colored balls that popped up inside the plastic dome when you pushed it. The bastard. Yeah, I can handle dirt, I guess.
The little flag wires grew into 2 x 4s, which sprouted sheetrock and electrical outlets, and before you knew it, we were moving in. We weren’t the first house in the neighborhood, but there were still plenty of vacant lots around when we occupied the home.
The subdivision was called Westlink, and there was even a big, ultra-modern wedge-shaped sign announcing this fact to anyone who drove down Central Avenue. At the time, Westlink was on the western frontier of town; take a few more steps toward the sunset and you’d be immersed in the wild territory of the untamed Cowskin Creek. The suburb was growing faster than we kids were; and it was fun to watch.
There was a shopping center with a Dillons supermarket, and a Rexall Drug store. There was an elementary school, and another one under construction. And no modern neighborhood would be complete without a couple of churches, including the bizarre A-Frame of the Westlink Baptist Church, which looked more like it belonged in the Alps than in the Great Plains. And not too long after we moved in, the big machines started digging the hole for the Harvest Park Swimming Pool.
The Harvest Park Pool was a standard L-shaped affair, with a 6-lane 25-meter section conjoined to a square diving well, which featured a one-meter and three-meter board. None of us were really sure what a “meter” was, but we were confident that we’d learn all about it in school (along with readin’, writin’, and how to duck and cover during a nuclear attack.)
Our family spent a lot of time at Harvest Park. The first swimming day of the summer was unofficially known as “burn yourself to hell” day. We may not have known how to swim yet, or how to convert yards to meters, but two things were immutably clear: 1) You would die if you got moisture on any body part during the first hour after eating (stomach cramps, you know), and 2) You had to get a good burn before you’d start to get a suntan.
That first night, we’d lube up with First Aid Cream and sit in a bathtub full of ice cubes, enduring the pain with the certain knowledge that our suffering was for a good cause. For the next three days, we’d wear white T-shirts to the pool to protect the seared flesh of our backs. (Our legs were on their own, I guess.)
We took swimming lessons each summer, and spent many pleasant evenings frolicking around in the shallow part of the pool. At 25 cents per person per visit, it soon became obvious that we needed a “family membership”. From then on, we just recited our last name as we came up to the front desk of the pool facility. Boys turned left while the girls turned right. We were required to shower before entering the pool, so naturally, the challenge was to apply precisely the minimum amount of water that the stern lifeguard would accept as a “shower”. (It didn’t take much.)
I was amazed with my Dad’s ability to swim underwater and grab our legs when we least expected. And I’ll never forget the day that my sister first swam an entire length of the pool without stopping. I was inspired to duplicate that prodigious feat myself.
I worked hard at swimming lessons, trying to catch up with my sister. My best friend, Herbie, and I would hang out at the pool at any opportunity. Herbie was a natural swimmer, and charismatically got to know the entire pool staff almost on opening day. When he encouraged me to join the summer swim team, I declined. But under his constant needling, I finally agreed to give it a try. After all, it meant I’d get to stay at the pool even longer each day.
I’ll tell you about that in the next installment.
Terry
Sunday, June 22, 2003
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.
Special Effects circa 1974
On our swim team, the grandest event of the summer was the “Smith Open” Ping Pong Tournament. Oh, sure, we had swim meets to compete in, including the infamous Air Capital Meet, the Regional Championships, and for the fast people, the National Championships. And folks who did well at those events received medals, trophies, and adulation for their accomplishments. But to truly become a hero to the team, you had to win the Smith Open.
The Smiths were the only family who had six kids swimming on our team. That’s right, six kids – and they were all pretty good swimmers. But it was not just the sheer volume of Smith genes in the pool that made them inescapable – it was the Smith household that did it.
They had an open door policy. Really, I mean it – the door to the Smith home was always open. No one was expected to knock, just to walk in and make themselves at home. Visitors would always find food in the kitchen, music on the stereo, and someone who was up for a friendly game of pool in the front room.
It was a nice house, but certainly not a mansion. Still, there was room for plenty of activity. The ping pong table in the basement was in a bit of a cramped space; a free swinger would occasionally impact the hanging beads that were draped across the doorway to the laundry room, but you could still put in a good game.
The Smith parents were beloved by all the kids on the swim team. Eccentric, but beloved. The dad’s name was Duane Rollo Smith, but everyone called him Duaner. Mom’s name was Patricia, but most just called her “Pitter Pat”. Duaner referred to himself as “the King” of the household, and enjoyed issuing mental challenges to anyone he encountered. Pitter Pat simply spread massive amounts of love upon everyone who walked through the doors.
The Smith’s eldest son, Steve, proclaimed himself to be the greatest Ping Pong player on the face of the earth. My college roommate and best friend (Mickey) was quick to point out just exactly how totally full of crap Steve was. The gauntlet had been thrown.
And as these things usually go, once word got out of the upcoming epic Ping Pong duel, more pretenders appeared from the woodwork. Seemed as if there were quite a few swimmers who felt their athletic skills extended beyond the aquatic realm. A tournament was proposed.
There was not even a question about who would host the thing. The only problem was to find an additional table – the Tournament would simply take too long if all the games had to be contested on the single table in the Smith’s cramped basement. Glenn Nyberg volunteered to swipe, er, I mean borrow, a table from his neighbors.
I was assigned to the table pickup task force, along with Steve Smith and his brother Doug. Duaner drove his wood-side-panel monstrosity of a station wagon over to the Nyberg’s.
In our current modern age of mini-vans, most young people have never experienced riding in the rear seat of a station wagon. The front two seats of the vehicle were exactly like those in a regular sedan, but behind the second seat was a third that faced backwards. It could be folded into the floorwell if one wanted to carry cargo rather than passengers, but provided adequate comfort for three when unfolded. The kid on the starboard side of the car had to contend with a bulging panel that hid the spare tire (which were full-size, in those days), but the other kids had nearly normal space to sit in. Most of these rear seats had no seatbelts, and I believe the Smithmobile was no exception.
Facing backward provided opportunities that conventional seating did not. For example, you could stare directly into the eyes of the driver of cars behind you. You could play with the electric rear window – put it down to allow seatmates to dangle their feet out the back, then roll it up to try to guillotine their unsuspecting legs. And if Duaner wasn’t paying attention…
While his dad was distracted by traffic in front of the car, Doug climbed out the rear window and got a secure grip on the luggage rack on top of the car. Staying low to avoid wind resistance, he crept forward and waited for his opportunity.
Now, Duaner was quite attentive to the rules of politeness and propriety. He rarely swore at all, but I think everyone in the county heard what he said next. “JEE-JUSSS CHRIST!” he shouted when Doug suddenly appeared upside down directly in front of the driver’s side windshield. Not only had Doug launched his entire torso down the front of the car, but he had put on his best bug-eyed, tongue-protruding, maniacal demon face at the same time.
Try it. Suddenly appear upside down in front of an unsuspecting family member. Even though they may know your face well, and love you with every fiber of their being, I guarantee that such a sudden, inverted monster-faced appearance will totally freak them out. It certainly did with Duaner.
The car was stopped and discipline applied. After Doug was safely back inside the wagon, we were emphatically informed that we were henceforth forever banned from operating the car’s rear window. Oh, well, it was worth it.
At the Nyberg's, putting the Ping Pong table on top of the car was not that hard; after all, we were athletes in our prime, and feats of brute strength were welcome challenges. We opened the rear car doors and looped Duaner’s long rope around the table to secure it.
When Duaner emerged from the house after talking with Mr. Nyberg, we were ready to mount up and return to the Smith’s house. The kids climbed into the car and closed its doors.
Except they wouldn’t close – the rope was in the way. I’ll never forget Duaner’s expression; a perfect Spock eyebrow half-grin. “Ah,” he said, “two loops of rope – one for each year of college.” None of us said much as we unwound the rope, closed the doors, and wound it again – through the open car windows. Then we sheepishly climbed into the car (through the open windows, since we now couldn’t open the doors), and rode home in silence. We could tell that Duaner wanted to continue laughing at us, but to his credit, he was remained silent.
Once the table was set up in the living room, Doug and I started scouting camera angles. We had decided that the tournament would play an important role in the kung fu film we were making. The plot called for an epic Ping Pong battle between good guy “Mr. Roper” (played by Mickey) and the evil overlord “Mr. Spanman” (played by Steve Smith).
As a show of his strength, Mickey was supposed to crush a ping pong ball under Spanman’s nose1. Seems like a simple effect, but it took us a long time to figure out how to do it. We found that it is nearly impossible to actually crush a ping pong ball in one hand – so we mashed one with a hammer. Well, through the lens of the camera, it just looked like a blob, so we decided to crack a ball into shards and then insert a closeup after Mickey opened his hand. It worked better than the mashed ball, but on the final Super-8mm film product, it didn’t look any different than if we’d have had Mickey crush a single Dorito® chip (which would’ve been a lot cheaper than the several dollars we spent mutilating real ping pong balls). Sigh.
Anyway, the game scenes were exciting, and so was the dramatic fight scene where Spanman had Roper “wasted” after the tournament. Everyone who attended the Smith Open Tournament that year also showed up at our movie premier, and applauded wildly during the dramatic scenes of ping pong competition.
Well, when I started this piece, I was planning to talk about some of our other special effects as well, including the jet-scorching laser we created, the head-crushing leap from a high rooftop, the 10-story plummet in the parking garage, and the dramatic hotel window escape climb. But those stories will have to wait until another time.
And, by the way, Mickey won the tournament that year. Steve Smith won the next one, I believe, and the two continued their epic battles for years to come. I’m not sure when the Smith Open Tournament was last held, but if you ever see that it has been resurrected, don’t you dare miss it.
1 - The movie was called “The Tiger and the Dragon”. We modeled it after Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon”, and the ball-crushing scene was an homage to O’Hara breaking boards before his fight with Lee.
Special Effects circa 1974
On our swim team, the grandest event of the summer was the “Smith Open” Ping Pong Tournament. Oh, sure, we had swim meets to compete in, including the infamous Air Capital Meet, the Regional Championships, and for the fast people, the National Championships. And folks who did well at those events received medals, trophies, and adulation for their accomplishments. But to truly become a hero to the team, you had to win the Smith Open.
The Smiths were the only family who had six kids swimming on our team. That’s right, six kids – and they were all pretty good swimmers. But it was not just the sheer volume of Smith genes in the pool that made them inescapable – it was the Smith household that did it.
They had an open door policy. Really, I mean it – the door to the Smith home was always open. No one was expected to knock, just to walk in and make themselves at home. Visitors would always find food in the kitchen, music on the stereo, and someone who was up for a friendly game of pool in the front room.
It was a nice house, but certainly not a mansion. Still, there was room for plenty of activity. The ping pong table in the basement was in a bit of a cramped space; a free swinger would occasionally impact the hanging beads that were draped across the doorway to the laundry room, but you could still put in a good game.
The Smith parents were beloved by all the kids on the swim team. Eccentric, but beloved. The dad’s name was Duane Rollo Smith, but everyone called him Duaner. Mom’s name was Patricia, but most just called her “Pitter Pat”. Duaner referred to himself as “the King” of the household, and enjoyed issuing mental challenges to anyone he encountered. Pitter Pat simply spread massive amounts of love upon everyone who walked through the doors.
The Smith’s eldest son, Steve, proclaimed himself to be the greatest Ping Pong player on the face of the earth. My college roommate and best friend (Mickey) was quick to point out just exactly how totally full of crap Steve was. The gauntlet had been thrown.
And as these things usually go, once word got out of the upcoming epic Ping Pong duel, more pretenders appeared from the woodwork. Seemed as if there were quite a few swimmers who felt their athletic skills extended beyond the aquatic realm. A tournament was proposed.
There was not even a question about who would host the thing. The only problem was to find an additional table – the Tournament would simply take too long if all the games had to be contested on the single table in the Smith’s cramped basement. Glenn Nyberg volunteered to swipe, er, I mean borrow, a table from his neighbors.
I was assigned to the table pickup task force, along with Steve Smith and his brother Doug. Duaner drove his wood-side-panel monstrosity of a station wagon over to the Nyberg’s.
In our current modern age of mini-vans, most young people have never experienced riding in the rear seat of a station wagon. The front two seats of the vehicle were exactly like those in a regular sedan, but behind the second seat was a third that faced backwards. It could be folded into the floorwell if one wanted to carry cargo rather than passengers, but provided adequate comfort for three when unfolded. The kid on the starboard side of the car had to contend with a bulging panel that hid the spare tire (which were full-size, in those days), but the other kids had nearly normal space to sit in. Most of these rear seats had no seatbelts, and I believe the Smithmobile was no exception.
Facing backward provided opportunities that conventional seating did not. For example, you could stare directly into the eyes of the driver of cars behind you. You could play with the electric rear window – put it down to allow seatmates to dangle their feet out the back, then roll it up to try to guillotine their unsuspecting legs. And if Duaner wasn’t paying attention…
While his dad was distracted by traffic in front of the car, Doug climbed out the rear window and got a secure grip on the luggage rack on top of the car. Staying low to avoid wind resistance, he crept forward and waited for his opportunity.
Now, Duaner was quite attentive to the rules of politeness and propriety. He rarely swore at all, but I think everyone in the county heard what he said next. “JEE-JUSSS CHRIST!” he shouted when Doug suddenly appeared upside down directly in front of the driver’s side windshield. Not only had Doug launched his entire torso down the front of the car, but he had put on his best bug-eyed, tongue-protruding, maniacal demon face at the same time.
Try it. Suddenly appear upside down in front of an unsuspecting family member. Even though they may know your face well, and love you with every fiber of their being, I guarantee that such a sudden, inverted monster-faced appearance will totally freak them out. It certainly did with Duaner.
The car was stopped and discipline applied. After Doug was safely back inside the wagon, we were emphatically informed that we were henceforth forever banned from operating the car’s rear window. Oh, well, it was worth it.
At the Nyberg's, putting the Ping Pong table on top of the car was not that hard; after all, we were athletes in our prime, and feats of brute strength were welcome challenges. We opened the rear car doors and looped Duaner’s long rope around the table to secure it.
When Duaner emerged from the house after talking with Mr. Nyberg, we were ready to mount up and return to the Smith’s house. The kids climbed into the car and closed its doors.
Except they wouldn’t close – the rope was in the way. I’ll never forget Duaner’s expression; a perfect Spock eyebrow half-grin. “Ah,” he said, “two loops of rope – one for each year of college.” None of us said much as we unwound the rope, closed the doors, and wound it again – through the open car windows. Then we sheepishly climbed into the car (through the open windows, since we now couldn’t open the doors), and rode home in silence. We could tell that Duaner wanted to continue laughing at us, but to his credit, he was remained silent.
Once the table was set up in the living room, Doug and I started scouting camera angles. We had decided that the tournament would play an important role in the kung fu film we were making. The plot called for an epic Ping Pong battle between good guy “Mr. Roper” (played by Mickey) and the evil overlord “Mr. Spanman” (played by Steve Smith).
As a show of his strength, Mickey was supposed to crush a ping pong ball under Spanman’s nose1. Seems like a simple effect, but it took us a long time to figure out how to do it. We found that it is nearly impossible to actually crush a ping pong ball in one hand – so we mashed one with a hammer. Well, through the lens of the camera, it just looked like a blob, so we decided to crack a ball into shards and then insert a closeup after Mickey opened his hand. It worked better than the mashed ball, but on the final Super-8mm film product, it didn’t look any different than if we’d have had Mickey crush a single Dorito® chip (which would’ve been a lot cheaper than the several dollars we spent mutilating real ping pong balls). Sigh.
Anyway, the game scenes were exciting, and so was the dramatic fight scene where Spanman had Roper “wasted” after the tournament. Everyone who attended the Smith Open Tournament that year also showed up at our movie premier, and applauded wildly during the dramatic scenes of ping pong competition.
Well, when I started this piece, I was planning to talk about some of our other special effects as well, including the jet-scorching laser we created, the head-crushing leap from a high rooftop, the 10-story plummet in the parking garage, and the dramatic hotel window escape climb. But those stories will have to wait until another time.
And, by the way, Mickey won the tournament that year. Steve Smith won the next one, I believe, and the two continued their epic battles for years to come. I’m not sure when the Smith Open Tournament was last held, but if you ever see that it has been resurrected, don’t you dare miss it.
1 - The movie was called “The Tiger and the Dragon”. We modeled it after Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon”, and the ball-crushing scene was an homage to O’Hara breaking boards before his fight with Lee.
Saturday, June 21, 2003
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
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
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
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
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
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
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
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
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
Monday, June 16, 2003
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
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
Sunday, April 20, 2003
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.)
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.)
