I've never ridden a motorcycle and frankly I never really rode a bike. I fell over my handlebars didn't want to get back on and never did. My mother was very protective and I think she liked it as much as I did that I never got on a bike again until I moved up here and rode a bike up and down the block a few times just so I could say I did it.
I grew up in Wood-Ridge, New Jersey. One main street, not much to do but a lovely little town just like any of them you will see all over the country. Ironically, I grew up a half a block away from what was at one time a toxic waste dump and the second biggest superfund site in the country(I kid you not) but was a functioning paint factory spewing poisonous air into my neighborhood. It was the 60's before anyone really knew the danger of all those toxins. The vehicle I remember most from my childhood was a Dodge Charger in this unbelievably beautiful rust color. I probably remember it most for being the car that 4 adults and 3 kids(including my teenage cousin Sal, god bless him don't know how he even fit in there)went down to Florida in. The first time I drove it I scraped up against a weird colored car in a shopping mall parking lot and my dad had to write a check because I left. Not really very good thing to do.
When I was 16 I worked in Burger King and hung out with some kids from the parking lot. We used to go dirt riding in the swamps. Those memories stay with me even now as on one of our jaunts, we were sitting in the back of this fellows truck and the doors were tied together with a rope and sure enougn racing through the swamps of New Jersey the rope broke, the door opened and I fell on my butt or as my boss at the time said my personality. Sexist pig. I probably broke something but will never know and am lucky to be alive and lucky my friends didn't leave me there to save themselves.
I had a lovely pale blue Volkswagon hatchback which was my first car. That car drove me around from bar to bar dancing and having a grand old time. The highlights for that car are twofold. Once I was in a bar with a railroad track directly behind it and my car got stuck on the railroad track sounds funny now but wasn't so funny then. A towtruck came and got the car. Then I was on a jaunt with some friends on my way back from the Jersey Shore and the back seat went on fire. Literally started smoking. That wasn't so much fun either, but an interesting tale. And a towtruck came and got the car.
I drove a Vega that smelled awful, a ford fairmount which was the ugliest car I ever owned and that smelled like burning rubber all the time. A toyota tercel, a dodge shadow, a honda accord, a crv and now I am reliving my childhood with a Silver Fit which is the closest resemblence to my favorite baby blue Volkswagon Hatchback. I love my car, it drives me to all the wonderful places I like to go and is so wonderfully reliable.
So now that I have taken the vehicles and put them on the path, my blog should get more interesting day by day. I am determined to find and sort out what I will take and what I will leave behind. In this tale of the day I will leave behind the toxic dump and the car literally going up in smoke on the parkway. I can laugh at most of it and whatever mode of transportation it was, it got me where I am today. Blessings.
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