CHAPTER SEVEN: LAST TWO DAYS ERE THE RIDE NORTH

 Monday’s Miles: 13.4  Total Miles 1,367.5

 

(Disclaimer:  You may have noticed a slight delay getting this entry published.  There may or may not have been a slight User Malfunction.  I’m not pointing any fingers but it is POSSIBLE that either I might have done something or that the Ghost of August Past hit the keyboard but the original copy seems to have disappeared.  I have done my best to recreate what I had previously typed……but no guarantees)

 Today started out like virtually every other day.  I woke up and started on my morning routines and then, at the appropriate time, I would give Lisa her wake up call so that she can get ready for work.  It is funny, she really doesn’t need the wake up call.  However, we have made it part of the morning so that there WILL be a morning call.  We don’t talk long but there is a lot of thought going into the call and that is the important part.

I have no plans at all for the morning.  I looked out the window and it appears to be a really nice day.  I am sure that it is still a bit chillier than I prefer but it shouldn’t be too bad.  I will be sure to emphasize with others that it is COLD so they can make fun of me for being from Florida and think that this “comfortable” weather is COLD.

I don’t feel bad.  I have earned my Golden Snow Shoes (if there was such a thing) and have ridden in REALLY cold days.  When I actually lived in Michigan I rode almost every single day to work for 9 of the 12 months.  Trust me, there is NOT 9 months of “comfortable” weather in Michigan.  My thought process back then was that snow mobile enthusiasts would ride their machines for hours in some really raunchy conditions.  Of course, I was going to work so I didn’t have my friend, Jack Daniels, to help me keep warm.

Even while I was still working in Florida there would be a few mornings in the winter months when the temp would be below 40° but as long as it wasn’t raining (and it is rarely raining in the morning in Florida…….for the afternoon ride home I would not always be that lucky) I would zip to work on two wheels.  Granted, there were times when I would have been swearing and shaking my fist at Ma Nature…..but I would be too cold to do either of those things.

I was not planning on leaving today until shortly before noon.  I did leave a bit earlier and stopped at a CVS to pick up some supplies.  On the first Monday of most months a group of guys, most of whom I know from the Good Ole Daze, meet at a local sports bar, Buck Shots, for lunch.  I had that gathering in mind when I made my traveling plans.

After stopping and shopping at CVS I headed over to the strip center where Buck Shots is located.  I was a bit early so I went down to the end of the parking lot and looked like a true citizen of the 21^st Century by pulling out my phone and going over anything that might have happened in the world during the previous 5 minutes.  Just then OLD school classmate and fellow Vietnam vet, Bob, pulled up.  We chit-chatted for a brief minute and then headed to the restaurant at the other end of the parking lot.

Jim was already there with some others and we were shortly followed by Bill, Tom, Larry, and Becky.  We had a grand lunch touching on subjects of decades ago and on current affairs.  It was not just a trip down memory lane….although there was some of that…..nor was it a bitch session of the politics of today.  It was a great mix of friends and conversation.

From there I was to head over to Kirk’s house.  Kirk is a friend dating way back…..as do most of my friends from this area.  I hopped on the bike, started it, and began to back out of the parking spot.  It was a bit uphill and I was having to REALLY push with my feet when………YIKES……..my left foot hit a little patch of itty bitty gravel and slid out.  I’m sure that many of you motorcycle riders know happened then.  Most of the time you can catch it but sometimes you are putting everything you have into pushing that if your foot breaks loose you lose EVERYTHING on that side and there is virtually no way of stopping the bike from going down.  Generally speaking, when that happens the bike goes down relatively softly and there no damage of any kind and the ONLY thing that you are concerned about is hoping that no one saw you.  Of course, the downside of no one seeing it is that no one is there to help you stand the bike back up.  So, being the macho man that I am I kept my head down not looking.  You see, if I don’t look anyone in the eye that means that couldn’t have seen me.  Of course, now I have to lift the back up.  HOLY CRAP…..I did it.  That even kind of surprised me.  Keeping my head down so that no one could see me I shot out of the parking lot and headed toward Kirk’s.

I got to Kirk’s and spent a very, very pleasant three hours out on his deck with him, his wife, and daughters.  Then it was time to head for the hotel, give Lisa her “good night” call and then head for Dreamland.

 

 

Tuesday’s Miles: 13.7  Total Miles 1,381.2

 

Today wasn’t on the schedule to be an extremely busy day but it was going to be a day of getting together with friends old and new.  I did have some extra time this morning and I got myself busy typing the events of yesterday.  The plan was, and is, to put yesterday and today in the same published entry.  I will tell you that I typed out a masterpiece that was sure to win the Pulitzer Prize for outstanding non-fiction (for the most part).  Never have such wonderful words and phrases flowed from my fingertips.  Then in the flash of an eye, a mere nano second, faster than a speeding bullet & more powerful than a locomotive……the entire description of yesterday’s happenings were…………GONE.  YIKES!  Oh Curses!  Unfortunately, that level of literary excellence only comes once a lifetime.  The above words are the best I could come up with to recreate what I had written.

After shedding tears over my lost journal entry I needed to get busy and get myself ready for the day.  I was being picked up by a dear friend that I have known for….well, a long time.  Reeta was to pick me up at 11:30 and we were going to have lunch to catch up.  I had plenty of time.  It was 10:45.  No sweat…….and then I got a text from Reeta saying she just left the eye doctor and would 11:00 be too early.  Of course, I sent her a CALM text back telling her that would be perfect but behind the scenes I shifted from the Retiree’s 2^nd Gear into the Teenage Over Drive.  You will be happy to know that when she pulled up I was calmly waiting in the parking lot like I had been ready for a couple hours.

We did our greeting and she asked where I wanted to go eat.  I told her that I had not had a Coney Island yet and that I could not come to Michigan and not have Coney Islands.  So that is where we went.

The next 90 minutes or so was spent with me making a total mess with coney sauce and with the two of us catching up.  Because of covid we did not have lunch in August when I went through town.  After I got all the coney sauce off my face (it was permanently on my shirt….nothing I could do about that mess) she took me back to the hotel where we said goodbye and she drove away…………probably checking the car seat to make sure that hadn’t smeared coney sauce all over the place.

I had an hour or so before my next “appointment” and I thought that would be a perfect time to check and make sure that I didn’t have any holes in my eyelids.  I lay down on the bed and began my inspection.  It took about an hour and a half but I am happy to be able to report to you that my eyelids are without leaks.

I jumped on the bike and headed for the local VFW where I was to meet up with some guys.  Not only were these guys old neighborhood chums and/or classmates they were also all Vietnam vets.

It was a good group that consisted of myself, Bob, another Bob, Rick, Phil, Rod, Bill, Dale, and another Bill along with others that meandered by our table.  We talked school, neighborhood, the service, being OLD, girlfriends…old and new, motorcycles, cars, planes, and more.  I will tell you this……there was a LOT of laughter.  Bob M was kind enough to get me a VFW Challenge Coin.  It was great fun with some great guys.

I finished up there and stopped to fill up the bike knowing that tomorrow I will be heading north.  I got back to the hotel and I packed and loaded the bike so that I wouldn’t have to deal with it in the morning.  I ended the day with my call to Lisa after which I jumped in bed a happy man and I closed my eyes.  Since I had previously in the day checked the eyelids for holes I was able to go right to sleep.

 

If you enjoyed your read give this a Like and Share.  Also, feel free to drop me a line by email at donbova1966@yahoo.com, in messenger, on my Facebook timeline, or a comment on the blog.  Lastly, if you have missed previous chapters all you have to do is find them over to the right and catch yourself up

CHAPTER SIX: TWO DAYS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

 

Saturday’s Miles: 22.8  Total Miles: 1,354.1

Over the years of writing journals of my trips I have often mentioned that I generally spend nights in one of the Choice Hotel brands.  Most of the time they are very good to excellent.  In my old hood of Waterford, MI I have stayed at the same hotel for many years now.  It was originally a Comfort Inn but a few years ago they stayed in the Choice Hotel umbrella but changed the brand to Quality Inn.  I pick this hotel because of its location.  It is perfect for me to see friends and places that are important to me.  Over the past few years, with each stay, the quality of the Quality Inn drops.  I have always said that all I need is a reasonably clean room with a bed and running water.  I will say that I DO have a bed and running water and the room is reasonably clean…..BUT….with the exception of the TV, microwave, and mini fridge EVERYTHING was unplugged.  The lamps, the clock, the coffee maker, etc. all sat with their cords uselessly hanging to the floor.  The bathroom light fixture has three bulbs BUT only one was working….the eerie lighting kind of makes me resemble Bela Lugosi.  The message light on the phone was blinking but the instruction card that is usually attached to the phone…..missing (I have a wash cloth over the flashing red light).  And the hairdryer doesn’t work (and, yes, I did plug it back in).  I will survive because, as stated above, I have the important bed and the running water gets hot when needed.  Still, it is disappointing that a really nice place has diminished in quality so much.  Ok….off the soap box.

I was graciously invited to join some friends at a restaurant not far from the hotel called Coppertones.  It is a nice family dining place that locals go to in droves.  As I walked out to the bike…..oh, by the way, I luckily brought a handful of plastic grocery bags with me in case I needed them.  The hotel’s covid policy is that if a customer is staying multiple night they do not do a make up of the room unless you ask for it.  Since I am wearing old clothes to be discarded daily I have used a grocery bag for all my trash and on my way out to the parking lot I throw my bag away…….the housekeeper may wonder “what the heck” when after 5 days there is NO trash in the room.  Anyway, out to the parking lot I went and started to prepare to get on the bike.  An older guy walks up and starts talking about the bike but what he was really doing was setting up the conversation to talk about HIS car.  He had a purple Dodge Challenger R/T which was obviously a midlife crisis purchase.  We talked for a bit on why he was here (visiting his brother) and ALL the bells & whistles his car had.  We wished each other a good day and he went off and started his car…….I can’t tell you how it ran but it sounded hot.

The ride to Coppertones was a fast on as it is only a few miles from the hotel on the same highway.  I got there before my friends so I just grabbed a stool at the counter.  I was marveling at the Saturday morning breakfast crowd.  I like little diners like this because so many of the people who came in were greeted by their names when spotted by various waitstaff.  It always reminds me of the theme song from the TV show, Cheers….”You wanna be where everybody knows your name”.  That is so very true.  If you have a store or restaurant or bar or store/bar/restaurant that you go to and they know who you are and greet you when they see you then it is most likely that is where you will continue to go.  Their prices could increase to maybe 5% more than their competitors and you would probably still go to them because they know you.  As I sat on my stool for maybe 10 minutes waiting for my friends I saw a lot of faces light up because they were where everybody (more or less) knew their name.

Then Ann and Helen came in.  They are sisters that I have known since high school.  Shhhhh, don’t tell Helen but I had a crush on her back in high school (when I wasn’t rescuing Annette) but her heart was “stolen” by a fellow classmate.  Well….I suppose “stolen” is the wrong word since no one, especially Helen, knew about the crush.  We had a great talk and a super breakfast.

From the restaurant I went to my old neighborhood.  I will go back there before I go home but this was a fast ride down my block to take a picture of a neighbor’s house.  It has been years……way more years than either of care to admit……since the neighbor or I lived there (for me it has been 49 years) but when she found out I would be around there she asked that I “say ‘hi’ to the old neighborhood”.  So I whipped down the block stopping in front of her old house, snapped a picture, and sent her a copy asking “look familiar?”  I didn’t really ride around the neighborhood but plan to before I head back to Florida.

Then I went to the Mt. Hope Catholic Cemetery in Pontiac, MI.  We all like to think that we were someone’s favorite……well, I WAS someone’s favorite.  I was my grandmother’s favorite and, trust me, all my siblings and cousins will confirm that statement.  My grandmother lived with us from the time my next oldest sister was born.  Both my dad AND mom worked and she helped with the house and raising the 5 of us siblings……although she raised ME the best!  About a year after I returned home from Vietnam she passed away and was buried at Mt. Hope.  I find cemeteries to be a great place to meditate and reflect on things and even more so when at the grave site of a loved one.  I brought a steel brush with me because the last time that I was here a hard mossy substance was growing on her little store.  I cleaned it off and it looked almost like new.

While there I meandered around the cemetery looking for some other grave sites that other people had told me about.  They would try to give me “directions” on how to find a grave.  It is still a very daunting task to walk around looking at thousands of grave stones for a certain name.  One description I got was “over by the road near a couple pine trees”.  That was well and good but the cemetery is bordered on three sides by roads and there are, give or take, 80 million pine trees.  Needless to say, I didn’t find that grave.

I took the long way back to the hotel so that I could sightsee a little bit.  Like it is for just about anyone that travels back to their growing up home…..a lot has changed but a lot has stayed the same.  I look at the house where 8 of us lived and I think…..HOW?  I never felt crowded.  Then again, I was a kid and a kid never feels anything.  We had 4 bedrooms and one bath.  Thank Heaven’s I was a boy and only needed a bath once every two or three weeks…….boys apparently were a lot cleaner than girls.  So many things are gone……my high school is now a Krogers, my favorite corner store is a field, the mall where I hung out for soooooo many hours has been bulldozed and is now a HUGE empty field, my first “real” job was an early fast food restaurant but is now a modern T-Mobile store, the local movie theater is a strip center of stores, and the list goes on.  But, at the same time, so many things are still there……the beach .9 of a mile from our house where I spent hours upon hours…in fact, as many hours as possible between Memorial Day and Labor Day (a Michigan summer)…..is still there and as nice as ever, the neighborhood has kept its personality and is still a place where kids can ride their bikes from dawn till dusk without a care in the world, the bowling alley where I bowled and played pool and drank and danced is still a great place for bowling and all the other stuff, the churches I attended are all still standing and doing their part in keeping the worshiping of God relevant, and more.  Riding around like that full of happiness and sadness at the same time.

Back at the hotel I gave Lisa a call.  Being a Saturday I didn’t have to call and wake her so I gave her plenty of time to get active by herself.   Then I called one of my daughters to go over my schedule while I am in their neck of the woods.  That left me with about an hour before I had to get to the Pontiac Lake Inn.

I got a message a few days ago from one of my old neighbors asking if we could get together at the Pontiac Lake Inn, aka PLI, for a burger while I was here.  I asked if Saturday between 3 and 4 would be ok and she agreed.  I just HAPPENED to mention it to a couple of others…….just in case they might want to stop in.  The PLI is only about 3 blocks from the hotel.  I mean, heck, I could walk to it.  But this is America and I don’t walk ANYWHERE.  I hopped on the scooter and enjoyed all the scenery of those three blocks and pulled into the PLI. I was a little early so I figured that I could get a sandwich and be done eating before I had to do any socializing.  Silly Me!

As soon as I walked in the door I heard someone call “Bova!” and there were good friends Steve and Pat sitting at the bar.  We moved to a table and just as we sat down more friends came in.  Before I was ever able to order a sandwich not only was I sitting with Steve and Pat but had been joined by Jack, Linda, Maria, Ann, Helen, Kathy, Mike, Rick, Coni, and Kirk.  It was a great couple hours covering old times, new times, and somehow finishing a grilled cheese sandwich and an order of fries.  Maria brought me my annual ration of tamales………a tradition that stems from her mom bringing them to my parents house as a Christmas Eve treat.  All I can say is “yum”.

I got back to the room and gave Lisa a call.  When we hung up it was approaching 7:30 and, to tell you the truth, I was wiped out.  I haven’t had a lot of down time since leaving my house and I was ready for some good, old fashioned, do nothing relaxation.  So, by 7:45 the hotel room light was extinguished.

Sunday’s Miles: 22.8  Total Miles: 1,354.1

Ahhh, Sunday is here.  This the traditional day of rest for many of us and I have decided that today will be a good day to let my body regroup a little bit.  I don’t know if I should say this too loud but all this traveling and visiting and Twinkie eating isn’t as easy as it was 25 years ago.

I woke up deciding go down and have breakfast here at the hotel.  Keeping with its apparent objective of not being up to my standard the breakfast room was dark with a handwritten sign taped to the wall saying “Breakfast Closed”.  I went back up to the room and through a notice on Facebook that I was going to go to the Highland Grille for breakfast at 9:00 if anyone was interested.  That gave me about 2 hours to lay around and do nothing.

I know that some people….maybe even most people….would flick on the TV and watch something, anything to make noise and keep their attention.  To be honest, I am not a huge TV person to begin with.  I like to keep up with current events but only for 1 hour a day and even then I try to sift out the news from the commentary that is disguised as news.  I like Jeopardy.  I am not good at it but I like it and I do my happy dance when I get more than two right.  I like sit-coms because they don’t require a lot of thought AND the shows have a beginning, a middle, and they actually end.  I hate the “serial” dramas that NEVER end.  When they reach the end of the time slot they just do a cliff hanger for the next show.  I want it to start and end in the same time slot.  I can’t stand daytime TV.  You only have to watch a couple hours of it to understand why some of our society is a little, dare I say it, whacky.  When I am on a vacation or a trip I just do not watch any TV.  Heck, the Canadians could invade and take over important places like Ely, MN, Derby, VT, or God forbid, Mt. Rushmore.   I have no idea what is going on in the world but I figure that it will only take me a day to catch up once I get home.  So I did the next best thing.  I lay on the bed and I checked my eyelids for any possible leaks.

At 8:45 I grabbed my helmet and out I went.  Out in the parking lot I met Mr Purple Challenger again.  He was checking out and we had a little chat about nothing in general but it is always nice to talk to people.  I hopped on the bike and headed out of the parking lot.  Highland Grille is almost directly across the highway from the hotel and I looked at it as I pulled to a stop leaving the hotel.  WHAT?  It was dark.  There were no letters in the sign.  There were no cars in the parking lot.  The Highland Grille is apparently a thing of the past.

I headed up the highway in a different direction for a few miles to the Great Lakes Family Restaurant (for us old timers it used to be a Big Boy).  I pulled in there, updated Facebook where I was, and went in for breakfast.  Since I knew that I was going to spend a good portion of the day laying around I decided to order a BIG breakfast so I had plenty of material to turn into fat…….2 eggs, 5 sausage links, hashbrowns, toast, biscuits & gravy, large orange juice, and enough coffee to not only keep me awake but to keep me going to the bathroom for 2 or 3 hours.

I finished breakfast and took a nice round-a-bout way back to the hotel and I settled in for the day.  I napped a little.  I watched You Tube some.  I played a few games.  I napped a little more.  I did a video call with Lisa and it was time to call it a day.  I am positive that I have recharged my body and that all of my breakfast has lodged itself in various arteries.

I’ll be back at it tomorrow.  As good as doing nothing is, sometimes doing something can also feel good…….as long as you don’t have to call it a JOB.  I’ll talk actcha some more later.

If you enjoyed your read give this a Like and Share.  Also, feel free to drop me a line by email at donbova1966@yahoo.com, in messenger, on my Facebook timeline, or a comment on the blog.  Lastly, if you have missed previous chapters all you have to do is find them over to the right and catch yourself up.