The next few years.
After changing the solenoid in my Virago a couple of times I decided I was not going to do it again. So I rode for a few months with a screwdriver in my pocket and started her that way. I got quite good at it, I could get it at the first try, sometimes faster than with the starter botton.
I got a job as a salesman and would ride from the house to the job every day, my tie flapping in the wind like the team flags do in cars these days. It got pretty loud sometimes.
The time had come to get a car so I went to a dealer and traded my Virago in for a Ford Escort. I know what you are thinking, AN ESCORT? Well they were fairly new at that time an very economical and something that came very handy very soon, it was a station wagon.
I say it came in very handy because a few months after I bought it I had to move out of my apartment. I packed all my worldly possessions in the back and drove around like a hermit crab for a couple of weeks. Finally, I found a new shell...er... house with a very good friend, who had bought one and needed help with the mortgage.
This friend and I had a business together before I sold the bike. Video rental stores were very popular in those days. Another thing that was very popular was people keeping the movies or "forgetting to return them". We found out, by accident, that there were dozens of accounts that had movies out and late fees uncollected. We talked to several of these stores and made an agreement to go try and retrieve their property. It was a good deal for them, since our compensation was $2.00 per VHS retrieved and half of the late fees collected. It was hard work, sometimes we had to return many times to the same location in order to collect the fees. We became mobile bill collectors.
I would ride my bike around town to visit this people and my friend would do the same in his moped, an old Moped
he bought to fight the cost of gas, which went up from $0.95 to an unheard of before price of $1.08. We did not ride together often, but on occasions when we would meet each other on the way home from a store, he would be flaying in his Moped at the extreme top speed of 27.5 miles per hour and I would cruse next to him in second gear.
The good thing about the low speed was that we could talk and hear each other, even over the loud wine of the Moped and the low rumble of the Virago. It was Hialeah, so we each had a milk crate, the Cuban version of the saddle bag, strapped to the luggage carrier of the bikes where we transported the movies or groceries, when it was that time.
Those were fun times. It is good to remember old friends. He was the best friend I've had that I was not related to. We lost touch after I got married but a few years later he came to visit me at Home Depot, where I was working, and he was still riding that moped.
Ride on, brother!
I got a job as a salesman and would ride from the house to the job every day, my tie flapping in the wind like the team flags do in cars these days. It got pretty loud sometimes.
The time had come to get a car so I went to a dealer and traded my Virago in for a Ford Escort. I know what you are thinking, AN ESCORT? Well they were fairly new at that time an very economical and something that came very handy very soon, it was a station wagon.
I say it came in very handy because a few months after I bought it I had to move out of my apartment. I packed all my worldly possessions in the back and drove around like a hermit crab for a couple of weeks. Finally, I found a new shell...er... house with a very good friend, who had bought one and needed help with the mortgage.
This friend and I had a business together before I sold the bike. Video rental stores were very popular in those days. Another thing that was very popular was people keeping the movies or "forgetting to return them". We found out, by accident, that there were dozens of accounts that had movies out and late fees uncollected. We talked to several of these stores and made an agreement to go try and retrieve their property. It was a good deal for them, since our compensation was $2.00 per VHS retrieved and half of the late fees collected. It was hard work, sometimes we had to return many times to the same location in order to collect the fees. We became mobile bill collectors.
I would ride my bike around town to visit this people and my friend would do the same in his moped, an old Moped
he bought to fight the cost of gas, which went up from $0.95 to an unheard of before price of $1.08. We did not ride together often, but on occasions when we would meet each other on the way home from a store, he would be flaying in his Moped at the extreme top speed of 27.5 miles per hour and I would cruse next to him in second gear.The good thing about the low speed was that we could talk and hear each other, even over the loud wine of the Moped and the low rumble of the Virago. It was Hialeah, so we each had a milk crate, the Cuban version of the saddle bag, strapped to the luggage carrier of the bikes where we transported the movies or groceries, when it was that time.
Those were fun times. It is good to remember old friends. He was the best friend I've had that I was not related to. We lost touch after I got married but a few years later he came to visit me at Home Depot, where I was working, and he was still riding that moped.
Ride on, brother!
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