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In 1989 my aunt died of lung cancer and left me $65,000. In the summer of 1992, I drove to Eugene, stayed with
Doug and went to the Oregon Country Fair. I returned to Santa Cruz and few days later Doug calls me. "The green smoke
grenade's in the driveway," he said. "So, what is that to me?" "It's a landing zone, dude. You can move in!" I
recalled that I had been talking about moving out of Santa Cruz when I'd seen him that summer, but I
didn't know where - where was
Eugene. I moved up there in October, it clouded over in November and I didn't see the sun again, until June.
My girlfriend had all these oddly familiar objects scattered around her apartment. I was over at her place,
one afternoon. She wanted to turn on the box-of-the-devil (TV). I remembered where I seen this stuff before.
I had seen it on the TV commercials.
I replaced my current 3 wheel bicycle (heavy, slow), with one that had the 2 tires in the front, the single tire in the back
(quadra-trike). This trike was was advertised by the guys that built it as being road-worthy, when, in fact, it
was not.
I'd ride the
quadra-trike in the afternoons after trying to find a job in the morning in the Eugene area.
I kept breaking the bicycle, cracking the frame, the seat mounts etc, much to the dismay of the people that
built it.
They were sure I
was taking advantage of their willingness to work with disabled people.
The problem was not one of which
I abused their quadra-trike. It was one of expectations. I bought a custom bicycle, that was
advertised as roadworthy, for riding on the roads around Eugene.
They had designed a trike that had not been seriously ridden. I got to discover all the
defects (oh joy) that had been engineered into its design, defects for which they blamed me.
I bought a used Toyota pickup truck to haul the bike around in. Then Cindy's car died. It needed a new transmission
and she wanted to borrow my truck. She didn't know how to drive a standard, but she said she'd learn.
I questioned her about her car and its sudden demise. It turned out that the transmission had been making
noise for more then a week. Rather than take it to a mechanic and plunk down $100 or $200, she chose to drive
it until the transmission was destroyed, costing $1700. I gave her a ride to and from work for the next week.
I got used to riding in the rain and cold. I reguarly rode to Coburg, sometimes to Mohawk Point and even rode
to Junction City once. The narrow green bridges, the lumber trucks, rain, freezing rain, snow, snow showers
and the occaisonal fog
made for some interesting bicycle
rides. A friend once confronted me with, "But it's raining!" To which I replied, "It could
be raining harder." I got used to wearing a water proof cover on my helmet and putting Rainex on my glasses.
One night I was having dinner with Cindy. She told me about something that happened when she was a senior in
highschool. She was
driving her VW bug, it was really cold and the radio was broken, lying on the floor. Cold air was coming
through the hole in the dash where the radio had been. She was almost home, but pulled over anyway. She picked
up the radio and put it back in the hole in the dash, but it wouldn't stay. There were wires in the hole and she
tied the radio in place with them and then procceded to her house. Her father was in the yard and she honked as she
came to a stop.He looked over at her, he started running towards her, yelling at her to get away from the car.
The wires
she tied together had shorted, causing a fire. The gas tank was under the fire. The car was a total loss.
I grew tired of being wet most of the time, cold part of the time and of the constant grey overcast. Cindy started
talking about getting a place together. After nine months of being rained and snowed on, of futilely
looking for work and now this,
I couldn't take it anymore and fled back to sunny California in the summer of 1993.
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