College Days

It was a crazy day at Stony Brook University, in G dorm. I had just  bought a new Czechoslovakian Motorcycle, a Jawa. It was a big engine, but the frame was big , so you felt like you were riding a heavy duty  bike.  A few of us had bikes, and we rode thru the woods and along the railroad tracks and ended up inside  of  Nuclear Power Plant property. Trespassers I think they shoot them.
Well we were certainly trespassers.   Riding thru these woods i hit a few trees and knocked by foot pedal off, but it didn't serve much of a purpose anyway.   We were amazed that we fell upon such a  hidden secret area. It was not more than 10 minutes that all sorts of government vehicles pulled up and made us get off the bikes, line up against the fence and question us.  I guess we kind of looked Russian. And at that time, Russians could have been spies.   Eventually they let us go with a warning.  Meanwhile my bike didn't even have license plates on it.  But managed to get away with that violation.
So we ride back to  the college.   Oh , I forgot to mention our bikes were loud.  We took the baffles out of the muffler , and my friends Ducati had what they call a megaphone, making it growl even louder.  We started riding around campus .  Our dorm room was on the 2nd floor.  We thought it would be cool to ride through the dorm halls with 4 loud bikes.  So we did. It was surely loud. It was  hilarious, scaring people just getting out of the shower , walking down the hall with a towel around them and a roaring motorcycle   shoots by them. In the safety of their dorm.  The guy in charge of the floor, the RA, chased us back outside. He was a good guy , so no worry there. Then it happened  , a glorified  Barney Fife or Wyatt Earp campus cop pulled us over , out in front of the dorms.  He swaggered up to us with his leather jacket and boots., hands on his hips, sunglasses. You get the idea.  Then he gives me the weirdest traffic ticket.  It said "  No License, No insurance, No muffler, No NOTHING!".  Now that's a bizarre ticket.
    Other bike antics were riding with 6 of us on one bike. pretty nuts.  Or the time me and Marshall were riding to FIT( College in NYC),  after we flunked out of Stoney Brook.  There we were going down Flatbush Ave.   They had just passed helmut laws , and we didn't have real helmets. we were wearing  football helmets. We looked kind of funny.  As we are riding, a big tractor trailer was crossing the intersection. We had recently seen Abbott and Costello ride under a truck with their motorcycle in some old movie.  They were fine afterwards.  So I look back at him, he was behind me,  He looks at me.  We both knew I was thinking of going under the truck.  He taps me and  says   NO!  So  I listen, figuring he was a smart guy.  And we stopped. We see under the trailer there is a bunch of metal stuff that would have stopped us. We would have been dead.
   Then back in East New York,  I'm riding the bike, me and my friends had bikes and we were doing that Marlon Brando circle thing. Just going round and round in little circles. Well, wouldn't ya know it, my bike slid out from under me, and got stuck under a car.  Talk about  embarrassing.  And how the heck do you explain to anyone that your motorcycle is stuck under a car.
    We used to sit up nights and talk about  our motorcycle "gang" taking over Rhode Island, we didn't think that would be too difficult. Then we thought Grande Mesa Colorado, population 9 would be an easier task. We never made it there.  We had dreams of buying a penguin, and training him. We were kind of weird kids and thought the penguin could hang with us and tell us what to do and stuff. And he'd be smoking cigars ,  His name was Max.  Ok, it would have been Max, if we actually bought him.
   We went down to a store on Wall St. called Treflich's Exotic Animals.  We walked in and  a dozen apes were going wild, They were shaking their cages, just going bizerk. We asked the guy, where's the penguins. So he showed us the only one he had. He said he didn't get much calls for penguins. The penguin was a big Emperor Penguin. It looked pretty cool.  The manager guy said to us,  ' you have to wash him down twice a day and fee him fish".  "Watch your fingers because he will snap them off."  Then he gave us the price , $275.  We thought that was a bit steep for a penguin. And where will we keep him.  So we left the place penguin less, but  it did seem like a good idea.
   I still love Penguins.

Happy Holidays

A Merry Christmas and Happy Chanukah and Happy New Year to you All.
The weirdest Christmas tree I ever had was decorated with motor oil cans and matchbooks.