a note and more!

I’m kinda like using this space to remember things better because over-all, it’s been a pretty interesting life.

I can’t tell if readers stay with the whole story – I mean, I seldom get to finish a story out loud because I only have one or two friends around here right now. Sometimes I write it here and tell it later – that’s kind of cool, but, not so many people to listen. You meet new people, it’s usually not the right time, ya know?

And, people tend to have really short attention spans. Verbally, anyway, cuz we all seem to like to read. Us here on OD anyway. Or use it as a dairy and a picture post.

I like taking pictures; I have been since I was ten. Got my first camera then, a Kodak 110 dirt-simple camera.

And, on from there, better cameras and the chances to use them.

It is a real drag if you take good shots and there’s no one to see them. It’s fun and all and like, technically challenging and satisfying, sort of, but if no one else sees them it’s a drag in the end. This place is really cool in part because I can show my pictures to pretty much anyone, world-wide, who wants to see them. And that is really, really cool. So, writing down 27 year old memories, aided by a USA road map book highlighted where I have been – 35 states, with at one point, different colors for different trips – the "honeymoon drive" I’ve been writing about was one of them. 7 trips across the US, on my dime.

They’ve faded and are getting to be less distinctively different colors. It’s getting to be a long time ago.

Looking at the map reminds me of the way I drove and the things I saw, and certain events stand out with clarity, but the point of writing it down here is that those words will help me remember more words to describe things seen and done and said, and will be a kind of skeleton to build around to tell it better. This is, I guess, a first draft, in those terms.

Anyway, I really appreciate the chance to show off my stuff, words and pictures, and, thanks for coming along.

***

more!:

I have driven half the length of Japan. I had a Japanese drivers license; they drive on the other side of the road.

There are places and things in Japan like nothing in the US. I showed her my country, and K* showed me hers.

I’ve barely said anything about Japan, and I lived there almost six years. Did about 60,000 kilometers of traveling there, by car and by train.

It was really cool to open a beer and look out the window and see Japan going by at 280 kph, riding the Bullet Train.

The cars, by law, had speed alarms in them. K*’s dad’s car’s went off at 105kph. The maximum highway speed was 100 kph. I got really good at holding it just under the alarm threshold, but 140 Kph was pretty cool too. My FiL had a turbo Mitsubishi sedan the first time I was there, and a really nice Nissan Laurel the second time, easily comparable to a BMW 5 series, and not available in the US. Fast and smooooth.

I should tell you about the parking ticket I got there, with that Nissan. The traffic cop was a hot looking young Japanese thing in an above the knee-length skirt and tall black boots – really hot, ya know. Even though it was the most expensive parking ticket I’ve ever gotten, bar none, it was pretty much the funnest ticket ever, cuz, gawd, she was hot! I’m six foot and way taller than her and was grinning at her the whole time – she got like, weak in the knees as she looked up at me and handed me the ticket. I could not stop grinning. She said something in a breathless sort of way and swayed, and I reached out and cupped her shoulder.

Felt like a Penthouse Minute or something. Damn. She was hot.

Following my interest in the American atom bomb project, we drove to both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

wow

In Hiroshima, deer attacked us – we threw food at them and fled.

Stay tuned please.

*****