The Beemer

 In 2013 after I had a stroke and retired, I decided to fulfill an oath that I made to myself more than fifty years ago to someday own a Corvette. But I one problem, Sadie my Golden Retriever probably wouldn't like it. She has ridden many miles with me including several cross-country trips. She rides with me in the front seat for a few hours but than she will hop in the back and take a nap. She has told me that she really enjoys taking those naps in the back seat and yes, we really talk to one another. She is a very good listener and rarely interrupts when I am talking. She knows how I really hate being interrupted while talking. She was not going to cotton to some two seated toy car. So the Vette got kicked under the bus.

A close runner up was a BMW convertible. The little princess surely couldn't find fault with that Teutonic jewel. I settled on a silver 2001 328ci convertible. It had a Bose sound system, heated leather seats which every southern Californian needs and lots of other trinkets that make it the "Ultimate Driving Machine". It was love at first sight and I bought it. I didn't have my Little Red Corvette but I loved the car and named her Loretta.

About five years later the six speed transmission went south. To either fix or replace the tranny would have cost more than I paid for it. After driving a Kraut car you eventually succumb to the German logic so I did the logical thing and bought another silver BMW  328ci convertible. The only slight differences was this car was a 2002 and didn't have all of the bells and whistles. It wasn't the same but it wasn't all that big of a sacrifice. The only difference in apperance was so slight only I could really tell the difference.

Fast forward another five years and "my better half" upon returning from a shopping spree announced that some fool in a Hertz rental truck hit Loretta II and scratched  it. It was barely noticeable so I breathed a sigh of relief. Due to some dumb shit corporate logic,  Hertz's insurance company decided to "total" my little Loretta II. "Total" meant to take Loretta II off our hands and reimburse us enough money to replace it. So off we went a hunting for a replacement. This time I settled on a guess what? A silver 2001 BMW 328ci convertable.

We now possess Loretta III. She is the identical twin of Loretta I, Bose stereo and heated leather seats etc. except she has the wheels that Loretta II had.

Now, it appears that, the third time truely is a charm. I have come to the conclusion that I have found my automotive soulmate.

Getting older

 There was a time not long ago when I was considered a young stud. Or so I thought sometimes. I tried to not be some kind of pretty boy but I noticed every now and then some female seemed to be giving me the eye.  Life was good and I liked being married. When out drinking and shooting shit with "the boys" When I was on the road I was always requested to get some ladies sitting at another table to come and join us. Later in the evening I would go to the men's room and then back to my room. I have no idea how my mates did and I wasn't really interested. I was either already married or had a steady girlfriend and I didn't really care for trolling for companionship.

One day a few years ago when I was looking in a mirror I started to wonder who the hell was that old guy looking back at me. Youth is truly wasted on the young. I now have two sons and one godson and the boys seemed to handle themselves pretty well. 

These days I go to bed too damned early and wake up to damned early. I used to  scoff at the old farts who ingested a dozen pills every day. Now I six pills before I have my morning coffee and go out to slay the dragons. Before I go to sleep I take two more and then put on my CPAP. If you don't know what a CPAP is thank God you don't. CPAP stands for Constant Positive Air Pressure which is a torture device that seems to be made popular in the middle ages. You put a mask attached to a hose that is part of a machine over your face. The first time I tried it was about 12 years ago at the VA sleep lab. After about ten minutes I ripped it off of my face. I said to myself I really don't care to live like this. Five, or so, to placate upper management, my wife, I agreed to  take another try at the sleep lab. This time I kept it on all night and in the morning when I was brushing my teeth I noticed that the black rings under my eyes had disappeared. I slid fartherdown the hill to old fogyville. 

If all of this seems to be the muttering of an old fart well here I am. I guess all of this inconvenience beats the alternative.  

UFO & Extraterrestrials

 There is a lot of talk these days of UFOs and extraterrestrials. I would like to mount my soapbox for a few minutes.

I have personally witnessed one and am a believer. This is no shit as we would have said in the Navy. 

About 1973 I lived in Glendora, California about two miles from the foothills. My friend Denny had come over to my house and we, as my dad used to say, Chewed the rag and had a few beers together. Around midnight Denny was going to head to his home in Covina. He was standing at my doorstep facing west and all of a sudden I saw this bright light go by. My condition 3 station off of the coast of Vietnam on the ship was gun director officer. I had tracked many aircraft and had developed a pretty accurate eye as to range, bearing altitude and speed. It was a clear night so my vision wasn't diminished.

By my somewhat expert reckoning I judged this "light" to be less than three miles away and making a speed well over 500 knots. The light had a very distinct round shape. It wasn't leaving any trail of sparks so I was pretty sure it wasn't a meteor. It went straight into hills without making any noise or crashing sounds. The whole thing swept across the sky in less than five seconds and it was gone. The hairs on my arm raised and I asked Denny "Did you see that?" Of course he was standing with his back to it so he asked. See what?

For the next few years I gave a lot of thought about what it was that I actually saw. According to Albert Einstein, and who am I to question him, the speed of light is the absolute  limit of velocity. I happen to know that the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. That's way faster than my mother driving a VW van. If people were actually able to attain the speed of light and the nearest planet is 40 light years away, give or take, that means that who ever is driving these cosmic hot rods would have to make an eighty year round trip. What kind of intelligent being is going to volunteer for that gig?  So I poo pooed that theory. Still looking, I found a rational explanation in of all places the Sunday comics, Broom Hilda. Some little creature in the comic is strolling along with the Owl. The Owl says "Some people believe that so called extraterrestrials aren't from some far away planet. That they are from Earth but from a different time. 

Time travel is, to me, a lot more acceptable than travel that takes a hundred, or more, years. So there you have it. Out of the mouths of babes, or owls in this case, come the gems of my knowledge.

If you have a better scenario. I'd like to hear your thoughts.