One More Good Adventure

Last year I bought a motorcycle for my 70th birthday.

In retrospect it seemed to be a huge mistake. Why? Well, I discovered that I needed to get an endorsement on my license in order to legally ride the thing. Why not just ride anyway? Down here the “Transitos,” special police dedicated entirely to transportation, set up road blocks all over the place, daily ,and check people’s licenses. An acquaintance who rides his motorcycle daily said that while he had always been waved through the road blocks for a couple of years the Transitos had demanded his license several times in the last few months. But the places I wanted to ride are mostly far off the beaten track and the chances of being stopped are few. However, there are a few places where I could still get nabbed.

When I got my Panamanian driver’s license I made a mistake by being honest. The girl taking my information asked me if I had a motorcycle in Florida and I said “no.” If I’d said I did then I would have gotten the endorsement and there really wouldn’t have been any way for her to verify or refute it. And I would have walked out with a license allowing me to drive a car and a motorcycle.

In order to get the endorsement there are quite a few hoops I have to jump through. First, I’d have to go to a driving school. Naturally it would be in Spanish. Then I’d have to take a driving test, again, in Spanish. At the time, while I was able to do a bit better than “okay” in Spanish I didn’t have the confidence that I’d be able to pass a test.

Next is a “practical” test of actually demonstrating the fact that I can ride a motorcycle. Finally, since I hit the magic number, 70, I’m also required to have a doctor, either a gerontologist or an internist, give me a physical to attest to my physical and mental acuity to drive a motorcycle. That makes one wonder if, in fact, a 70 year old is mentally sound simply because they want to ride a motorcycle in the first place.

It just seemed like so much of a hassle that I didn’t want to deal with I put the bike up for sale. It wasn’t a big success. Only one person actually came to look at it. Several others expressed an interest but never showed up to see the motorcycle. So there it sat, unused but not unloved.

As I’d sit at the bus stop people on motorcycles would pass by and I was envious and think about the orange rocket sitting idle at home. Last week I made a trip into David to do some shopping at Pricesmart, our local equivalent of Costco. It sits next to the Chirqui Mall and I knew there was a driving school there, so I stopped in to talk to them. Of course I did this in Spanish which, while a long, long, way from being fluent, is a lot better than it was last year. The cost of the school is $125 and new classes start every Monday. I told the lady that I was a bit worried about having to take the examination in Spanish. She showed me a page of their multiple-guess test and scanning a couple of the questions it didn’t seem all that difficult. And having talked with her for nearly a half hour in Spanish when I said I thought it might be possible to pass, she said, IN ENGLISH, “You’ll do all right.”

I have a copy of the “Manual del Conductor y Reglamento de Tránsito.” I’ve been going through it recently and have added quite a few new Spanish words to my vocabulary. For example in now know that a ruedo is a wheel; a carril is a lane; I know the difference between an autopista and an avenida, and that a remolque is a trailer.

And as far as getting the letter from a doctor, it’s probably a good idea since it’s nearly three years since I’ve had a physical.

Last week I saddled up for the first time in about seven months and went around the neighborhood practicing my starts and stops and turning from a stop at an intersection, a cruce. Sure, it’s illegal but it’s going to be necessary in order to pass the “practical” exam and to be one step up on practicing at the school. They rent motorcycles to practice on a closed course and to take the exam, but I want to have a leg up before I do that.

I’m going to spend the coming week going over the manual and will probably start the school next Monday or the week after that. I’ll keep you up to date.

Well, February is almost over and with it another Black History Month goes in the record book. One thing that’s always disturbed me about Black History Month are the people, and I have to admit, to my chagrin that some of them are my friends, who say in all seriousness, “When’s ‘White History Month?'”

That’s when I say, “Have you ever heard of March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December or January, asshole?”

Not only did blacks get the short end of the stick when they were dragged to the western hemisphere, they also got the short month of the calendar for their contributions to the history of the United States, too.

Three ways of celebrating the same event:

NEW ORLEANS, USA

LAS TABLAS, PANAMA

RIO DE JANIERO, BRAZIL

If it’s just another Tuesday where you live, well, then, you’re a sucker!

Check this out…

http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/blog/50860/a+hooked+marlin+sinks+a+fishing+boat+well+something+like+that/

Janis Joplin should be celebrating her 70th birthday today.

Those of us of a “certain age” remember the Alan Sherman song that started off, “Hello Mudda, hello Fada…” This morning surfing the site called Bits and Pieces I came across this gem:

Dear Mom,

Our Scoutmaster told us to write to our parents in case you saw the flood on TV and got worried. We are okay. Only one of our tents and 2 sleeping bags got washed away. Luckily none of us got drowned because we were all up in the mountain looking for Adam when it happened.

Oh yes, please call Adam’s mother and tell her he is okay. He can’t write because of the cast. I got to ride in one of the search and rescue Jeeps. It was great. We never would have found Adam in the dark if it hadn’t been for the lightning.

Scoutmaster Ted got mad at Adam for going on a hike alone without telling anyone. Adam said he did tell him, but it was during the fire so he probably didn’t hear him. Did you know that if you put gas on a fire, the gas will blow up? The wet wood didn’t burn, but one of the tents did and also some of our clothes. Matthew is going to look weird until his hair grows back.

We will be home on Saturday if Scoutmaster Ted gets the bus fixed. It wasn’t his fault about the crash. The brakes worked okay when we left. Scoutmaster Ted said that with a bus that old, you have to expect something to break down; that’s probably why he can’t get insurance.

We think it’s a super bus. He doesn’t care if we get it dirty, and if it’s hot, sometimes he lets us ride on the bumpers. It gets pretty hot with 45 people in a bus made for 24. He let us take turns riding in the trailer until the policeman stopped and talked to us.

Scoutmaster Ted is a neat guy. Don’t worry, he is a good driver. In fact, he is teaching Horace how to drive on the mountain roads where there aren’t any cops. All we ever see up there are huge logging trucks.

This morning all of the guys were diving off the rocks and swimming out to the rapids. Scoutmaster Ted wouldn’t let me because I can’t swim, and Adam was afraid he would sink because of his cast (it’s concrete because we didn’t have any plaster), so he let us take the canoe out. It was great. You can still see some of the trees under the water from the flood.

Scoutmaster Ted isn’t crabby like some scoutmasters. He didn’t even get mad about the life jackets. He has to spend a lot of time working on the bus so we are trying not to cause him any trouble.

Guess what? We have all passed our first aid merit badges. When Andrew dived into the lake and cut his arm, we all got to see how a tourniquet works.

Steve and I threw up, but Scoutmaster Ted said it was probably just food poisoning from the left-over chicken. He said they got sick that way with food they ate in prison.. I’m so glad he got out and became our scoutmaster. He said he sure figured out how to get things done better while he was doing his time. By the way, what is a pedal-file?

I have to go now. We are going to town to post our letters and buy some more beer and ammo. Don’t worry about anything. We are fine and tonight it’s my turn to sleep in the Scoutmaster’s tent.