THE HISTORY OF THE  BICYCLE BUS, part 7

Above: The Bicycle Bus and Ellie at Umpqua hotsprings in 1999. Below: 3 newstories from'96 and '98.

In June of 1998 I was bicycling in Eugene when someone opened a car door suddenly and there was nowhere for me to go. I crashed and dislocated my kneecap. My leg swelled up twice its size and still hadn't returned to normal a year later. I couldn't climb to the top of the bus to get bikes and parts. Doing much bike repair or rebuilding had to be put on hold indefinitely. Xrays indicated that eventually the knee should be replaced with an artificial one. Meanwhile the only place we had to live was the Bicycle Bus and the only thing I knew how to do to make a few dollars was fixing bikes. I still had hopes of publishing my book and making money as an author but the years were passing and that just never happened.

After about a year I was getting around better and I could get to the top of the bus if I did it carefully and not too often. So I  tried do do some bike business by going to a few communities where the people had always appreciated me.. The picture on the left shows the Bike Bus parked in Yoncalla Oregon, one of the towns that really needed my services and where I had some regular customers.

But the town council was a different breed from the low income people who looked forward to me coming through town and they told me they didn't like the old Bike Bus parked where I customarily parked to fix bikes and there really wasn't anywhere else in town that would work. So I had to discontinue fixing bikes in Yoncalla. Bicycle repair and sales became less and less possible all in all... It would have been all right I suppose, if all the mills had reopened and people were working again and there weren't any low income people around anymore needing their kid's bikes fixed... But that hadn't happened.

I suppose I should be flexible and just get it published. It's just that I have always had a vision of it published a certain way and it is hard to  see a lesser version of it come to fruition after all the work I have put into it. Actually it is interesting to see low income artists struggle together.

This is Eddie -- one of my closest friends. A sensitive human being. He was the caretaker of Umpqua hotsprings for many years. There's few men I know who understand... things... He really does... No one realizes it when they first meet him. Guess that is why he is a batchelor. There are so few people these days who take the time to search the depths of their soul and really get to know someone. That is where the spirit lives -- deep inside the person. People who don't take the time never reach the secret place where spirit lives... -------A sad note must be added to my bikebus website. My good friend Eddie died on September 5, 2005, basically of a toothache. We had a memorial service for him at Umpqua hotsprings. All kinds of people came. Everyone who knew him seems to have loved him. His mom came out from New York. His brother too. So many tears were shed. What a good guy he was.

This is Heidi and her baby. I will tell you about Heidi. Me and Ellie love her. We love her husband Roman too. And all her children. it is just the way things are. They are welcome in our home any time of the day or night. Funny how often they appear in the middle of the night too. LIfe is so absurd. But you see they are wanderers like Ellie and I. Except they have rougher times than we have due to this and that. They have lived in our Bicycle Bus with us. That baby there was probably made in our Bike Bus for all I know.   You know what? Isn't it beautiful when the heart GUSHES when you meet with some friend that you love after you haven't seen them in a long time? Well that is how we are. Heidi is part of our family in deep deep ways. Ellie has so much sadness she carries with her... When Ellie KNOWS a person is a really TRUE FRIEND Ellie heals amazingly for awhile. Heidi is one of the people who can do that for Ellie. Two years passed where we saw hide nor hair of them. Little did I know that they had been listening when I told them about the way Ellie and I had ridden our bicycles across Canada with our daughter Sandy Laughing-River. They decided to do something like that too. They took their bicycles and a bike trailer and headed off, riding first to Arizona, then up to Montana, and oh heck thousands of miles. Then they showed up on my doorstep about a year ago and, what do you know? Moved into our motor home with us again. Far out. We found them a trailer of their own in a month and now they live just down the block from us.

I am a man who has been very privileged to know some very beautiful and intelligent women because of my art, but also for a lot of other reasons. But of all the beautiful women I have ever known this young one here must surely be one of the most beautiful and wise of them all. Her name is Junipurrr and her mother is Ami, who has been our good friend now for about six years. It is too bad that they live rather far away from us now -- about a hundred miles -- because Ellie and I enjoy it very much when they come over to our home to visit.

I think she will be an artist someday the way she enjoys painting things on the computer. Her hair is something like the color of these autumn leaves only much redder. She is funny too. She makes me laugh. It is very nice to have someone around who is able to make a person happy. Sometimes too I think she is very serious. That is good too. All these things will work together to make her a beautiful artist someday...

The picture up above is Ellie with a sage smudge stick on the night of December 31, 1999. Sage is for purifying. We were up in the mountains near Crater Lake Oregon, parked at Umpqua hotsprings. The weather was getting ready to snow. The path to the hotsprings was too steep and slippery for Ellie at night. But I made it to the springs by myself. Hotsprings have always been considered sacred places. I could think of no better place to be than sitting in Umpqua hotsprings as the millenium rolled over. The black and white critter up above is our dog Yogi. He and Ellie have a special friendship. They go on walks together. He is a fast energetic dog and he loves playing with a basket ball. He has sort of invented a game a lot like soccer that he loves to play. Good friend.

Here is Ellie with my son TR. I was married way back in the nineteen-sixties to his mom. We separated and got divorsed and I wasn't allowed to know him while he was growing up. A couple Christmases ago I got tired of looking forward to the day when COMPORTING ROADWISE would be published and people would be able to read it

and understand what had gone on back in those days to make me have to leave my family. So I made a couple of copies of my book -- and sent one to him. He read it cover to cover, all 500+ pages and gained a whole new understanding of me. Soon afterwards we had a warm reunion and have  gotten together several times since.

At long last I am becoming friends with my son. Thanks to reading the book TR became aware of what she has gone through and now they have become friends too. He and I went too many years without this part of our heart-family existing. It is a great relief to us both that the bond has been restored. TR is a truck driver. When I first saw him wheel in his huge semi and park it in a very tight place with an amazing tricky maneuver.

I thought to myself "Gosh, he handles that big old truck of his about like I handle my Bicycle Bus! What a chip off the old block!" We have other similar quirks. He also married a woman from another country -- Alehandra from NIcaragua -- and she struggles with English like Ellie does. They have two children.

On the left is a picture taken in September of 2000. I am a lot grayer than when I started the Bicycle Bus business... Early in 2001 we put the Ford Bicycle Bus into storage. It runs good. It may yet roll out of that storage yard again. But for the time being we are quite content to be living for the first time in our lives in a more conventional home, complete with internet and cable tv and electricity and plumbing. Our new home is a comfy Pace Arrow motorhome. We are parked for the time being in a trailer park in Eugene. But in the twinkling of an eye we can be flying.

Thank you for visiting with us and for reading the history of the Bicycle Bus. Please drop us a line, email, or when our comment board is up you may write something there. Here is hoping we meet one day on one of life's interesting highways...        RomTom

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