I really liked that old '05 harley Davidson road King....it took me
out to Sturgis, down through the eveglades and one time after anight
of Jerry jeff walker she took me out to Luchenbach for long tall Lone
Star...

But coming off a ferry while crossing the Mississippi, she bucked me
off and down over the levee we went. I bailed out when she started
flipping and spinning so I just watched as the tour pack broke, the
saddle bags flew open and my back packed vomited.....

Wenching it up the embankment was not really aproblem but every danged
thing I had was scattered opver about a hundred yards of thorn
bushes...thought I'd never get it all collected! It was then that I
realized I had too much stuff...sold I sold the bike.

Sold a car...sold a bunch of stuff and hopped a plane. Hopped aoff and
bought a Honda TMX, 155 cc. Used radiator clamps to fastend a milk
crate to the luggage rack and used caribiners to hook on two back pack
style book bags and took off down the road.

One day I ran into a bunch of boys harvesting coconuts and wew sat and
talked and farmers being farmers they started cracking open cocnuts
and we are all lip smacking down the jelly and I strike up a
conversation with one of the little ladies who hahppened to walk by...

One thing led to another and she finally comes out and says that she
would like to be the one to wash all my dirty clothes....hmmmmmmmmmmm

I was down to feeling socks, sniffing t-shirts and doing a visual only
to detemine what shorts were suitable - so I thought about it.

No way was she going to be able to get them washed and dried before
the daily rains came....probably have to take them off the line and re-
hang them tomorrow....If anyone slept late or if the rains came early
the next day...well...probobaly wouldn't get the clothes dry tomorrow
either....it looked to me as if this load of clothes might take three
days...and she knows it.

So I give her the okay and help her draw the water, proud she is to
have a man help her with womans' work and I walk to the village to buy
some rum so the boys and I can drink this coco water in the style god
inteneded.

Some time passes and I return to see her taking things off the line
prior to the rain coing and her eyes are wet. Real wet, she's
crying....

She shows me my hat. My Waldo's, Spring Fling 2000 hat... Now this
hat had never been washed and it was looking like wader funk smellsbut
now it is as clean as a whistle.

But where she scrubbed it with a brush it is frayed and worn and
gleaming white in spot...poor thing had never seen a denim hat
before...and she is so, so sorry that she has whaitened and frayed my
hat....

My mind goes aback to the very moment I got that hat. And I'm wishing
Walt was there to see it now....

So I found a little wicker hut with a palm roof and it turns out, I
can stay there for a while....at least until the laundry is done...but
then, sometimes I dirty clothes pretty fast.

....looks like the Branch headquarters for R.O.F.F. is open, albeit
temporarily...

john