{"id":2117,"date":"2012-07-07T10:31:28","date_gmt":"2012-07-07T16:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.keloland.com\/lund\/?p=2117"},"modified":"2023-07-20T21:00:07","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T21:00:07","slug":"hog-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/hog-heaven\/","title":{"rendered":"Hog Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"

I sure hope Heaven is my final destination because I couldn\u2019t take the heat of Hell.<\/p>\n

It felt like Hell on the golf course Tuesday as I tried to tuff it out through the constantly rising temperatures. The same valley, from which this lovely lay-out was carved and helps to shelter players from the full fury of hurricane-force winds like we\u2019ve been having lately, unfortunately also concentrates and magnifies the Sun\u2019s intensity on calm steamy hot days which can be potentially lethal for fluffy guys like me. It\u2019s too bad too because I felt great at the beginning of the round; striking the ball cleanly and making a few pars on the early holes. But by # 6 I noticed that after placing my ball on the tee and rising up quickly to give it a rap with the driver, my world started spinning like I\u2019d just stepped off a school Merry-Go-Round. I backed away from the ball and somehow managed to force the whirling sensation to cease but my pulse rate had picked up the pace quite a bit. \u00a0I have been in this situation a few times before and in spite of the fact that I\u2019d been drinking plenty of water and keeping a wet towel around my neck, it was clear I was experiencing the warning signs of heat stroke. Now, anybody who plays golf knows that to have any success at the game requires a certain amount of concentration. Unfortunately, all I could think about was the very real possibility that the Lord might decide to call me home right then and there if I didn\u2019t stop this foolishness and retreat to the air conditioned safety of the club house bar which He hath provided. But I chose to ignore the symptoms, addressed the ball and gave a mighty swing launching it straight up in the air advancing\u00a0 maybe twenty yards. I managed to stumble through the next few holes finally confessing to my playmates that the heat was too much and I sheepishly pointed my golf cart up the hill for the parking lot and home. \u00a0<\/p>\n

A\u00a0 short digression here:<\/p>\n

I know it\u2019s a silly hypothetical but I\u2019ll bet we\u2019ve all asked ourselves if we had to choose between being blind or deaf which would we pick? Me? I\u2019m sure I\u2019m in the minority on this,but I think I\u2019d go with blindness because I couldn\u2019t bear the frightening loneliness of being unable to hear. Here\u2019s another; maybe more realistic question; which would you prefer; living in Phoenix in the summer or Fairbanks in the winter? I\u2019ll bet most of you, including my wife, Linda, \u00a0would head for the desert. Not me, I\u2019ll be going \u201cNorth to Alaska\u201dand hope she gives me a call from the poolside now and again.<\/p>\n

Nope, don\u2019t do heat well. In fact, I\u2019ve been riding my HOG a lot more this summer; (HOG is a nickname for my motorcycle which is not a Harley Davidson at all; it\u2019s just a joke so don\u2019t you members of the H<\/span>arley O<\/span>wners G<\/span>roup get your snouts out of joint and come after me.) in part to save money on gas but mostly to cool off from mowing or some other rare form of physical activity. I\u2019ve mentioned my motorcycle background here before.<\/p>\n

It all began when I was 13 and got my first hummer.<\/p>\n

Now, wait a minute fellas, before you start thinking what\u2019s the big deal about that?\u2026I\u2019m talkin\u2019 about a 1951 Harley Davidson 125 Hummer. I bought it from my older cousin who\u2019d outgrown the thing.<\/p>\n

\"Me

Me around 1960 atop my Harley Hummer; a plump Marlon Brando wannabe surrounded by jealous pals.<\/p><\/div>\n

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This was at a time long before motorcycles or scooters were common sites on the\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0road so I was quite the novelty act buzzing up and down the streets of Volga until that fateful day when..blocked by a hedge..I crashed head-on into a car causing embarrassing injuries to my groinal area and irreparable damage to my Hummer. (That may sound redundant but again this\u00a0 Hummer was a Harley.)<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until the mid eighties, when passing by a gas station,\u00a0I spotted a used small engine Kawasaki for sale and got the motorcycle bug again. I even convinced Linda that, for a hundred and fifty bucks, it would be great fun to zip around on..which is exactly what we did.\u00a0\u00a0Then it developed a problem and I had that motorcycle repair shop on West 12th<\/sup> (now gone) come pick it up and haul it off to the shop to be fixed. Several weeks passed without any word..finally, after numerous calls,\u00a0I went down there to pick it up and my little Kaw was gone. They had no idea what happened to it. I, of course, voiced my extreme displeasure; even threatened to sue but I think they knew\u00a0it wasn\u2019t worth going to court over and they were right so the bike bug disappeared again until a couple years later when I heard about all the used motorcycles on sale at Inter Lakes Sports Center in Madison. That’s\u00a0where I found the bike I still have; a 1980 Kawasaki KZ-1000 Shaft Drive..just like the ones Ponch and Jon drove on CHiPS only this\u00a0was black and didn\u2019t have any flashing red lights.\u00a0 It was by far the biggest and most powerful motorcycle I’d ever driven and as fast as any Harley which led Linda and I to facetiously dub it the HOG.<\/p>\n

\"Me

Me 52 years later still chubby trying to look tough next to the HOG. A difficult task when your HOG has a ferring and a trunk.<\/p><\/div>\n

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\u00a0We rode it quite a bit early on; even to the Black Hills one summer weekend. (Not the Stugis Rally. Even I\u2019m not stupid enough to bring a Japanese bike to mingle amongst all that American Iron. Besides, Linda likes to keep her shirt on in public, thank you.) \u00a0We had great fun tooling around curvy highways stopping at all the touristy places until we arrived at Custer State Park and the Wildlife Loop. Those buffalo and burros are a lot more intimidating when you\u2019re fully exposed instead of in the safe confines of an enclosed vehicle. We couldn\u2019t get out of there fast enough.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve gone years without firing up the HOG but with a good charge or a new battery, its never failed to start. \u00a0It\u2019s always been inside the garage and cleans up real nice, has new tires..\u00a0plus fewer than\u00a020 thousand miles on the ticker.\u00a0 Wait a minute, this sounds like a For Sale ad. I hadn\u2019t thought about selling it until just now. 2 thousand bucks and she\u2019s yours.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had my eye on this used Harley.<\/p>\n

It sure would be nice to stop living a lie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I sure hope Heaven is my final destination because I couldn\u2019t take the heat of Hell. It felt like Hell on the golf course Tuesday as I tried to tuff it out through the constantly rising temperatures. The same valley, from which this lovely lay-out was carved and helps to shelter players from the full…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11712,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117\/revisions\/11712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}