I have been back for about a year and a half. It seems like a few months ago when I told my boss I thought it was time to hang it up. Its been two years and I am becoming very conscious of time now. Where did those two years go? I decided last month to buy a smaller motorcycle that I could spend more time riding and less time polishing because I know time is working against me and more and more of my trips will be on shorter runs. My wife gave me the thumbs up and our newest addition to our family is a Softail Slim. I love this motorcycle! Big enough to be comfortable and small enough to be pure fun.

So, having been back home, and by home, I mean back where I grew up, went to school and became an adult, for over a year and a half now, I have begun the process of rediscovering my county and the towns that make it up. What we really learn about where we grow up is very limited until we become independent and we don’t really do that until we can drive. I started driving when I was maybe sixteen and a half. I joined the army and married at eighteen and a half, and spent most of my life as a nineteen year old in Mannheim Germany, with my lovely sixteen year old wife.

We just celebrated our forty second anniversary together! Not many people could put up with me for that many years so let me give her a thumbs up on that! Most of those forty two years are a blur but I wouldn’t  change a thing although I would like to slow some of it down a bit.

What I am getting at is that two years isn’t much time to learn everything around you and at the time, and I had other things on my mind. Now I want to learn about where I spent so many years becoming who I am. All of my past has made me who I am now, and places I went to and places  that influenced my development, are just memories. I couldn’t tell you where most of them are.

So I am on a mission to find those places. Find where they are. Know what they are close to. Tie all these things together.  I am doing a lot of this on my new Harley. This will be the story of me and most of the story of me includes my wife, so much of this will be the story of us.

So the story begins….