The First Harley Trip, 2014 Part 5: Hanging With Hotrod

The First Harley Trip, 2014

                    Part 5: Hanging With Hotrod    

               

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Mark Twain

Since my last visit with Hotrod and JodiRod, they had sold their home in Portland and bought a new spread in Powell Butte, Oregon. They had had enough of the wet rainy petri dish some call “Portland” and felt they needed some drier weather and open space. Besides, they said all of the wet was causing their bodies to go through some kind of Darwinian change, noting that they were starting to grow webs between their fingers and possibly even gills.   

          Their Powell Butte home was amazing. Besides the fact that the floor plan is one of the most well thought out I’ve seen, the million dollar views out their back door of the Cascade Mountain range, a large attached two car garage, and a giant detached shop with a full-on man-cave made the place appear as if it was custom built for the two of them.

         

Since I had cancelled my trip to Portland to visit with Tom and Loretta, Tom, of Tom and Loretta, packed his wheelchair and hopped in his custom built hotrod and ventured the 5 hour trip to visit us in Powell Butte. What a welcomed surprise!

         

A side note on Tom. Some 30 years ago, Tom was involved in a work related injury, falling 30 feet off of a painter's scaffold.  The injury resulted in the loss of his hearing and the use of his legs. More recently, a successful cochlear implant surgery restored Tom’s hearing. I suppose I could write an entire book on how Tom has made this accident his little bitch but instead, I’ll just say Tom is one badass hombre and has never let the accident prevent him from anything. He built his hotrod himself with hand-controls so that he can drive it. He has built a successful architectural CADD design business, Hell On Wheels CADD Drafting Services (http://howcaddrafting.com/about/.) This is a guy who took the word, “can’t” out of his dictionary. This is a guy who pulled his pistol from a secret holster hidden in his wheelchair and held a home invader at gunpoint until the police arrived. (Tom, while holding the pistol on the guy, even made the shit-for-brains thief call 911 and report himself to the police.)   And when it comes to wives, Loretta qualifies for sainthood, staying by his side the whole time and always with a smile.

          I spent the next 3 days just relaxing in the best of company, enjoying good food, and seeing the local sights of the High Desert. Dorothy got a bath,  her 1500 mile check-up, and fluids changed. Hotrod and I took a nice ride on our bikes out to Smith Rocks joined by Tom and JodiRod in Tom’s hotrod.

At the end of the third day, we said our goodbyes and I headed northeast to Milton-Freewater, Oregon to visit my dad.