Back At Home

The big trip is over. Steven got his bike back with only a few miles added to the odometer, an empty tank, well almost, it was actually not on reserve yet, and I gained a pair of motorcycle goggles but I lost my friend.

I was reassigned to a different load crew, I was now on Al Holsenbeck’s crew with people I didn’t know very well, and none of them were bikers. We now had to move to a new shop location, we lost our revetment near Victor Alert, we now occupied the hanger that used to house the two mix-master helicopters of our rescue unit, I suppose it was either relocated to a different base or they disbanded.

Life had made many changes in the short week we were gone. I had some getting used to.

This was the first time I was disappointed with those kinds of changes. There were many more to come, some of each on either side of the disappointment fence.

I considered myself a veteran motorcycle rider at this point. I could ride the big bikes and I rode two-up all the way back from England. I still hung out with the guys in the motorcycle group, except Calvin was standoffish.

I still rode my Honda around Bitburg, Trier, and the Mosel River a lot. Only a few trips to outlying areas, I never did take a trip to France on it, I regret that now. I still had trouble with the slides sticking on my carburetors, I sometimes had to hold the throttle open and just wait for them to release. On occasion it was embarrassing.

Then the big day came and I got my orders to transfer to Nellis AFB, near Las Vegas, Nevada. I had hoped for Castle AFB in Merced, they had B-52’s my dream to work on. Nellis was OK with me, it was close enough to California I would be happy.

I sent a letter off to Billy Dexter, one of the old timers who had taken me under his wing when I first arrived at Bitburg back in ’72. His nickname was Billy Bolder, from the Mothers’ of Invention album, Billy the Mountain. He denies it but it is how I remember.

Billy wanted to take a leave of absence from his current station in upstate New York to drive across the states with me, since I was going to arrive on the east coast and needed to travel to California. Permanent change of station, the orders I had assigning me to Nellis, included one month of leave, so I could travel. I hadn’t seen my sisters, or most of my family, in over two years. My mom has spent one month with me in my VW touring Europe less than a year before.

The trip with Billy sounded good. We had traveled in his Opel GT together when I went to Spain with before he was reassigned, so I kind of knew what would happen. I hadn’t studied too well in school so Billy was my history and geography teacher now. What the heck lets go!

I rode up to Bremerhaven on my bike and left it with the military agent there to have it shipped to Bayonne, New Jersey. I was accompanied with all my buddies from the motorcycle group, plus a few more who wanted to go for the long ride. One of the guys had a ’64 Chevy that we took that along for the ride home. It was full both ways. Bach rode my Honda for a while on the trip up.

I was very happy to be going home to California. Things were winding down for me in Germany. I wanted to go home in a bad way. I wish I had stayed longer now.

I volunteered to travel to Aviano Italy one more time on a TDY with my loading crew. I loved the place, I had good friends from my motorcycle buddies going at the same time, so I signed a waiver and it was off to Italy in a C-130.

At least things were going my way. That is until I got to Italy. Then the worst thing you could imagine happened to me that didn’t include anybody giving up the ghost.

My orders to Nellis were cancelled!