And speaking of driving!

I don't know if you guys remember this or not, but we didn't have a car when I was in high school. And the simple fact is that I would never have gotten anywhere other than on my bike if it hadn't been for EJ and Margaret. How many hours did we spend riding around town in your family cars and hanging out at the Triangle. I was spending so much time with you guys in the afternoon that I think my mother thought I was going to turn into Don Juan as there were so many girls around ( if she had only known....but more about that another time :-) ) I rode my bike far longer than most of the guys in our class and the one above and below me. It was a source of a bit of grief for me that we couldn't afford a car. Finally my Sophmore year in college my parents managed to get a great used Chevy Bellaire with 8 cylinders no less. One night home from college with a friend after going to the midnight show at the Elroy, I was making a left turn off (can't think of the name of the road but it's the main road out of town toward the Interstate) and KABLAM I was blind sided by a kid who had just got his drivers license. Totaled that beautiful car. We got another car, not as nice as that Bellaire, and one night when I was clearing out my LSU apartment to head to grad school in CA my mother and I were driving along Plank Road just outside of BR and KABLAM! A cow came up over an embankment and we hit it head long then a second time as cow dung flew into the car onto my shoulder and the car spun to a stop as my mother sat on the ground. ( no seat belts in those days) . So I've never been much of a driver since. Would drive my mother's car when I was at home, and sometimes if I'm working out of town I drive but I don't need a car in NYC and usually prefer having someone else do the driving!