What goes round....

Comes round they say. Last winter a homeless gentleman I met at the McDonalds I often frequent, ( for the free WiFi, and the delicious food as well...in case they are monitoring me...)...suggested as a blogger I should make sure I blogged at least once a week. I've tried to heed his advice, and probably because of him I have blogged as often as I have. He always had his laptop with him-and his bicycle. He said he had a storage unit with his belongings, except for his car which was in L.A. He was one of the 'regulars' here, along with about a half dozen others. We could all trust each other, to watch out for computer gear while running off to the men's room to take care of nature's call...There was another older gentlemen who was homeless as well. Both of them were black, which did not matter to me, as well as to the rest of the 'crew' here, which is a pretty good mix of ethnicity and all...  The older gent said he was trying to get some V.A. paperwork done , so he could apply for some temporary housing to get set up... to start attending the local college. Both of these men related tales of the rigors and dangers of being out 'there'. Like so many people in this country, as well as most anywhere I suppose, a lot of us are that 'one paycheck away from homelessness' you hear on news stories all the time.

And then of course, there is an ever revolving cast of scumbags in this burg....that occasionally drift through...'spare-changing'...trying to pull scams...stealing cokes...purses...laptops...the usual... 

The older gentleman had his back pack with all his paperwork stolen one night. I ran into him a week later and he had recovered his pack and some clothing, from the guy who had taken it, who had been stupid enough to keep it. The fact that a security guard was at the supermarket he was at, when he located his property... probably saved the young fool from a sound thrashing from the older gent, who was ex-Army and looked like he could take care of himself. Unfortunately the kid had dumped his paperwork...so he was back to square one with that process...

The younger gentleman, was robbed of his wallet. Having no I.D. or his credit cards for awhile put him in a pretty good bind for a bit. I bought him some food and loaned him 20 dollars and told him to pay me back someday, no rush. He disappeared from the scene sometime before Spring...I figured he'd gone back to L.A. to re-group. 

A few weeks ago I ran into the older gent. Hadn't seen him in a while. Turns out he got a place to live and had just finished a semester at City College, where he is studying computer programming. He had come back to this part of town to look up some of his buddies from last winter. Back in the day he had ridden a Honda 750, and a Goldwing. So he liked to talk bike stuff with me. I was glad to hear things were going good for him.

On the way over here this evening I stopped to buy some groceries and ran into the younger man, who says I got that 20 for you. We talked a bit and it seemed as if things had turned around for him as well. He drove off in a Toyota sedan. It was good to hear it was going good for him. And, seeing him reminded me it had been a week since last I posted...

Sooooo....children, the moral of this story is....many things actually...and you can take what you want from this little tale of life in California's state capitol. All of us, myself included can think it's been a rough year....but as I look back....I'm blessed, I am....and hot dang I got some cool motorcycle projects lined up.

Here's a pic of a cool model T Ford....found on the web (This is to remind me I need to get crackin' on that project and blog as well)