Influence and Inspiration

Things that makes us tick and tick us off.......

The summer before high school, I was playing a lot of baseball, but more ever,wanted to be a football player.  So when that season ended, I turned my baseball pants into to a couple pair of handy "cut-off" shorts.  These shorts only had one pocket - on the left hand side.  Around that time I started carrying some type of wallet, so it went into my only pocket on these shorts.  To this day, I keep my wallet in my left pocket, despite being right handed.  It wasn't until many years later I realized how this happened.  That's how it works quite often.

Helen Wheels

In my remarkably ordinary neighborhood, lived a couple remarkable people;  Merlin and Helen.

Merlin was born blind and had several brothers the same way.  Merlin taught school and would walk to and from that school, alone nearly every day.  He was an old radio guy, having taught sailors how to repair radios in the dark during WWII.  He tried to teach me Morse Code when I thought I wanted to be a HAM - when I was 12 years old and impatient.  He was really something.  And then there was Helen.  She was born in a house not far from where we would all live, sometime in the 1930's.  When she was born her little body was so deformed that doctor literally told her mother to simply "leave her alone in the back bedroom until she quite crying".  Basically leave her to die.  To her mothers remarkable credit, she did the complete opposite.  By the time I came along, Helen was in an electric wheelchair.  She had absolutely no use of her legs, arms, or hands, yet she had already lived a remarkable life - a story that is by itself remarkable.  She wouldn't let bad weather get in her way, as she would travel around the various local neighborhoods to sell greeting cards.  She would control her wheelchair via a stick in her mouth, while using the stick to "beep" a little horn, alerting people to come to their door.  I never once ever heard her, or her parents complain.  I know she had incredible trials in her life, as did Merlin, but I believe both of them to have been grateful for every breath they drew.

You never know how thing will stack up in you life.  I can tell you this, all I have to do is think about those people in my life that had it tough and I think I have it pretty good. Just remember when riding the spin bike early in the morning before work, there are a lot of people that would give their eye-teeth to be able to suffer like that.

A good morning on the spin bike.

Click here for Helen Wheels

Ride Hard!