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The Great Willamette Valley Cycle Works Christmas Dinner The Bike I Rode to and from the Christmas Dinner I was working at the Willamette Valley Cycle Works bicycle shop in the winter of 1976. My friend Frank was the owner and his shop was having a pretty good year after a couple of very iffy ones. Frank decided to splurge for a company Christmas Dinner for all the staff and their spouses or dates. He reserved a room at a nice restaurant in Eugene. A dinner at a nice place in Eugene at that time was under $10, in fact, that $10 would likely be close to covering both the dinner and a glass of wine. And it's not like we would be ordering the higher priced meals as we were almost all vegetarians. There were going to be 12 of us going and Oregon did not have any sales tax so even if we all had a couple of glasses of wine or beer the cost of the dinner looked like it would be easily under $150. I doubt any of us had ever spent anything close to $20 for a single meal...

Dating – Sounds Like Fun The W.O.W Hall @ 8th and Lincoln in Eugene T here was a time when I met and developed romantic relations with women rather easily. I was comfortable and self assured. Sadly that time was past. After hearing all that “inside information” living with the Barrington Gang all that confidence seemed to have left the building or at least the vessel that is me. I struggled with meeting and going out with women for the rest of the time I lived in Eugene. So, keeping my ego under control I will reflect on some of my failed romantic escapades in Eugene after splitting with Cyndi, aka Cyd. W hen Cyndi and I split up I moved into a house on 32 nd and Alder. I was now a free man. One of my first dates after Cyndi was with a woman I met at a bar, in fact, she was the bartender. When we talked at the bar it was free and easy. We decided to get together and when we did I kind of froze up. I was not sure what I should do. I was overly cautious bei...

Halloween with Theresa and Rick Me and Rick - Halloween 1976 I 'd recently moved into a house at 32 nd and Alder in Eugene. My new roommates were Rick and Dave. My friend Tom lived in the attached studio that was once the garage. The studio had a door into the kitchen of the main house but it was generally kept locked. A few months after I'd rented the house Tom moved out making the studio available. I was not enjoying sharing a space with the other Dave so I was considering moving into the studio. R ick and I got along well. Rick was from the northeast like me and we shared that east coast trait of being direct with little consideration about being diplomatic. Rick was mild mannered and unassuming but Rick would tell me exactly what he thought about something I said or did without any of the usual west coast filters. We did this without any animosity. We could discuss and argue without taking offense. It was refreshing for me as that was the cul...

Snap Judgments at 32 nd and Alder  3210 Alder Street in Eugene, Oregon A trait of mine is I tend to make decisions based on a feeling. I am also usually quick to get a feeling about something or someone. I've learned to trust and go with my gut and I'm usually able to make quick decisions based on that. If you are someone I am going to like or dislike I will generally know it within the first few minutes of meeting you and it's all based on a feeling. I tend to be a logical thinker and I have excelled in areas that require analytical thinking but the truth is I most often react and evaluate based on feelings. Even as a computer programmer I would know I'd written a good piece of code because it would feel right. When an issue comes up or a question arises I will get a feeling that says to me what's right or not right well before I am able to articulate it. I find even after thinking about it and or discussing it I still land on the side of ...

Nyshia 2 - Where's the Chuck Wagon? Nyshia and her favorite toy O f course everybody's dog is special, at least to them, and Nyshia was no exception. Nyshia and I settled into living with each other at the Villard Street house. She house trained very quickly. She only had one incident of relieving herself in the house. We of course were living with roommates and I knew we would likely be living with roommates for some time in the future. I wanted Nyshia to be well behaved especially because I may need to convince potential landlords and roommates that Nyshia would not be a problem. We put in the time and worked hard. Nyshia was a good student. She learned to come promptly when called. She learned to sit and stay on command and she learned to heal off-leash. She was so well behaved that I could take her pretty much anywhere and I found that she was welcomed in places where dogs typically were not. N yshia's personality was very much like her mom's...

“ One of the Girls” and the Breakup of the Barrington Gang From Front Left - Martha, Cyndi, Maria, Valerie, Louanne I'm sitting behind Valerie and Louanne M y female roommates all were used to me, a man, being around and it wasn't long before many filters that existed previously melted away. Feminine type subjects and issues were freely discussed in my presence. I was becoming one of the girls although “my time of the month” never did sync up with theirs. Well, is more like one of the women since “girls” was not an acceptable term in our circle. I heard about all kinds of stuff including their relationships with men, good and bad. At first all this sort of inside information was interesting and even seemed useful. It helped me understand and experience how women felt and were affected by the kind of things my side did. A s a household we continued to get along and everything seemed to be going well. We didn't have many issues and everyone seemed t...

How I Became a Computer Science Major Card Key Punch Machine A t the beginning of my second year at Oregon I began to take Computer Science classes. I had been told while I was in the Air Force and also by someone who was into computers that I would be good at computer programming. I needed some science classes if I was planning to graduate and since everyone seemed to think I'd be good at computers I figured why not give it a try? I expected it would be an easy grade and heck, it sounded like it might be fun as well. So I looked into the Computer Science curriculum. In other fields of study I had found that beginning and intro classes tended to be less interesting and not really necessary for succeeding in the higher level classes. Subjects tended to get more interesting at the higher levels. Computers were going to be new to me but I figured I could at least skip the preliminary, first level of classes. I figured it would be no big deal as I'd been suc...

No Tickets, No Problem - The Grateful Dead at Winterland The embroidered linen shirt made by Cyndi I n the fall of 1974 the Grateful Dead were going to be doing 5 shows at the Winterland Arena in San Francisco. Cyndi really wanted to go or maybe it was more like Cyndi was going to go even though she had no tickets and, since I had recently become her boyfriend, I was going too. The show was sold out but Cyndi insisted we drive down and get on-line the morning of one of the shows in hopes that additional tickets would be sold for that day's show. After all, Bill Graham was the promoter and had a rep for over packing his shows by admitting additional people into them the day of a concert. The Grateful Dead were planning to take an extended break from touring so this was going to be their last concert for awhile. They did end up playing a couple of shows in '75 but they would not return to touring until the summer of '76. I wasn't too sure about going ...

Cyndi Loses Her Shirt and I Go Over a Waterfall Cyndi at the piano in the Villard house I was the summer of 1975. Saigon had fallen that April and the movie “Jaws” had hit the movie theaters that June. Cyndi and I had returned from our cross country adventure. We all, the Barrington Gang and me moved out of the Fairmount house. One of us, it wasn't me, found a more normal sized 4 bedroom house close to campus.  It was a nice old house situated on the North-East corner of Villard and 19 th Street. The house had a fenced (white picket) yard, a full basement, and a ghost room. The ghost room had a window that looked to the front but there was no entry into the room. The wall above the stairway looked like it might have once had an opening in it and we were pretty sure there was a story involving a murder that goes with it but nobody seemed willing to say anything about it. We were never able to find out the details about that room. It's evidently a very wel...

Frank, the Bike Shop, and Me  Frank and Me in the yard behind his apartment on Patterson Alley “ I 'm a business man.” This was how Frank described himself when I met him at a potluck in 1975. He was part of a group of counter-culture friends I hung out with when I lived in Eugene, Oregon. In the counter-culture world this kind of description of oneself would be like someone telling you they favored socialized medicine at a Young Republicans gathering. It certainly made him stand out and while I didn't dismiss him I didn't find myself initially drawn to him either. But Frank and I seemed to get along. We talked easily and, as it turned out, he would become my best friend in Eugene. It turned out Frank and I had a lot of things in common in spite of how he characterized himself. I used to call him my young republican friend, even though Frank was not really one. He, like myself, was not much of a fan of either party. We were what was then referred to as...