Tell us about your "Perfect Day". One day in your life where you were living the dream, riding high, not a care in the world.

Here's mine:

I grew up on the coast of Southern Maine. I loved all things motorized and had my own wheels at 15 years old (a 1964 Chevy panel truck), but my real love had always been motorcycles. Unfortunately, Maine wouldn't let me have a motorcycle license endorsement until I was 16. Plus I didn't own and couldn't afford a street bike.

One perfect Spring day, the kind you rarely get on the Maine coast, it was predicted to be sunny and warm all day. Dang it, school was still in session so I was going to waste this rare day listening to teacher's drone on an on while staring out the window at happy creatures like dragon flys and crows.

As always, a bunch of us that were car guys met in the cafeteria before school. One guy was a year older than us, Kurt. Kurt had an awesome 442 that was all tricked out, I admired the heck out of him. Kurt, being a senior, must have already decided what I was lamenting over - he just wasn't going to waste this perfect day at Scarboro High!

"Let's skip school" he threw out there..... No takers..... "Really, let's just get out of here and go to the beach or something". My mind was reeling! I was totally on board except that I was a good student, good son, good neighbor, never broke the rules. My mouth voted for me without consultation with my brain "I'm in!" it uttered. My friends, all Sophomores like me, looked on with a mix of fear, longing, admiration, but their brains must have stayed hooked up to their lips - no one else was in!

I didn't know Kurt that well, he was so much older and all (1 grade). He said we should get our cars out of the school lot and we set up a rendezvous point. I started to see there was no real plan beyond this, but I was running with a Senior, he became my General. Yes sir, sir!!

A funny, exhilarating feeling started to seep in to my body. I was doing something wrong, I was going to get in trouble, but I was happy. An Ferris Bueller moment.

Kurt reminded me that we knew some girls in Old Orchard Beach that had motorcycles. They were out of school by a year and maybe we could catch them before work and they would let us borrow their bikes. Amazing thought!

Libby and Debbie, I still remember their names.

"Sure, take em, you do know how to ride don't you?" "Of course, riding all my life." Off we went down the Maine Coast's iconic Route 1.

I should have been scared and remorseful, instead I was euphoric. I kept thinking, no matter what the consequences, "this is the best day of my life!"

And it was!!!

What a great day indeed. But girls with motorcycles? Who will loan them to you? Too good for reality! Sweet. Always wanted a 442, had a 160 Honda instead.

(I also thought it would be cool to have a 454 with 4 barrel and headers with 4.56 rear end, just never thought it would be 35 yrs later in a 14,000 lb vehicle!)
I'm still thinking about my perfect day. There are several candidates.

Come on, there must be some others that can tell about their perfect day!

Well, it wasn't a "perfect" day, but memorable.

It was around OCT '68; I was Chief Engineer on a Navy special operations ship. We had two evaporators to make feed water for the boilers and potable for the crew. We constantly were on the raw edge of having enough - some days I could turn on potable for only an hour or two.

My people scoured the ship for leaks, and found none. One day, in a typhoon, the feed water got so low the punps to the boilers lost suction snd I had to shut them down, so we were cold iron in bad weather. I figured that the problem had to be an internal leak in one of the evaporators, where the fresh water was going over the side with the brine. This was the only time I ever used my Academy education to figure out a problem theoretically using the data from the evaps. We pumped feed from all the tanks into one and got the boilers lighted off. I shut down the evaporators, and we used next to no water for several hours.

A petty office and I removed the 1700# evap end cover and found the leaks, patched them with Devcon (like J-B Weld), and buttoned it back up.

Three days later was my "perfect" day in 2 ways: First, we topped off feed and potable water, and second, it was the ony day as ChEng that I got an uninterrpted 8 hours of sleep.

quote:

Come on, there must be some others that can tell about their perfect day!

Every day I get out of bed and take a breath is a perfect day.

Anytime I am able to attend a Barth GTG is perfect for me.