The Female Game Changer

My friend Robert Linz, author of a cross-country bicycling book called Godspeed—Riding Out the Recession, pointed out that the voluptuous brunette described on Day 10, who anxiously wanted to pick me up, “would’ve changed the course of your life had you taken that ride.” So true. That was the day after Otto and I had gone to the Bible study in Salt Lake City and had our morals refreshed. The next morning, after Otto trotted off to get his canteen filled, this 30-year old gorgeous woman, with “bountiful curves barely covered by a denim sunsuit,” stopped along the ramp. She offered a ride to San Diego. Only thing, she was in a MG and had room for only me.  Not that we needed company; this would have been a honey hole. Otto was nowhere to be seen.  I turned her down, very reluctantly. That was fulcrum on which my life turned. Had I taken that ride, I may never have returned to New Jersey.  My friendship with Otto would have been destroyed.  There never would have been a book because the cross-country hitchhiking trip would have been nullified if not obliterated. That scene happened exactly as described. She had “cherry lips and bright teeth, and looked like an Alberto Vargas illustration from Playboy.” Forty years hasn’t dimmed my memory.