My Transportation Utilizations :  the brief yet poignant experiences connected with the modes of transportation to which I have had access, and indeed rough descriptions of the non-vehicular related occurrences which accompanied those methods of conveyance.  

It all started one day when I suddenly seemed to be able to balance on my bicycle in Ashley Road. I think it was a small yellow one with 16 inch wheels, and I could only go a couple of yards without training wheels. After that came a metallic blue one with 24 inch wheels that I was actually able to ride and stay up on the length of the road. From there I built bikes with cow-horn handle bars and had one with drop handle bars. Sometimes we rode to the Oxshott Woods on a Sunday where the bikes often got broken and we had to push them home. When I became sixteen my Dads old friend Phil had a son who sold me a BSA Bantam 175 cc motorcycle which was also light yellow. I had a crash helmet which was too big and made me look even more ridiculous than the bike itself, and girls who saw me riding it laughed. Often the motorcycle did not work properly. 

When I reached seventeen years old I bought my Dads Austin Cambridge. It used to belong to my Uncle Frank. I earned enough driving various Commer and Ford vans to buy a older Ford Consul "Lowline" with a bad imitation leopard skin front bench seat cover, which was quite popular. The brakes failed only once when I was returning from a late night visit to Streatham. The car itself was quite a hit with the ladies, as was the Ford Transit vans from work. Then I bought a Singer Gazelle which had a great gear box, and then an Austin 1300 which burned out its front left UV joint, which I replaced myself. On Christmas day after drinking sherry at my Uncle Dicks house, I decide to race my parents to their house for Christmas dinner. Taking the short cut through the ford in between Molesey and Thames Ditton I took my foot off the accelerator in the middle and the resulting  vacuum sucked river water into the engine. That was a problem. Around this time my fiancée left for the antipodes with everything but the kitchen sink; I think she may have missed the front seat of the Consul. So I took work which involved heavy lifting and driving long distances in Ford 3 ton trucks, in which the cab tilted forward if you needed to put oil in or make repairs if you had broken down in Belgium. It was driving one of these trucks that caused me to be stuck on the Barry ferry for about a day.

Eventually I got a company car, a Vauxhall Viva where reverse gear was in a strange position, and then a Ford Cortina, where it wasn't, and for a while another Austin. When I changed companies they gave me a Ford Consul, which was dark blue in colour and the same shape as a Granada. Inside it had a heater, but the rest of the Granada similarities stopped there. Later working for myself, I purchased my very own Vauxhall Viva, which caught fire in Surbiton. A local garage type place saw the fire and came with a fire extinguisher and put it out. Then they sent me a bill for 120 quid.

When I got it fixed I sold it to a London police officer and bought VW Minibus from a chap who imported them from the Dutch army; who knew there was such a thing? Steering wheel on wrong side. I drove it all over England and parts of Wales and to Sweden and back. Later I  delivered Sampson, a dog I got for my parents, to their new home in Wiltshire. I sold the VW and used part of the money to board a Boeing airplane to New York. Once there I bought a Pontiac Granville with a damaged door for 350 dollars About two years later I sold it to a NY Police Officer.  In the interim, I  bought a 1971 Buick Electra 225 , which I kept for the next fifteen years to annoy my wife. In 1997 when it had become home to abundant wildlife, I sold it  for the engine; a V8 455 Chevrolet designed for 4 barrel carb, for $400 less than I paid for it in 1982. It had great sentimental value as my friend Dennis once got lost in the Bronx in it. Being of Danish descent he was quite noticeable there. Somehow he made it out and in doing so, he ruined what would have been a good story. 

Since then in New England I have driven a metallic gray Chevy Blazer with a red stripe on it, a black and silver Chevy Blazer without a red stripe on it, a Black Buick LeSabre, a silver gray Buick Park Ave, and recently I have driven a dark blue Ford XLT extended Club Wagon with a triton engine. My wife used to have an Isuzu Trooper, but she clipped it to death, and now has a Ford Windstar which she is in the process of, because she never did like the colour. 

When I hear of other peoples lives, they rarely refer to their transportation. Yet most people spend half of their lives going somewhere or is it just me? If it is then every one else has been doing very little with their time, unless of course they've been writing or something like that. So I've been lucky. I must conclude that I didn't have to walk as much as everyone else. I mean this here is just the main points; I must have been in hundreds of cars and trains and planes that I didn't even talk about. I suppose these are just the ones that stuck in my head form some reason.

Anyway unfortunately I cannot divulge my current means of transport until I have finished with it, so it will have to remain a mystery for the time being.