Galen

signals: "... Does the way still have all our names in their databank? When you move a few times and their newsletter follows you, they're tracking you." I would not be nearly as concerned about TWI tracking me, as I woudl be concerned about the NSA tracking us. Every post, on every forum, goning back from the days of the fido BBSes, compiled and used to generate a personality profile of you. To try and predict who and when someone is likely to do such and such. :-)

signals: "How many got tax receits for their ABS?" Pay with a check, and you dont need a reciept. Or use a personal ledger to document all your living expenses. Ten percent is pretty much accepted is normal, depending on your denomination. Some groups pay tithe is high as 20%, and so long as during the audit, you can name the group, show the auditor pamphlets or books or something to show that you do belong to said group, then they wont question your tithe. If they do question it, it is due to some other thing that they saw, that caused them to wonder about your honesty. We routinely give 15%, and it has never been questioned, during any audit. "True charitable contributins don't amount to much in income tax these days, but back in the seventies they did." I thhink it has always been important. "... But who wants to file a 1040?" We do. :-)

signals: "just bear with me. You mention SSI in your response to long gone. You rattled my mind about a few things." Does that hurt? :-) "The government(although obvious but ignored) and corp. do what they call 'double-dipping.' They tax you on your wages, then tax you at the beginning of the year. People who get refunds think...Great money coming back! Thing is in the meantime the gov made money from your interest which with all combined means billions! The taxes paid to it are just gravy!" Respectfully I must disagree. Please dont tar and feather me. :-) They do not 'double-dip' as such they just pre-collect. Your salary is only being taxed once. As money is taken out of your salary [assuming that you allow any to come out], it is 'held' or collected, and at the end of the year it's total is shown to you. YOu then have the opportunity of looking over and reporting all of that year's expenses and whatever your AGI was is what you compare against the tax-tables to determine your tax. If the amount that was withheld is more, then you get a refund. If the amount withheld was less then your total due, then you owe more. But your AGI is not being taxed twice. sorry. :-) "Shocking how many people don't realise that when you pay SSI it's for those already retired. Babyboomers are paying those retired. Now with babyboomers and a population drop..." It was not meant to be this way. You pay into your account for forty quarters, then it is 'mature' and that collection could be used to pay for your retirement. Unfortunately later it wa snoticed that SSA had a lot of money, so congress began using that money for highways, and monuments and social programs. Like it was free money that they could tap without paying back. Once Congress drained SSA, now we have began to notice that something is wrong. The idea originaly was not totaly a bad idea. :-) The real point that people miss, is this: your retirement is calculated from the last 40 quarters worth of contributions. NOT the payments made previously. It was done this way, in the assumption that over your work career, your salary would always increase. So the last 10 years of working your salary would be it's lifetime highest earning potential. the problem is when you decide to start working part-time in your 50's. Now your contributions for your last 40 quarters look like junk, and your pension will be drawn down to match. :-( Knowledge is power.

signals: "... Interesting 1935! Says a lot to me. Says We went through a depression and a useless Prohibition. Probably justifies starting a tax in the first place." I know that I will be mis-quoted here, and I already have been, ugh. It was not that they started taxation for the first time, in the 1930's. We had taxation, but it is was not focused on individuals. It was for businesses. "... Businesses in a warped way are suppose to alliviate the collection of taxes by home owners. But as they move out, taxes still remain and the tax payers are responsible." True. "Now there are all sort of odd tricks to do so besides the inevitable of raising property taxes, like creating new taxes to existing bills. Trust me, it happens. Example:I use less water, but my bill is $20 more a month." They meter our water, and they charge us for that water. Then using the same meter readings, they charge us seperately for sewage. So that one cubic meter of water is metered and we are charged for it's use twice. Even if that water went into my lawn or into our jaqquzi, they still charge me for sewage treatment of that water, as a different bill. :-)

When I was inside a bike shop a couple days ago, and I spoke with couple guys hanging out there. This one shop sales both HD and Honda, under the same roof, so I guess it is kind of primed for discussions comparing the two. :-) They were handing me a bunch of magazines that list all the bike shows in New England this summer. There does appear to be a lot of them scheduled. I never really thought about all these 'poker runs','weekend bash's, 'rally's, 'weekend of fun's, 'pig roast's, 'swap and rock's, 'bike show's, 'bike blessing's, 'liquid latex and lobster fest's, etc... And according to these magazines it does look like they do about even business in retailing trailers for their bikes. So apparently many dont even drive their bikes to these shows, rallys, roasts, etc. Does anyone else here on GS attend these things? I like riding a bike. Though through most of my career, I have been free to ride only when they gave my liberty. Coming in after a patrol and being adjusted to 18 hour days, it took a week of jet-lagging to re-adjust to a 24 hour day, so going out and riding a bike was great for that, just be back on base when time is up. I have never attended a bike rally. Now that I am retired, and almost empty-nested, I guess I do have the time to go to one. OE it sounds like your last trip to a bike week was in 72. Was there more going on then smoking and drinking? I dont drink and drive, and I dont feel comfortable to drink or smoke socialy. From the pictures they look like a lot of bike polishing going on. :-)

Trefor Heywood: "When I was in, we were told that the money stayed in the country. Still would like to know what they actually did with it. Robert Wilkinson the Limb Leader of Great Britain still kept a secular job as well as having his other responsibilities. Presumeably it ended up being ploughed into the Gartmore project." It is possible that your money went into Gartmore. What a nice place, it is too bad, it never seemed to work out well. I had thought that Chris Kent was the LC for the UK, it was he that gave us PFAL when we ran classes in Scotland, 1987 thru 1990. I dont recall ever meeting Robert Wilkinson. :-)

Hammeroni: "Thanks, I needed that.. I hope you saw the humor in it, the mind picture of a pair of IRS auditors with smiles on their faces kind of made my morning, heh heh." Your welcome. IRS employees are NOT all bald frustrated old men whose life's desire is to see people bleed. They come in all shapes and sizes, and it is not uncommon to hear some of them saying that their policy is to ensure that everyone is paying their honest lowest possible taxes. Not unlike police officers, some actually would prefer that everyone was peaceful and happily going about their lifes helping each other. Not all police want to be pushy and demanding, catching you in some wrong doing. So auditors can also vary. :-)

I would guess that we are about the same, in all those topics, as we were back when we were 'in'. We did not follow completely in everything that TWI did, We did not know about all the things that TWI did. I dont know that offering slogans ever helped people, but that was not what I saw from being 'in'. I know that each of us saw something different from our envolvement with TWI. Bonnie and my envolvement was over a relatively short period of time, so we were not really exposed to the degree as were others. :-)

Hammeroni: "Now Galen, that may be going a bit too far, heh heh." Very well, point well taken. No government Department or organization can ever be 'happy'. I had meant that phrase in within the context, that at that point we knew and were assured that the IRS had gone over everything that we do, and that they [those specific auditors] were satisfied that we had fully and honestly complied with all IRS requirements, and that those returns would likely never be brought into question ever again. That is what I had meant when I said that they were 'happy', obviously such could not be a factual truth but rather a methaphor. :-) Bless you.

I dont know either. Sorry :-) We focus purely on MFRs, and it has done us very well. Both for the income and for the huge tax-writeoffs. Most of the folks do say that nothing beats a mutual fund. And even though many will state that you must have a minimum balance to get into a mutual fund. I have written letters for sailors before that mutual funds did allow them to get started, investing as low as $50/month. [waiving their minimum balance requirements] It just takes a letter say8ing that you work hard and you really want to invest in their fund, but that you just dont have that much cash on hand, and that you want to invest so badly that you would be willing to make an automatic direct deposit from your salary in the amount of $50 per month into their fund. My father buys mortgage notes from a broker and he does very well with that investment vehicle. Mortgage-notes often get traded like baseball cards. Each broker seems to have their own system for rating a mortgage-note and based on that rating system, they will be willing to trade a given note. He buys mortgages, and he never pays more than half of the note's face value. A note with a remaining principle of $100,000 for example has a face value of $100,000, even though if the holder were to continue making payments for the life of the note, they will eventually have paid as much as 3 times that amount. So he buys the note for $50,000 and notifies the note's holder to begin sending the monthly payments to him. His rate of return varys. But you can see the rough numbers of what they would generally be like. In doing this since 1977, he has had 2 mortgages go into default, he has had to travel to whichever state, file paperwork to transfer the propertys into his name, evict the residents, make repairs and place the property back onto the market. But even after all that, when the property sales, he makes a huge windfall. And he does very little of the work himself, he contacts the local trade union halls and has them do all the work. Good luck anbd tell us what you decide. :-)

igotout: "We slowly perfected our itemizing down to the point where we had no tax obligation. No money taken out of our pay, no money owed at the end of each year." "I wouldn't publish that too loudly. It just does not seem possible to do legally. Did a professional look over your returns? How long have you been doing this? Careful if you get audited. Penalties and Interest are steep and we have even known one Corps couple who went to prison. But I wish you success." Follow the IRS guidelines, never never lie and always check your numbers multiple times. From my understanding [and this comes from IRS auditors] the people who get into trouble are the ones who try to hide something, or who don’t honestly have the right numbers to fill out the forms with and they are trying to misrepresent their numbers. We have been audited, numerous times. And again it has been by taking IRS courses that we learned this, and that I gained certification via the Navy as: "Command Financial Specialist" to assist crewmen in: budgeting, tax-planning, and filing their taxes. When it comes to an 'un-usual' sounding write-off it does help to have on hand, copies of court decisions, to exactly lay out how each item is to be interpreted. While on subs, each year I did collect copies of court decisions, and my source for those court decision was the auditors themselves. “Did a professional look over your returns? How long have you been doing this?” We have been doing this uh. Early '80s just followed the example of other crewman around me, most of them maintained their tax-exempt status. In college, I took a couple tax theory courses [just as electives] focusing on the why and how the idea is to passively control what the population does with their money, not to gain revenue for the government. It was not until 1987 [while we were stationed in Scotland] that I finally took my first tax-course from the IRS [but I only took one VITA course at that time]. Bonnie began volunteering one day each week at "Navy / Marine Corp Relief Society", she got certified to write budgets, loan and grant applications for NMCRS. She stayed working for NMCRS, and was eventually at the level of approving loans and grants, when we were stationed back stateside in 1990. The command there allowed me to take the VITA courses each year and to volunteer half my work-hours each January to doing people's taxes. Bonnie continued with NMCRS there in Groton. In 1991 I took my first "Command Financial Specialist" course, and started really helping other sailors with their budgeting, investments and tax planning. Anytime that a sailor gets into financial trouble, [whether from creditors or the IRS] that sailor is referred to a CFS. So each command does need at least one guy on-board who is certified and able to help. It gets the sailors out of trouble and makes the Navy look better, to have an 'in-house' system for helping each other. We both [bonnie and I] continued doing these [she did NMCRS, and I did the annual IRS course VITA and every three years I re-took the CFS course.] When I transferred onboard each of my next two boats, I was automatically issued memos from the Commanding Officers of each, stating that I was their official CFS. . At Subase Bangor the VITA courses commonly had H&R block guys sitting in on the courses. The IRS requires that if you take their course, you have to sign an agreement that for that one year you can not take money from the ‘tax-payer’ for doing taxes, it all must be volunteer work. The H&R guys in that area, had to remove themselves from actually handling taxes for that year, but they could train other H&R block people. And since many of them only worked part-time for H&RB, it did not really effect their incomes much [or so they said, I was told that by attending the VITA courses they were receiving a far higher quality of training than that offered by H&RB, so they were willing to give up their income for one year to gain the higher quality training.] "“Careful if you get audited. Penalties and Interest are steep and we have even known one Corps couple who went to prison. But I wish you success." True, as I have already stated we have been audited many times. Thanks. Anymore it feels like a good thing to have a second set of eyes going over what we do, to confirm and like finalize that year and all years prior. So we can rest easy on everything up to that point. When we returned from Italy, this last time, we had to request audits. One of the managers who had been running our apartment building in Ct, had totally screwed up the paper-trail. The last two years we were over-seas, he claimed to have had a fire in his house that destroyed all paperwork. Both years!!! He had gone to the point of Police reports and letters from a lawyer, all to ‘prove’ that all leases, rent receipts and bills had been lost. So when we returned stateside, we did have to finally ‘make-up’ numbers for those years. And we did request audits from the IRS. They same auditor did an audit of the years: 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, for us. So we could peacefully rest assured that nothing was amiss, and that the IRS was ‘happy’ with everything up to that point. :-)

Hammeroni: "Well Galen, I can't argue with one of the experts, heh heh." "But I can understand Signal's opinion, and perhaps feelings about the situation- those jerk-o**s have no business hiding behind the tax exempt status for a dummy non-profit corporation, while the rest of us yokels pay merrily away, well, at least most of us, anyway, heh heh. At least that's what I am reading in between the lines." True. I get defensive, I apologize. Bonnie and I worked many years, studying IRS tax codes and budgeting [Tax Planning]. We slowly perfected our itemizing down to the point where we had no tax obligation. No money taken out of our pay, no money owed at the end of each year. I admit that riding a submarine through those years certainly did help [since the Naval service does provide some great tax-writeoffs and numerous court-won decisions about how the IRS handles submarine pay]. By IRS phraseology, the term "EXEMPT", they dont recognize it on their forms unless it is written in capital letters!!! What a joke. But we have been tax exempt for many years, from the days of being a couple, through having sent our eldest to college. We have been audited a number of times. Most times they manage to increase our 'refund', usually on matters of EIC. Which makes the whole thing really funny, when you pay into the system nothing, but come each January we get some check from the U.S. Department of Treasury for a 'Refund'. :-) If someone is not functioning as a non-profit business, when in fact they are breaking the law, then fine the IRS will catch them. But I dont know all the insides of their books, nor do anyone else here. Not the 'public' books either, but the private books, it is legal, it is currently 'legal' to maintain multiple concurent sets of books to 'see' the business from divergent management strategys. So it is common to have one set just for the IRS, and another set for management. Bonnie learned about how to do this while studying for her degree in accountant. Otherwise it is not needed to equate the phrase "Tax-exempt" with un-lawful or immoral activity. Our tax laws are not the laws of Our Heavenly Creator. He gives the admonition to follow said laws of man. Which anyone following the IRS tax codes is doing. If someone does not like the idea of tax write-offs, fine lobby to get it changed. But any method you use to try and decypher the 'true' annual profits of a business man, will still have room of interpretation. Not everyone thinks in terms of being a factory worker who only gets a salary from the foreman each week. Some of us own businesses. To me if some preacher lets good accountants keep his books, and his church is ran entirely separately and it's books are well maintained; when they all get an audit, either he is good, or he pays. If he is good, then throwing mud at him wrong. And that does not change if he is preaching against our president, or if he is preaching for our president. Do you thing that churches were silent on Nixon? YOu must remember that churches were not silent on Klinton. Why msut they suddenly be silent on Bush? :-)

Long Gone: "Galen, whether or not “their share” was an apt choice of words, you should know better than to write what you wrote. The federal government’s revenue comes primarily from taxes. The vast majority of it comes from taxes on income, including “income tax,” as well as Social Security and Medicare taxes." the last time I saw it broken down as a pir chart on our 1040 booklet, showed that revenue from income taxes made up for arond a third of the Fedreral Government's revenue. Taxes as a whole have been around for a long time, however the idea of taxing individuals is a much newer idea from FDR, or at least so says my grandparents. From what i have been told, income taxation was for employers and corporations up untl the Great depression when it was opened up to include all individuals. Social security money was never supposed to be used for anything outside of the social security program, until far later when Congress began taking that money out to fund highways, etc. That money was never supposed to be helping the federal budget. "All tax-exempt organizations benefit from taxes others pay. An example that seems appropriate to TWI is the benefit provided by law enforcement and the judicial system." I dis agree. Anyone benefiting from the government, benefits from the government. Paying taxes has nothing to do with it. Or at least so I have be taught by IRS auditors when I have sat through VITA courses as well as my Tax Theory courses in college. :-)

signals: "... They're tax-exempt and someone has to pay their share." Could you possibly explain? Paying someone's "Share", you are implying that someone owes shares, to what do they woe a share? :-) Is there something that if one person did not pay, then others would have to pay more? I know, and you know, that you can not possibly be talking about income taxes here in America. Where the Federal government went nicely without Income taxes; 1777-1935. And where even today income-taxation still amounts to a minority of the Federal budget. So what shares are you talking about? :-)

Al Poole: "Not to horn in... but I thought the Harley was made in the USA??? No????" They were in 1903. I dont know the entire history, by the mid-80s they were manufacturing enough parts and doing some assembly work overseas that HD lobbied in 1987 to drop all tarrifs from imported bikes. Whereas Honda began manufacturing bikes in the US in 1979, Gold-wing production started full-time in America in 1981. It is my understanding that to this day parts are commonly imported for HD, Specifically starters and electrical components are honda and HD modifies their frames to fit honda components. So to that extent HD's are Amercian made, in that they do include American made Honda parts. I had to get a fuel filter today and I asked they said that many of the parts today come from Turkey!!! I did not know that. And of course their main source Brazil. Learn something everyday though. :-) "I thought some of the family decendants and old design guys got together and bought it back from AMF." Yeap that is their marketing. :-) That is the story that I have been told, but they soon went public so they dont own it anymore, rather the share-holders foreign and domestic own it. Their website says: 1962 HD buys tomohawk boats manufacturing, 1969 HD merged with AMF, 1973 HD builds new assembly plant in Penn. 1981 HD execs sign deal 'buying back' their name. 1983 HD lobbys to get an added tariff to imported bikes 700cc and larger, 1986 HD goes public, now owned by share-holders, HD buys 'Holiday Rambler' motorhome manufacturing 1987 HD listed on NY stock Exch. 1987 HD lobbys to drop import tarrifs to allow them to import parts for cheaper, 1991 HD purchased robotic painting system from honda to paint bikes at their Penn assembly plant, 1996 HD builds a new inventory processing plant for parts distribution in Wis. 1997 HD builds a new production developement plant in Millwaukie, and another one in Kansas City, 1998 HD builds new manufacturing plant in Manaus Brazil, HD buys out Buell bikes. :-)

TheSongRemainsTheSame: I did not mean to make any cheap shots, or to insult you in any way. I am glad that your '75 Sportster is holding up so well. Have you rode it all this time? Where all have you been with it? How many times have you rolled over the odometer? The same really about your buddy with his '75 Kawasaki (900/950)? It seems to me that often when I do see a mid-70's bike, they are the results of someone's project and really spent 2 decades in a pile of milkcrates, having only recently been re-constructed. I did not mean to imply that you had not rode the same bike all this time. It is just that many of the guys I see now, with older bikes either the bike lives in a garage except for Memorial-day weekend, or they spend a decade here or there as a pile of parts. :-) My current Goldwing is a '82 [which makes it American-made]. I only bought it in 2001. Before that being overseas, I had a break in my bike riding, Naples is not a real good place to take a big bike. Before that I had gone through a series of Kawasakis, starting in 1977 ... :-)

Our eldest son, bought a new Suzuki, last summer and drove it through the winter. With their $39/month financing deals, it is hard not to. That is pretty cheap for a vehicle, He drove it out to Indiana for a 'New Years Teen Advance' and he really seemed to enjoy the ride. Then he drove it down to Wichita. :-)

TheSongRemainsTheSame: "I used to carry a huge tool-roll..." awe come on man, that's a cheep shot dude! I never had any problems with my '75 Sportster. Did not even leak a dime of oil. Well, I will have to admit, Harley was owned by AMF at that time. Really you never had any problems? Sorry. I am just under the general impression that the norm is otherwise. Just last week a Harley came alongside me, for about 3 miles till he had to pull-over. I did not go back, to see if I could help, but then again I dont carry tools anymore. At least in my expereince I dont see Hondas or Kawasakis broken down nearly as often as I do see Jap-Harleys. American made bikes [like honda] seem to perform better, but that is just my observation. Smoother, quieter, no rattle to loosen the bolts or your kidneys, and 100,000 miles later they are often still running well. "... But I betcha ya won't see a Gold Wing on display in a museum anytime soon. :D-->" I have no idea what gets put into museums, do we have Harleys in museums? Over the years I have owned various cars too, but I never really paid any attention to which ones may have museums dedicated to them either. A car, a pick-up, a van, a bike they are each peices of equipment usefull for transportation, though they each have a 'focus' that makes one better at one thing, while another choice is better at another thing. Do you purchase a motorvehicle on the basis that one day it may be in a museum? That is fine if you do, it just never occured to me. :-) "Are ya talking coast to coast like in Highway 80? And on Kakasakis? I would like to hear a coupla stories those crotch rocket rides. I fancied to do one on a Harley, but it just never happened. You free soul to da bone dude!!!" I-20, I-40, I-70, I-80 and twice on Highway #2 the 'Queen's Highway'. [over all the Canadian roads are far better] Seriously I dont think you should try that on a harley, wouldn't you really need a kidney belt to not injure yourself? Better stick to something that does not use a V-twin engine, for better stability and less shake. That shaking will really rattle you over a long drive. :-) "This Gold-wing though it only had 80,000 miles on it when I got it, very low mileage, for a 20 year old gold-wing. I would imagine a little ole lady used it to go the store. No just low mileage, probably some weekend-only summer-rider. Who just used it for local stuff. Here in Ct, I do see a lot of summer only rides. I dont mind carrying a bag of salt [in case the tires freeze to a parking lot] in one saddlebag, and a snow shovel on the luggage rack in case I need to move a snow drift. But in general it is my impression that most Ct natives only ride in the summer-time. I guess they jsut dont really enjoy it that much. Hmmm, don't know 'bout 'dat. I have a friend who still has his '75 Kawasaki (900/950 ?)~~~ Really? without the water-cooling I seem to think that air-cooled stuff does not tend to last as long in terms of mileage that is. No doubt there are 'wild-points' individual bikes that last a long time, but in general I doubt that there are very many 200,000 mile bikes out there with air-cooled engines. I could be wrong. :-)

nellie: " ... I am the product of two (2!) depression era survivors, ..." Same here, of course. Both sets of grandparents lost their farms during the depression/dust-bowl. My earliest photos show me in a cotton diaper sitting in the sand leashed to a row of grapes . LOL My father used to brag that my mother could split one bean in half and feed a family of six. What he left out was all the poke salad that we picked to fillout that meal. :-)

Aye Aye. ;-)

Jim: "Keep an eye on that rear shaft-drive assembly. My neighbor let his run out of grease and it seized while he was going 70 on the freeway. He said half the fun was staying on it until it stopped and the other half was getting it out of the fast lane with the rear wheel seized" LOL Cool. I was once on I-40 going West, while doing a quick run from Norfolk to Fresno, and just past Kingman Arizona, I blew the front tire. I had the throttle locked and my feet were up on the handle-bars at the time. I had been doing 80, and trying to get through the desert before sunrise. Doing something like that will surely get your attention fast. :-) Thanks

Hmm BOOKS - I have read everything of Asimov and Heinlein. MOVIES - I have seen every: LOTR, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Harry Potter movie; but I have often missed movies and caught up with them years later, due to computer-related high-security work commitments. 'PUTERS - I know how to read & write in binary and hexidecimal: Fortran, basic, pascal, COBOL, Com-Tran, UNIX, C, C+, and Machine Language. I Worked for 14 years locked up in a big steel pipe for months at a time, with my computer system, workng as a computer system analyst in the support of Nuclear-capable FBM Missles [you know, launch each one and they go into orbit, to launch up to 14 warheads each, at a later time]. I have four PCs networked in my home, they are good for LAN gaming :-) MUSIC - We listen to the Statler Brothers, mostly. PETS - One dog. WORK - I retired at 42 , simnply put I had put too many years and had become too old to continue in my job. -I have known and worked closely with literaly hundreds of: Nuclear physicists, NASA engineers, Nuclear Reactor Operators, and 'rocket scientists'. MODE OF TRANSPORTATION - a station wagon, a saab, a motorhome, a Gold-Wing, a '57 Willy touring-Wagon and a boat. TRAVEL - As an adult, I have spent a looot of time under the Arctic circle, lived in Ct for a while, lived in Va [for 2 years], lived in Southern Ca for a year, lived in Northern Ca for 2 years, back to Southern Ca for a year, lived in Scotland for 3 years, lived in Ct [for 3 years], lived in Wa for 4 years, lived in Italy for 3 years , currently back in Ct. I spent one year's annual leave touring the Nile River from a paddle steamer [one trip of 30days length]. I spent one year's annual leave touring Archeological sites in Israel [one trip of 30 days length]. I spent one year's annual leave touring Greece [one trip of 30 days length with my family]. I spent two year's annual leave sking the Austria [two seperate trips in two consecutive years, both trips were 3 weeks each]. I spent one year's annual leave sking both sides of the Matterhorn [the Southern side goes down into Cervina Italy, the Northern side goes down into Zermatt]. :-) I have gotten phone calls where I have had to run to the nearest military base to find and use a secure [scrambled] phone-line to discuss 'restricted' matters with former work-mates. Does any of that count?

TheSongRemainsTheSame: I have a Gold-Wing. "That is the most quiet and vibration free bike I have ever straddled." They sure are. And the engine sits so terribly low, laying down flat like that, and the fuel tank being so far down too, the center of gravity is very low. With the roll bars on it, I can lay it down on it's side and nothing touchs the ground. If you stay seated, your legs are still 4 inches off the ground even when the bike is laying on it's side. It's quite I can hear a good deal of nature while driving [if my stereo is off]. :-) It is hard to imagine that I have owned cars with smaller engines. :-) "... I traded my Harley '75 1200 Sportster, which would numb your foot in 50 miles," I used to carry a hug tool-roll. But over the years, I never did use it for anything on my bike, I was always loaning it out to help all the Hardley guys that I ended up riding alongside of. A lot of those hardleys you see sitting on the side of the road, man. I dont carry any tools anymore. I bought this Gold-wing 2 years ago, just as the bike turned 20 years old. Got it for $1,000. It's blue-book value is less than the cost it would be to have a shop do about anything to it. So the first sign of a break-down and it is going to the dump. But that was 10,000 miles ago. I did change the oil, I dont know why, but I did. It just keeps running. It would not surprize me if I get another 100,000 miles out of it. The guy that I bought it from, really did not ride it much, he never took it for a coast-to-coast run. I have done a bunch of those drives on a couple different Kawasakis that I have had. It is a good drive, about 3 days depending on which highway you use. This Gold-wing though it only had 80,000 miles on it when I got it, very low mileage, for a 20 year old gold-wing. Kawaskis dont hold up the way that Gold-wings do, By the time you get a Kawasaki up to 75,000 or 100,000 miles it is pretty well worn. :-)

LOL True. I have spent long frustrating hours in various phone-booths, standing on a pier in some port, trying to get a connection. It amazes me how many nations where the phrase "United States of America" simply does not translate, if the operator can figure-out that your speaking Englaesi, then they may connect you with the 'international' UK operator, but that just adds more static to the line and more delays to trying to get a connection stateside. It has always been very common to see servicemembers with phone bills in the hundreds of dollars when they only made a single phone call. The new satelite marine telephones are great, but it is hard to find anyone who can afford to have one. The military does not provide them. In Kosovo, it was the reporters who had them, and would let servicemembers use them on barter. Of course that was 4 years ago now. Things do change. :-)

outofdafog: "So as long as homosexuals are having their periodic health check-ups, aren't hurting themselves or anyone else, are not arguing with any one and their genitals are doing fine, then no one can suggest that they do anything different." You already concede that often homosexuals shove it in everyone else' face. Then it CAN be argued that they should do something different, What someone does i sentirely their own business so long as it is not in my face. When it does get in my face, then it does become my business. And that is what happens now, often. Plus 'alternative lifestyles' guidelines for Public school librarians and among public school curriculum. :-)