I have been a cyclist for almost all my life, although there have been many times when I have put the bike away for weeks or months at a time. I grew up in Southern California in the 40’s and 50’s and from home in Lynwood I could ride 10 miles south on Long Beach Boulevard to Rainbow Pier or 10 miles east on Imperial Highway to Orange County where orange and grapefruit orchards were everywhere. In 1957 when I was 18 I joined the Navy Reserve, and I put away the bike for a long while. I was in college, first at Compton Jr College and later at Pepperdine, and I served as a weekend warrior. I would board ship on Friday evening and spend the weekend at sea, returning to port Sunday afternoon. After boot camp in San Diego I was assigned to the USS HANNA (DE 449), homeported in Long Beach. The DEs (Destroyer Escorts) were virtually miniature destroyers, like a VW beetle was to a Oldsmobile 88; there was definitely no room for a bicycle on board. As the lowest seaman apprentice (SA) when I reported on board I was immediately assigned as a mess cook and my very first job was peeling a large heap of potatoes; just like Beetle Bailey in the comics.
The HANNA was in poor mechanical condition and we frequently couldn’t get to sea. After about a year almost the whole crew was transferred to the USS VAMMEN (DE 644), while the HANNA was scrapped. The VAMMEN was the same size as the HANNA but was in good shape. The VAMMEN was one of just a few DEs which had turbo-electric engines. One of their duties at the end of WW2 was to generate electricity for small naval bases on the south pacific islands. I advanced to BMSN which meant I was a seaman (paygrade E3) and I had passed the exam for Boatswain’s Mate 3rd class (BM3, paygrade E4) but at this time in 1959 the Navy had enough BM3’s so a promotion was not in sight. The executive officer called me to his quarters (I thought I was in trouble), but he told me to apply for Reserve Officer Candidate School (ROCS) rather than wait around for promotion to BM3. This turned out to be good advice. The Reserve OCS was designed for “Weekend Warrior” college students in that it was composed of two eight week summer sessions at Newport, Rhode Island. If you finished ROCS in good standing, you would be commissioned as Ensign, USNR concurrent with college graduation. So I spent the summers of 1959 and 1960 at Newport.
In June, 1961 I graduated from Pepperdine with a B.A. in Math and a commission as Ensign, USNR, and was immediately assigned to an almost new destroyer the USS PARSONS (DD 949) homeported in San Diego. There was one new twist. I had fallen in love with Donna and we were married in the summer of 1961. In those days an ensign’s pay was $222 per month, with a small housing allowance. We were so broke that our honeymoon consisted of camping in Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite. Setting up housekeeping took all the money and time that we had. And when the PARSONS steamed out of port for a 6 month deployment to the western Pacific I had arranged to have almost all my pay deposited into our joint account, leaving Donna with our baby daughter (and in later deployments leaving her with daughters). I had enough money to get by on, and just as well as not enough to get in trouble on shore leave. The bicycle gave me a low cost way to go sight-seeing and get some good exercise ashore.
By the way, it is not well known by civilians that officers aboard ship pay for their meals. The enlisted crew generally eat well and free meals are just part of their enlistment contracts. Officers don’t eat with the crew; they eat in the wardroom. The officers elect a mess treasurer, usually a junior officer who collects the monthly mess bills. In my experience the bachelors wanted expensive meals like steaks and the married officers wanted to eat more cheaply; after all when we were in home port the married officers wanted to eat at home. The mess treasurer was never able to satisfy everyone; each month I usually ended the month by paying my mess bill and having 10 bucks or so left over.
My first visit to Japan was about 20 years after the end of WW2, and the country was still recovering. Many people were riding bikes probably because they couldn’t afford a car; on my last visit in 1979 there were many fewer bikes and cars were everywhere. Most of my solo bike rides were short and easy. I would start out from the ship and head inland usually without a firm destination. I would always carry a map, which was nearly always in Japanese. If there was an interesting temple or park on the map I could stand by my bike and show a passerby the map; I would point to the place on the map and ask (in my very crude Japanese) “where is this place?”. Almost every time the passerby was very polite and would point in the direction I should go. The Japanese people were friendly and thought it was unusual to see a gai-jin (foreigner) on a bicycle; they seemed to appreciate a “wealthy” American getting around like one of them.
The longest bike ride I made in Japan was with a shipmate, Jim Allen. Jim was the only one who had the slightest inclination to travel by bicycle. We had a whole weekend off and left Yokosuka early Saturday morning. We rode through Kamakura and continued on to the base of Mount Fuji; a long day’s ride. We stayed in a ryokan (a traditional rural inn) overnight and rode back to the ship on Sunday. Two incidents were memorable - we made a rest stop in Kamakura which was the capital of Japan a thousand years ago. It is picturesque and worth visiting. We spent only about an hour there, and in a park was a modern building which housed an art gallery. We wandered into it and noticed that it was quite new and much like a contemporary U.S. building, even many of the signs were in English. We saw one door with the sign “Men”, and assuming it was a restroom we went in to do our business. After we finished we saw that one wall was lined with sinks, and as we were washing our hands an elderly Japanese lady came to use an adjacent sink. As we left the room we saw that another door said “Women” and it opened into the same room. The Japanese architect had evidently overlooked a small detail. The other memorable incident was Sunday morning breakfast. We had a pleasant night, sleeping on tatami mats. They were on the floor, very firm, but about the same as our shipboard bunks. In the morning a maid brought us hot tea and we went to have breakfast. Jim was a mid-western guy who grew up on meat and potatoes, while I’ve always had an adventurous palate, so I was game for just about anything. There was no menu but we were brought steaming bowls of rice and an unbroken egg. We watched the other folks eating and it was obvious that we were to break the egg over the hot rice and stir with the hashi (chopsticks) until the egg was cooked. This was quite a stretch for Jim but he was about to give it a go. But then the maid brought us a large bowl of little things like tadpoles which were swimming around. I think I might have tried one had I been alone but Jim had gone past his limit. We rode back to the ship on empty stomachs. (I later learned that the little critters were elvers, or baby eels, and they were great delicacies).
We were frequently in port at Subic Bay, Philippines for a few days of minor maintenance, and loading fuel, food and ammo. The Naval Base was really big. I don’t know the actual dimensions but according to Wikipedia it had 262 square miles, about the size of Singapore. The roads on the base were mostly paved and were much better than the roads off base. I could easily get a 20 mile ride while staying on base, and I enjoyed this better than exercising in the base gym. I don’t remember any really exciting cycling moments but in general this was a good place to ride. Most of the other ports in the Pacific were difficult for getting a bike ashore, so I had short rides in only a few places: Oahu, Guam, Okinawa were all good for riding but I never had time for any rides more than a couple of hours.
By 1971 I was ready for shore duty and was transferred to the U. S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland. In later years our daughters all thought this was the best place we have lived, as they were surrounded by polite, fit and handsome young men (this was before women were accepted into the service academies). I taught math and was home for supper every night except for a few weeks in the summer when I was on training cruises with the midshipmen. Donna and I joined the local bicycle club and we went on family rides around the Chesapeake Bay, the DelMarVa peninsula and the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The two older girls had their own child-sized bikes and the youngest rode in a seat on my bike.
In 1974 I was back on sea duty and I continued on “shore-leave bicycling” around the Atlantic, in England, Scotland, Netherlands, Denmark and Norway. I’ve already written about two accidents I was in, but I didn’t stop riding. The most memorable ride that I recall was in Norway. My ship was moored in Oslo for a few days and I took a Saturday off to take the bike train from Oslo into the surrounding mountains, where we disembarked and rode our bikes back to Oslo - it was downhill all the way. It was a popular family activity and I managed to talk one shipmate into riding with me. Where the train stopped there were several routes back to the city and there were many pubs along the way. There was one “old guy” riding alone (remember I was about 35); the “old guy” was probably about 60-ish and evidently in excellent shape. He realized that we were new-comers and he offered to guide us. My shipmate spoke very good German, and I spoke very rudimentary German and the same for Japanese. It became clear that our guide spoke a little English, and was fluent in German and Japanese. In a short time we were communicating (kind of) in English and Japanese. We learned that our guide had lived during the German occupation of Norway and he had been forced to speak German. As a result he refused to speak German; and he had recently returned to Norway after several years working for a Norwegian shipping company in Japan. He knew the best places with the best beer and we had a very enjoyable ride. We asked him if he cycled often, and he told us that he rowed a bit when the weather was good. We asked him where he rowed and he told us “to Denmark”. This meant crossing the Skagerrak which is known for its rough seas. As we got close to town, he led us by his house where we parted ways. In his carport was a sea-going rowing scull, and as we rode away we agreed that we had met a real Viking.
This was about the end of my bicycling while on active duty in the Navy. After retirement I have continued riding and have a few good stories to come. For my 82nd birthday I gave myself a present of an e-bike. It is an excellent machine and as an e-bike it is a minimalist, which requires pedaling like any other bike and gives a little help going up hills. I hope I can keep riding it for a long while.
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