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In 1961, my two cousins and I had took a two-and-a-half month bicycling trip through Europe. I was 22, my older cousin was 20, and the younger was just 18. We drove across the country from southern California, taking the southern route to the east coast in my cousin's 1950 Ford. Our plan was to ship out from Montreal, Canada, land in England, buy our bikes, and spend two-and-a-half months biking through Europe.

Our church youth group collected food for our trip because we couldn't afford to eat in restaurants or even fast food places. We camped out all the way across the states and stayed in a youth hostel in New York state for only one night. The youth group, being the humorous folks that they were, removed all of the labels from the cans of food they gave us.

We had one big pan and everything we cooked was cooked in that pan. Since we didn't know what was in the cans we opened, we just tossed it all in the pan. We called it "umgawa." You will recall from the old Tarzan movies that the word "umgawa" could mean anything you wanted. "Umgawa Bawana!"

We sailed out the St. Lawrence river to England on the Q.S.S. Arkadia, a Greek steamship. The food was great and we had two pretty young women at our table, one from our own hometown. It was to be over two months before we ate this well again.

In London we were snatched by a cabbie as soon as we got off the boat. He asked us where we were going. We told him we needed to buy bicycles and we were going to travel all over Europe. He took us under his wing and took us to a bike shop. They agreed to put together a couple of bikes for us and sent to another shop for the third. Meanwhile our cabbie took us out to tea while we waited.

He pointed out the pretty ladies, made some rude remarks, and regaled us with stories. Although he spent most of the day with us, I think we only paid him one pound each, the equivalent of less than $5 back then.

In the English countryside we had an accident and one bike got its front wheel bent. We were picked up by two young men in a a small lumber truck. They put us and our bikes in the back of the truck, which was covered with canvas, and drove us 50 miles to the nearest town with a bike shop.

We had two problems. One was that we couldn't understand a word that they were saying (even though it was presumably English). The other was that the driver was driving at top speed on a narrow winding country road while looking at a map spread out on the steering wheel. We just prayed and didn't look through

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