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I had to drive - maybe fifteen or twenty miles to school in Santa Rosa. I drove from home in St. Helena north, just a little past main street in Calistoga, and turned left and went west over to Santa Rosa. You had to be careful within the Calistoga city limits, as the cops there were notorious for ticketing.
I used Sonoma's car, a yellow and black Opel she called Tweetie. It was a fantastic car with a little four cylinder engine that got near thirty miles a gallon, and that was when gas could be got for thirty cents a gallon. I kept that car running for many years, changing clutches, brakes, various engine parts and even rebuilt the engine once. At some point I bought a motorcycle I think in the spring semester of that first year. There were two routes I could go after going west for awhile. One was fairly straight forward. I would take that in the morning. The other was through beautiful wooded hills with dips and curves and parallel to a stream in places. This was a fantastic motorcycle ride if you didn't kill yourself.
One morning on that motorcycle it was so cold, I didn't feel that my boot was on the exhaust pipe, 'till it started to burn me. I had to stop and take the boot off. There was a hole burned clear through above right inside heel. My first class was usually at eight am. After the motor cycle ride, on always cool mornings, I was thoroughly buzzing with cold exhilaration when I got to class.
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