wandering

while writing my book, i came across this which i had lost<><><>my one year in europe<><><>i knew is was hooked on walking everywhere because of a bad habit called wandering<><>it can be dangerous but tell that to a seveenteen year old kid<>><<>when i was in amsterdam i had just started off towards the direction of the sea and all of a sudden i saw these giagantic walls built to keep the water out of that city><<>they towerered skyward and it scared me to think that tons and tons of sea water were heaped up on the other side of that wall<><>it was especially scarybecause i was stepping in water that seemed to be coming from those great walls<><>it was muddy, scummy water and then i looked up and saw this monument with an inscription<<>it was very hard to get close to the area because of all the debis: there were no sidewalks or direction<><>when i got close it read" in memory of a dutch boy who stuck his thumb in the dike at this spot and saved the people of amsterdam from a break in the dike and from certain death<><<><>we continued our trips to all the fjords of norway and ferrys to harris island where all the tweeds are made and to the gardens of tivoli in copenhagen and to the radhaus in bergen and the gypsies of skye<><>our trip home this time from europe  was premature in my mind<><>only 340 days most of which was spent graduating from high school and listening to sister phillips teach us the gospel of jesus christ in the old army barracks that we sued as our high school chemistry class when we were not there for sunday school and sacrament meeting<><><>and of course me using my dad's gasoline liter tickets to put gas in my motorbike so i could tool over to margie's house at toul airforce base{canadian} or go to luxemborg or a million tiny french towns all over northeaster france, always running out of gas or breaking down and having to use old eighty year old frenchmen to get me phone contact with my dad so he could come and pick me up and my broken down motor bike up and take us home<><>we took a family vaction to london  where we got to see the famous wax museum, piccadilly circus, the thames, tower of london, the queen, buckingham palace, a very friendly englishman who spent the whole day showing us around probably because he was attracted to diane, my sister