My name is Jerry Byron Lewis, born to parents Billy Sunday and Ida Lee in the year of our Lord, 1946. At the time of my birth, my parents lived on my grandparents ranch in Texas on the New Mexico state line. With the exception of a year sojourn in California, I have resided in Lubbock, Texas since I was a year old. I grew up with siblings Jan, David, and Jeff (deceased) during the idyllic, “Leave It To Beaver”, post WW II years. I am happily married to Lyn with with whom I share four daughters and a son, plus 12 grandchildren, and 3 great-grandchildren. I am blessed!
My work career has spanned 62 years thus far and began as a paperboy at the age of twelve. Beginning in high school, for three years I worked as an electrician with a six-month active-duty interlude in Uncle Sam’s Army Reserve after graduation. Following my dad’s career choice, and seeking more steady employment, I went to work for Ma Bell (Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., a subsidiary of AT&T). During my career there I held positions of Lineman, Station Installer, Maintenance Lineman, PBX Installer, Teletype Technician, and Computer Technician, in that order. In1983, Judge Green decided AT&T was a monopoly and the Bell companies were “spun off”. My Computer Tech job would remain with AT&T so I became a Customer Computer Engineer for the remainder of my total 34-year career. From 1992-99 I spent most of my time working all over west Texas including El Paso. After retiring from AT&T in 1999, I started my one-man remodeling company doing residential remodeling. I built a shop in my backyard, bought a van and lots of tools and the Lord has seen that I’ve been busy for the last 21 years. This past year I have started taking fewer and smaller jobs, in part to give me more free time to ride and travel.
My life of faith as a Christian began at an early age as my family “went to church” at least three times a week. I was baptized at twelve thinking that all my sinful tendencies would no longer be a problem. Those tendencies persisted and increased through my teenage years and led me away from the church and God. My faith and commitment revived in my early twenties, once I came to understand God’s grace, and the Lord has been busy “refining” me ever since. Of course the temptations are still around, but I’m a sinner saved by grace, thankful every day for Jesus.
My love for anything with two wheels began at an early age. My dad set the stage when he bought a Harley with a suicide clutch when I was six. I can still smell the hot oil as he took my brother and I for brief rides. I regularly climbed aboard my 24-inch bicycle with a sack lunch and headed down dirt roads on a new adventure. Then I would come home and fix my flats, something I still grudgingly do. I progressed to a J.C. Higgins 3-speed English racer with a generator and lights. This I soon “customized” by taking off the fenders, turning the handle bars upside-down and clipping playing cards to the spokes to make a cool motor sound. Sophomore year, without a car, I bought a very-used Allstate moped for sixty bucks and immediately punched holes in the muffler to make it louder. Of course, I soon graduated to a love for cool cars and tried earnestly to make mine the “coolest”. Married and with two kids at twenty-one, I bought a 125cc Benelli street bike, put some dirt-bike handle bars on it and fell in love with dirt bikes. I rode the Benelli until I snapped off the forks at the triple-tree while jumping a curb. From there it was a progression from Kawasaki rotary-valve two-strokes to Honda four-strokes. In 1981, I borrowed a Honda 750 and joined three friends for a trip to Canada and back and was hooked on road bikes. However, I always kept a dirt-bike, my last being a Honda XR-250R known as “Old Smokey” for obvious reasons. Getting long-in-the-tooth, and with fewer places to ride a true dirt-bike, I became interested in dual-sports as they were street-legal with a degree of off-road worthiness. In’08, I bought a 2008 Kawasaki KLR which was great fun. At this point, with the help of various riders and bloggers, I became proficient with Garmin MapSource routing software and “tracking” type GPS’s. This opened up a whole new world of motorcycle adventures for me. I now enjoy designing routes and flying them in Google Earth almost as much as riding them. My wife is very supportive of my adventures and even joins me on some road trips. She says I could have worse hobbies.
Well, if you read this far, you probably know more about me than you ever wanted to know. Hope you enjoy my web site.
“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” 1 John1:7
Jerry, Lyn, and Lee (1923-2020)
