Read the Zapfic serial #GHAWG on LeoThreads to follow the transformation of a courier into a Harley-riding tool of God.
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Cover image is a screen capture of LeoThreads edited with MS Paint
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TL;DR
What is GHAWG?
Zapfic Entries 92-98
9️⃣2️⃣ 2023-June-08 00:11:09
9️⃣3️⃣ 2023-June-09 00:12:42
9️⃣4️⃣ 2023-June-10 12:22:27
9️⃣5️⃣ 2023-June-11 00:04:45
9️⃣6️⃣ 2023-June-12 10:27:06
9️⃣7️⃣ 2023-June-13 00:13:30
9️⃣8️⃣ 2023-June-14 00:29:12
9️⃣8️⃣🅰️ 2023-March-29 03:46:57 -- BONUS ENTRY
Story Arc So Far
Next Week
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What Is GHAWG?
#GHAWG is short for "God's Hog: A Watchful Guardian." This fictional story tells how David Guardia, a courier and business owner from Bayonne, New Jersey, US moved into the next phase of his life after spending the final ten years of his ailing father's life helping him.
More details can be found in the first post of this weekly recap.
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Zapfic Entries 92-98
9️⃣2️⃣ 2023-June-08 00:11:09
"What's the message?" Geraldo asked.
"Stay tuned," I answered with a wink.
"That's it, patient needs to move!"
shouted a nurse. As I was being moved
another patient touched me, then an
electric sensation rushed through me.
🏍️ Geraldo was as much a television personality as he was a journalist, so he shouldn't have been surprised by the tease for the story David Guardia had to tell. Perhaps he's not used to being on the receiving end of those teases.
🏍️ David Guardia knows that he's a new man, a new person, only he still doesn't realize the magnitude of his transformation. This will become apparent shortly.
9️⃣3️⃣ 2023-June-09 00:12:42
I looked around, and I saw the patient who had touched me. He was an older gentleman bound to a wheelchair. Only this time, he was on his feet gently dancing The Twist. We looked at each other, and he gave me two thumbs up. 👍👍
🏍️ The original zapfic entry included the emoji pairing 👍👍 in it.
🏍️ It was the older gentleman who caused David Guardia to feel the sensation of electricity running through his body. It's a callback to one of accounts of The Lord speaking to a crowd of people only to feel energy leave Him because someone had touched Him. This person believed so strongly in the healing power of The Lord that just touching His garments was enough to heal him of whatever affliction or ailment he had. While David Guardia doesn't come close to being like The Lord, he himself had been transformed into a miraculous figure.
9️⃣4️⃣ 2023-June-10 12:22:27
The casts came off, and I washed up. My clothes from that life-changing night were singed from the explosion. Also intact was the envelope Manny Rey handed me to deliver to Harry Hoqualogue. What it says, I don't need to know.
🏍️ With his hospital stay over, David Guardia was more than ready to get back on the road to Sturgis. At that moment he would have had to walk, but he would deal with that later. He was just happy to be free from casts and tubes and drips.
🏍️ Just as we don't expect postal carriers to snoop through our mail, David Guardia wasn't in the habit of snooping through his customers' and clients' messages and packages.
9️⃣5️⃣ 2023-June-11 00:04:45
Back in my attire, including thick safety-yellow vest, I went to check out. After paying my hospital bill, I was handed a message to go to the given address in Davenport. A few minutes after receiving the message, I took a taxi.
🏍️ The thick safety-yellow vest-- actually a work coat whose sleeves were detachable-- had been part of David Guardia's "uniform" as a courier for many years. He had adopted it as his own personal uniform and fashion. If Late Steve Jobs had his jeans and turtleneck sweater for his look and Kevin O'Leary had his black suit with black tie for his look, why couldn't David have his own look?
🏍️ Taxi service isn't as readily available in eastern Iowa as it is in Manhattan, but one area were they could be found was near hospitals. While many people these days would have called for Uber or Lyft, that wasn't David Guardia's style or way of doing things. After all, until his fateful accident, he did all his travel by motorcycle.
9️⃣6️⃣ 2023-June-12 10:27:06
The taxi driver took me to a Harley-Davidson
dealership. Reserved for me was black trike
with orange and white accents. With the trike
was this message:
Enjoy your new Big Wheel
-- Jacob Angel
I was touched by this gift.
🏍️ David Guardia first mentioned his Big Wheel in zapfic entry #3.
🏍️ When the topic comes up again in zapfic entry #30, he was sharing his tale with an older gentleman he met in Cleveland, Ohio, US. At the time I didn't have a name for this older gentleman. Sometime later I came up with the name "Jacob Angel" for this gentleman, but it would be a while before I could use it.
🏍️ In 1987, the Irish supergroup U2 released what many fans consider to be its magnum opus album, The Joshua Tree. One of the songs from this album did well enough to be included in the 1988 combination live concert and documentary album Rattle and Hum: "Bullet the Blue Sky". Early in the song can be found the lyrics "Jacob wrestled the angel / and the angel was overcome"; this itself is a callback to one of the stories from the Book of Genesis in The Bible.
9️⃣7️⃣ 2023-June-13 00:13:30
Once I got my bearings, I found a bar where I could have a bottle of Magner's hard cider. As I was nursing the Magner's I heard a familiar song, only the voice was feminine. "Her version is better than Sinatra's," said a woman.
🏍️ Beer is alcohol made from wheat and hops. Cider is alcohol made from fruit, usually apples. A leading domestic hard cider in the United States is Angry Orchard, and a leading imported hard cider is Magner's from Ireland. Hard cider maintains the sweetness of the fruit, so it is very easy to drink a glass or bottle of hard cider very quickly.
🏍️ The lst time the name Sinatra is mentioned is zapfic entry #49, when David Guardia gets slugged in the face by a bar patron who was not a fan of the legendary singer from Hoboken, New Jersey, US. This is when he and Manny Rey spent a bit of time in Defiance, Ohio, US.
9️⃣8️⃣ 2023-June-14 00:29:12
"Now I'm a believer," I said as I turned
toward her. To my surprise, she's the
very tall redhead I had seen at the bar
in Defiance, Ohio.
"It was a shame you couldn't hear
the song back there."
It was a shame I got slugged."
🏍️ "Now I'm a Believer" is the title of the 1967 song composed by Neil Diamond and sung by lead vocalist of The Monkees, Micky Dolenz.
🏍️ "Fly Me to the Moon" had been performed by many musical artists and in many musical styles. Many people, even within Generation X, are familiar with the version sung by Frank Sinatra. However, one version more familiar with Generation Y (Millenials) and Generation Z was used as the closing theme for episodes of the ground-breaking 1996 anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion; this is the version which found its way into #GHAWG.
🏍️ I had heard the 1996 edition of "Fly Me to the Moon" decades before I heard the version performed by Frank Sinatra. The Sinatra version is nothing like how I had imagined it; not in style and not in tone. For me, the 1996 edition of the song is the gold standard among all editions ever performed.
9️⃣8️⃣🅰️ 2023-March-29 03:46:57 -- BONUS ENTRY
Rhonda parked her Harley-Davidson near the entrance before she entered the diner. As she was being led to her booth the other diners noticed three things: she was taller than many men; she had flowing red hair; and her face had freckles.
🏍️ Shortly after I started writing the daily zapfic serial #GHAWG I published an entry for the weekly Zapfic Monday contest at the Freewriters community. The prompt to be answered with zapfic was "freckles," and I decided to keep with the Harley-Davidson theme and write about a female biker. I wasn't sure how I would incorporate her into #GHAWG, but eventually I found a way to do so. Although #GHAWG is centered around David Guardia, I want to make better use of her as the story rolls on.
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Story Arc So Far
David Guardia finally gets to leave the hospital in LeClaire, Iowa, US, but not before people witness the power of his transformation from physical wreck to good-as-new human being. Elements from earlier in the daily zapfic serial begin to take on a new meaning, including the Big Wheel. As he spends time in Davenport, Iowa, US, he encounters a vaguely familiar face from his recent past.
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Next Week
Zapfic Entries 99-105 see David Guardia learn more about the very tall redhead he first noticed in Defiance, Ohio and encounters in Davenport, Iowa.
GHAWG itself continues at LeoThreads, where Act 4 sees David Guardia, his crew, and The Mongols led by Harry Hoquealogue, do some sight-seeing close to Sturgis before they ride through Portland, Oregon, US. Within 200 miles they ride past Mount Rushmore in South Dakota before entering Wyoming to see Devils Tower in the northeast and Yellowstone National Park in the northwest.
Catch the latest zapfic entries for GHAWG at LeoThreads. Get caught up with GHAWG with these weekly summaries at LeoFinance and at the Scholar and Scribe community.
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GHAWG Navigation
To find other weekly summary posts such as this one-- or to read the serial without annotated commentary-- use the GHAWG Navigation threadstorm at LeoThreads. Within LeoThreads, hashtag #GHAWGnav brings up the navigation.