Braker, Braker

Breako, breako hola CQ! (Yes, I am a Spanish speaking CBer) -- The other day I read a post by Carol of "The Turning Point". Carol is one of my blogging friends and she wrote a post about a trip she and her husband took to go see the site for their new home. In this post she mentioned that after listening to some of their CD while on the road they decided to turn on their CB radio and listen in.

One of our many hobbies that "mi chica" and I have had during our years was to talk on the CB radio. Before I became a CBer I didn't realize that there were clubs all over the country and that CBers are some of the most giving and welcoming people on this planet.

We joined our first club "Vigilantes del Aire" and got hooked instantly. In the L.A. area alone there were over 50 clubs and the biggest thing for a club was it's annual fund raiser party. "Mi chica" and I soon started going to the parties for the clubs in Southern and Northern California and really enjoyed meeting new people plus we loved to dance so they didn't have to twist our arms for us to go.

We must have attended over 100 parties during the six years we were into the CBs, but when we attended parties outside of L.A. and had to spend the night only the first two times we checked into a hotel to stay the night.

This one weekend we were going to a gathering in Salinas, California which was a good seven hours away from Hacienda Heights were we lived. We would talk to lots of people on the CB while driving and in many cases people asked us to stop so they could meet us. We had been driving all night and as we neared the town of King City we started talking to members of a local club, when we told them we were going to Salinas they said to stop and meet them, they said we could rest for a while and then later on we could all caravan as they were also going to attend.

We said we needed to get there so we could find a hotel or motel, since this are little towns sometimes hotels are hard to find and driving to the nearest time was necessary. They said that would not be necessary, they guided us to their house and to our surprise when we got there they had started cooking carne asada and menudo for us.

Keep in mind we had never met these people in our lives and we were a group of about 12-people on three cars driving together from L.A. After the introductions and the great food they divided us by families and took us to three different houses. They gave us a room showed us the restroom and shower, told us make ourselves at home and left to the other house to keep partying while they left us strangers in the sanctity of their home unattended.

I looked at my wife and just said, I guess there is hope yet in this world. Living in L.A. we would have never trusted a stranger in our house but since that weekend our lives changed, we learned to trust people more and that gave me a good feeling. There is a bond amongst CBers that is genuinely strong.

During the next five years of being hard core CBers we never again paid for a room or food while traveling, as long as we had a CB we would always find a place to stay the night. We traveled from Ensenda to Sacramento, and twice went all the way to Texas just to attend a CBer gathering.

Our radios were very potent and we were not liked very much by local CBers that only used 40 channels because we would filtrate into their radios very easily and our lingo which was mostly codes was hard for them to understand.

I joined a club when I moved to Phoenix and stayed active for another year and then we decided to take a rest from the fast pace life of being a CBer. 15 years later and we are still on hiatus, but my CB radio awaits in a box in my garage to be mounted in one of our vehicles so that we can once again say, breaker, breaker CQ.

If you read the whole post then answer this question for me.

Guess what my CB handle was?