Port Sonoma

too slow for the pros.
After boot camp, I went to Army Ranger Jump School in North Carolina, where I met my now ex-wife, Christie. Three months after we were married, my unit was shipped to East Africa to support a U.N. peacekeeping mission.
One night we were supposed to make a low-level jump into the desert which assured us a soft landing. Instead, we were dropped over a rocky hillside and I broke both of my ankles and hurt my back when I landed.
I was shipped back to the States where the doctors discovered that I had two cracked vertebrae. The Army decided I was a liability and gave me a medical discharge.
When I got out of the hospital, I received more bad news. My wife wanted a divorce. She had fallen in love with someone else: Simone, a woman who was the wife of another soldier. While they commiserated about their roles as Army wives they discovered a kinship they hadn’t felt with their husbands.
So, I came back to California alone, with a duffle bag and a bad back. I had few prospects for a job, so I enrolled at Port Sonoma JC. After I wrangled for months with the Veterans Administration, I received education benefits that paid for school and little else.
I was poor enough to qualify food stamps, which embarrassed me, and pissed me off. I had been injured fighting for my country and this was the best reward they could give me.
Soon after I enrolled, I ran into Mitch at the JC and he took me to a bar in Cotati, The Lazy Eye.