I like to go places. When we were kids, we moved all the time. My dad was in the space industry, and in those days families of space industry people moved around almost as much as military families. When I was old enough to set out on my own, I just kept moving. I've lived all over the western USA and I've tramped far and wide. It's a lifestyle.
An impressive aircraft, no?
In my youth, I travelled with my family. My grandfather was a retiree from the railroad, so we could take trains to go see him. As I recall, it took three days to go from California to Wyoming. That was a big adventure for a little kid. One of my cousins was in a drum and bugle corps, the Troopers of Casper, Wyoming, and we went to just about all the rodeo arenas in the state where she performed. My dad would also take me fishing, so I saw a lot of the mountains. I was in the Boy Scouts, so we went to the mountains, shores and deserts with the scouts. My family used to vacation in Ensenada, Baja California when I was a young teen. We'd buy hand made fireworks and go deep sea fishing.
I went out into the world early, and didn't have the money for vacations. But I ended up seeing the north and northwestern states on a travelling sales crew. We knocked on doors in Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon before I found myself by the side of the road with a few coins in my pocket, a thousand miles from home. A kind soul let me sleep on the couch and I went to work washing dishes. As autumn rolled in, I left the coast for Portland, where I enrolled in the junior college. Travelling was economically out of the question for a while, but I eventually went broke and had to head south. I bought a junk car for $75 and headed back to California, where I eventualy got my two year degree from a little skool north of Sacramento. Then, a buddy of mine decided to move to South Carolina and asked me to ride shotgun in his 1953 Chevy pickup. How could a vagabond refuse?
Carl and I headed east, stopping in Denver to see my cousin, Mark. Mark told me that I could crash in his basement as long as I was looking for work, and I told him that I'd see him on the way back. Carl and I saw the World's Fair in Tennesee, then crossed the Great Smokey Mountains into Pickens, South Carolina. From there we hitchhiked to see our buddy George in Long Island, New York. When we left, Carl headed south to start his life in Pickens and I headed west to Denver on the Greyhound. Carl's mom paid for my ticket when she heard that I was planning on thumbing my way to Denver. She thought that I'd surely come to a violent end on the road, while I was looking forward to being able to say that I'd hitchhiked coast-to-coast.
I ended up living in Colorado for a long time, and doing some travelling using Colorado as my base of operations. I got a job working at a shop that fixed personal computers. This was back in 1982 when personal computers were brand new, and nobody knew how to maintain them. Things were going along okay, then my cousin hit a tree while skiing and died instantly. Soon after, I got laid off and went out to the coast. I was in Humbolt County, up in the northwest corner of California when business at the computer shop picked up enough that my old job opened back up. I headed back to Denver and got an apartment using money that I had stashed loading crop dusters the summer before.
We had access to a little Cessna airplane, and we'd fly out to go see events. For example, we went out to see the time Indy 500 and the Springfield Mile. I used to go out to California every now and then, too. We'd pile into my 1967 Volvo and take turns driving, about 24 hours each way to do a long weekend in Monterey or whatever. We'd see friends and family, but mostly we'd travel. We went to the World's Fair in Vancouver and saw the Calgary Olympics. One summer a friend hitchhiked through town on the way to the Rainbow Gathering in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and I went along through Wyoming, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. On the way back we took a more direct route through Nebraska and attended a family picknic with one of the folks who picked us up. Imagine this: A normal, midwestern family plays host to a bunch of longhairs driving across country in a converted icecream truck. It was a good time, really. I remember sitting at a picnic table under a huge cottonwood tree with about twenty people whose connection to me was through their daughter, who was taking classes at Denver University and picked us up hitchhiking. They treated us all like family.
While I was in Colorado I went back to school to get my four year degree. Employment was a challenge due to the poor state of the economy and the time that I need to spend in class. There just weren't any good paying jobs in Colorado at the time, and since I had to take classes during the day it was tough to keep my mortgage paid, let alone afford tuition and books. However, on the weekends we'd load up the old Landcruiser and head for the mountains. For the price of a tank of gas we could spend the weekend camping and exploring the old mining trails that were accessable using four wheel drive. Naturally, our dogs came with us.
I left Colorado when I finally got my four year degree and a job offer came in from Arizona. I started travelling as part of my job. For example, I went to San Francisco for a few days every two weeks to support a new program. I went to Austin, Detroit, Boston, Oregon and back to Colorado for training or design reviews. One day I was asked if my passport was up to date, because the marketing guys didn't have time to support the Paris Auto Show. I went, then flew home on the redeye, caught a few hours of sleep and stumbled into work just a few minutes late. Jet lag? You bet I was jet lagged. While I was in Paris I worked 12-14 hour days and then went out on the town, dragging back to my room at the Hilton long after midnight. I probably slept a dozon hours the entire time I was there. I also took a couple of trips to Germany, working on projects with folks like VDO and BMW. I attended a conference in Hawaii and spent my free time exploring and diving.
About this time I started scuba diving, which became a good way to see more places. I got used to stepping off a plane in a country where I'd never been, where people didn't speak english, and finding my way around. My company gave me a sabbatical, and I spent my time travelling to places I'd never seen, or places that I had gone to for work but didn't get enough time to explore. I went to the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque. I went to Victoria, Canada, and Miami, Florida. I went lots of places.
I've started spending time n Latin America and the Caribbean.
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