It was my 19TH Christmas on Earth back in 1985 – and my first away from home and away from my family. I was newly stationed in the USAF in the United Kingdom by 6½ weeks, so there was no chance at all that I could take leave and return back home stateside for the holidays.
While I have vivid memories of my two years spent living, working, and playing in the U.K. I don’t remember much from that Christmas of 1985 away from my loved ones. I don’t remember if I was invited out to a coworker’s home, or if I stayed at the dorm and walked to the chow hall for a very special dinner. It was obviously a cold and forgettable holiday season in my life back then.
Here’s a song that I actually do remember from that Christmas, for it was the coveted Christmas # 1 smash on the radio all across the British Isles. It’s from one of the biggest-selling male artists in British music history. He’s Shakin’ (‘Shaky’) Stevens, and THIS is “Merry Christmas Everyone” !
– Let’s get spontaneous.
– It’s how these ‘Mini Thoughts’ roll.
– I wouldn’t think of doing it any other way.
– So this past Tuesday night I gave my first speech at Toastmasters.
– I essentially talked about myself for 6+ minutes.
– I got rave reviews.
– Is this the same Chris that used to be terrified of speaking in public ?
– Is this the same shy guy who had no friends all throughout high school ?
– Actually it’s not the same Chris.
– That Chris from yesteryear was from a different miserable life.
– This is the new and improved Chris that was reborn some 40 months ago.
– I’ve got a crammed and jammed weekend planned.
– I’ll probably run out of time before it’s all said and done.
– I need to work on my outgoing Christmas cards.
– I need to organize nearly 7 years of paperwork regarding my new home.
– This will be a stay-at-home-and-confine-myself-to-my-living-room weekend.
– Well except for Sunday morning when I’ll be at Life Pointe Church.
– I’m hosting the 9 AM service, and I dig that !
– Our Kids’ Life Kids are putting on a show for Christmas.
– It’s hard to believe that Christmas Eve is just two weeks from today.
– It’s even harder to believe that 2010 begins three weeks from tonight.
– We actually have a cold front slowly approaching us from Central Florida.
– It should reach us early tomorrow morning – and then stall out.
– Afternoon temperatures may be up to 10° cooler tomorrow – in the upper-70s.
– But the cooler air will only last for a single day.
– If you’re looking for much colder air then I’ve got a treat for you !
– It’s coming next weekend – a major continental shift in the jet stream.
– We may be talking about temperatures of 25 to 35 degrees colder than now.
– You have been warned – to break out your Christmas sweaters !
– Here on the blog Christmas starts this Saturday night on the ‘Retro’.
– I’ve also got a Disco smash for you tomorrow night from a Pointer Sister.
– Be sure not to miss another ‘Moldie-Oldie Music Weekend’.
– You won’t regret it pal.
Starting next Saturday night and continuing through the remainder of December it’ll be a very ‘Retro’ Christmas with three consecutive Christmas hits in a row from Shakin’ Stevens, Band Aid, and José Feliciano. Be sure to not miss the festivity of that as we celebrate the reason for the season.
This week on the ‘Retro’ I’m flashing back a decade ago to 1999 for some cool European trance music. It’s from German DJ / Producer André Tanneberger – better known to his fans worldwide (including myself) as simply ‘ATB‘. In this 1999 European pop and dance smash featuring female vocalist Yolanda Rivera he simply wants us to keep on going – “Don’t Stop”. This song actually enjoyed later success on South Florida radio via the former PARTY-93.1 during August, September, and October 2002. That’s when I discovered it, and danced to it at the clubs in and around Orlando Florida. “DON’T … STOP“:
It’s time for the informal debriefing of my recent long road trip. Let’s roll:
1. First I’ve got some raw stats – 1,381.3 miles going from Homestead Florida to Allen Texas – and an unbelievably close 1,383.4 miles going from Allen Texas to Homestead Florida. That’s a difference of only 2.1 miles – or a mere 0.15%. That’s ridiculously close for both legs of the longest road trip of my lifetime. Here’s another crazy fact. I drove 0.0 miles from the moment that I arrived in Allen Texas on a Saturday afternoon until the moment that I departed the following Saturday morning. I meant to drive around and explore the local area, but I never got around to doing so. My brother drove us everywhere that we went, and I was happy with that. He has far more experience driving amongst the crazy North Texas drivers. He is one !
2. I generally drive an overall average of about 21 miles per day – or close to 7,750 miles per year. (It’s great to live and work within 7½ miles of each other.) I amassed a grand total of 2,764.7 miles on this road trip from start to finish – or about 132 days worth of driving (nearly 4½ months) in a mere 4 days (2 days over and 2 days back). My car’s already due for its next routine 3-month preventive maintenance just a little more than 3 weeks after its last one !
3. There were a lot of horrifying traffic experiences along the way to (and especially) returning back from Texas. It was truly a miracle from up above over and over again that I did not get hit by any other vehicles big and small by all of the various crazy lunatic drivers that were all around me. I knew that I was driving some busy highways on the busiest travel days of the year, but I always thought that the airports were busy more so than the highways. This past Sunday I-75 from I-10 to Florida’s Turnpike was so thick and congested that traffic occasionally came to a grinding halt at times – 0 MPH. The same was true over much of the entire length of Florida’s Turnpike all the way down to the Broward / Miami-Dade County line. Ironically the Miami-Dade County portion of the Turnpike southbound was the most peaceful portion of my trek as I hit the final home stretch en route to my home sweet Homestead.
4. One horrific moment that’s still rather clear in my mind occurred high atop the mighty Mississippi River Bridge on I-10 on the eastbound approach into Baton Rouge Louisiana. It is apparently the highest bridge over the entire length of the river, and I believe it ! I was in the middle lane which came to a grinding halt (due to thick heavy traffic at the time); however, both of the other lanes were still moving slowly. As I was stuck in my middle lane for what seemed like forever at the time (but was surely for less than a minute) I could actually feel the bridge sway back-and-forth with the movement of the other vehicles. This frightened me to bits and pieces, and I decided that the best thing to do at that precise point in time and space was to grip my steering wheel harder than I ever had previously. I suppose that during that short ordeal it made me feel just a little bit more secure (for no logical reason whatsoever).
Mississippi River Bridge - I-10 - Baton Rouge Louisiana
5. Would I do it all over again ? Of course I would ! Before I embarked on this longest road trip ever I figured that once I got this out of my system that I wouldn’t want to do it again. That was then, but this is now. I want to do it again. I may plan my travel days a bit differently next time so as to minimize the horrific traffic experiences along the way. I really enjoyed the freedom of being able to take whatever I felt like taking on this road trip without any of the various space, weight, and security limitations that exist via flying. I made light of some of the horrific traffic experiences along the way, but there were plenty of peaceful, quiet, and uneventful stretches of this road trip as well. Those experiences made it all worth it, and I’m looking forward to doing it all over again – perhaps as soon as 5 months from now !
CountUp 