Category: Travel

Travel

Monday Night Countdown

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date November 24, 2008

I’ve never done it, but if I did it I would drive through 5 U.S. states to get from South Florida (south of Miami) to North Texas (north of Dallas). It would be over 1,400 miles of Interstate highway shenanigans. Maybe some year I’ll do it. But for now I’ll just blog about doing it – and the 5 states I’d travel through to get there.

5. Florida – More than half of the 1,400-mile excursion would be from Homestead to Pensacola. That’s about 12 hours of driving along Florida’s Turnpike, I-75, and I-10 just to get out of Florida. I think that reaching the Alabama state line would be cause for celebration – and time to call it a night at a nice hotel just across the border.

4. Alabama – It’s where it all started for me. I was born in Selma on the 05TH of June in 1967. There was once an Air Force Base in Selma – Craig. The USAF isn’t there anymore, but it’s still operational as a local-use airport. Alabama has it all – beaches along the Gulf Of Mexico, big cities dotting the state, and the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains to the northeast.

3. Mississippi – I’ve been to Keesler Air Force Base (near Biloxi on the Gulf Of Mexico), and I’ve driven along I-10 along the south coast of Mississippi. That’s pretty much my entire life history of the great state of Mississippi (in 1994 and 2004 respectively).

2. Louisiana – I’ve been there once before in my entire life – during the Summer of 2004. I spent a week in New Orleans on U.S. Government business a year before Hurricane Katrina wrecked her havoc on the region. Guess what ? I’m going back in about 2½-months. This time I’m flying there instead of driving. I’m taking a Carnival cruise out of New Orleans straight to Mexico.

1. Texas – It’s too hot and dry here in the Summer. It’s too cold and dry here in the Winter. They have long droughts here. They have tornadoes here. They have blizzards and ice storms here. I couldn’t live here. I adore humidity. My skins demands moisture. My brother and his wife live within the northern suburbs of Dallas. I don’t like this part of Texas. Actually there’s no part of Texas that I really like a lot. I’ve been to San Antonio a bunch of times over the past 23+ years – most recently this past Summer. That’s a fun place to visit on vacation. I don’t think that I could live there either. I belong on the U.S. East Coast. I need to be within eyesight of the Atlantic Ocean. That’s my ocean. That’s where I rock and roll.

Saturday Night Retro

TODAY I flew on an airplane from Fort-Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. It was the umpteenth time that I flew anywhere. (I actually don’t keep track of all of my airline flights via an EXCEL spreadsheet.) I’ve lost track of my flying over the past 23½ years. I’ve flown first class once or twice (wasn’t too impressed), and I’ve flown most of the major airlines that are still in business today. Flying is not as fun as it used to be (prior to September 11TH 2001). This morning I left my home at precisely 6:30 AM to get to the off-site parking area at the airport by 7:30 AM to get to the terminal by 7:45 AM to check-in, get through security, and get to my gate prior to boarding at 9 AM and departure from the gate at 9:30 AM. And then there’s the 3-hour flight. It basically took longer to get from my home in Homestead to the aircraft at the airport than it did to actually fly that aircraft more than halfway across the country !

Check out this classic 60-second television commercial for the legendary Eastern Airlines of the way things used to be. Compare our baggage handlers of today with those depicted from the 1970s.

Before I turned 18-years-old and moved away from home to join the circus USAF I recall flying only twice in my life – twice to and from Bermuda on summertime vacations as a little kid during the mid-1970s. I recall Bermuda to be a fun little place out in the middle of the Atlantic – sort of a hybrid between a Caribbean nation further south and the United Kingdom further east. I wish to go back there one of these years to check it out all over again for the first time in over 30 years.

And now Ladies And Gentlemen – IT’S GO-GO TIME ! Let’s kick it old school !

History Life Music Travel

Saturday Night Retro

The month of November is chock-full of anniversaries for me. 28 years ago in 1980 me and my family moved from one side of Washington D.C. (Maryland) to the other side (Virginia). Our lives changed for the better on the opposite side of the Potomac River. 23 years ago in 1985 I moved out of the country for the first time ever courtesy of the USAF. That anniversary was actually last weekend. I flew from D.C. to London England, and then I took British Rail westward from London to Swindon. I took a taxi from Swindon to my new home at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. I did all of that just 5 months removed from my 18TH birthday.

I lived in the U.K. for some 105 fun-filled weeks. In fact this weekend is the 21ST anniversary of my departure from the U.K. – and U.S. homecoming. I would eventually arrive at – Homestead Florida !

I haven’t been back to the U.K. ever since I left, but you can bet that I will return some day for a visit. I enjoyed the time of my young life for two years over there, and I surely did ‘Live It Up’.

Here’s Australian super group Mental As Anything. They’ve been together for the past 32 years, and in 1985, 1986, and 1987 they scored the biggest worldwide pop smash of their entire career with this uplifting track that you may just remember from the ‘Crocodile Dundee’ movie. Check it out:

Holidays Travel

Saturday Morning Shenanigans

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date November 15, 2008

Pinch-hitting this morning for ‘The Major’s Walk-A-Thon’ – which has been postponed until a later date (possibly during Thanksgiving Week in Allen Texas) – it’s the return of the ‘Saturday Morning Shenanigans’.

Recently (during the week leading up to the 4TH Of July) me and my brother went to San Antonio Texas for 4 days and 3 nights. He actually went there on business, and I tagged along for fun. While he was working for his company at an expo at the Convention Center I was hanging out on the River Walk. Back on the 2ND of July I posted a special on-location edition of ‘The Major’s Walk-A-Thon’ from the River Walk. It was a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to returning there soon.

We had an interesting southward view from our off-the-River-Walk hotel room. Straight out in the background was the 750-foot Tower Of The Americas. It was actually dwarfed by a much shorter hotel that was obviously closer to our hotel than the tower. Oh yeah – there was one other major object within our view from our hotel room – the mother of all Denny’s signs that was so MASSIVE and so bright (at night) that we could have used its light by itself to read a book from inside our room. It instantly became the running gag of our entire vacation there. My brother recalled a classic 1996 episode of ‘Seinfeld’ entitled ‘The Chicken Roaster’ in which Kramer is bothered by a MASSIVE red neon Kenny Rogers Roasters sign that beams directly into his apartment (and of course hijinks ensue).