Days are Numbers (The Traveler) in General

The traveler is always leaving town
He never has the time to turn around
And if the road he’s taken isn’t leading anywhere
He seems to be completely unaware…

(Long one)
It’s been a few years now since I lived that life.

For years I was always leaving home. And for a very large portion of my adult life the only time I ever came home was on the way to or on the way back from someplace overseas.

Italy, Turkey, Saudi Arabia three times. Enroute to a ship, or enroute to an Air Force Base as an Expeditionary naval officer.

This song always haunted me. I first heard it when I was 22 - 1984.

It has taken me till now, 62 closing on 63 to understand the implications.

Days truly are numbers. And I’ve taken to counting them.

My boss beat us all out of the office. Next is Jerry. Then me and Dave in August. Jacob is most likely leaving at the same time. That leaves Andrew.

He is in the unenviable position of having to rebuild a team. The truth is the design and engineering floors hate us. They think we sit in our office finding ways to screw them over. But we’re stuck in this position where we must do the companies bidding and schedule them very aggressively. We have a competitor who has an unfair advantage. They lease the 1000 or so acres their facility sits on from the state of Mississippi for a dollar a year.

The state of Mississippi also gives them a lot of tax advantages. And they are a right-to-work state, which unburdens them of the vagaries of union horseshit.

Our company is mostly situated on the banks of the Kennebec River within the confines of a small city that really doesn’t want our company there.

So, they throw every possible roadblock up to every potential ability to grow for our company. Plus, we are a union shop.

We have 5 unions. Like my father, I am not a fan of unions, because while Once Upon a time they served a purpose now they are just a scam.

The number of examples I could give you could go on for pages.

But not really the reason I started this entry

I started this entry because I’m waiting for my steak just off the grill to settle down.

And I have been remiss for a very long time in keeping up with my journaling. I often think that I’m going to regret not having written every day, because a journal is a handy place to see what you were thinking on a given day.

The traveler is always leaving home
The only kind of life he’s ever known
When every moment seems to be a race against the time
There’s always one more mountain left to climb…

So back to the original subject days are numbers.

I never understood why I felt the need to keep moving. When I was in the Navy, I volunteered for freaking everything. Sometimes it turned out to be a good deal, like Vicenza Italy, and sometimes it turned out to be not such a great deal like Prince Sultan air base Saudi Arabia.

Or the time my crew got stuck in Cherry Point NC because we were the spare jet for a squadron going to Aviano Italy. Then a comedy of errors where our jet just kept breaking down all the way home.

Unlike the Navy, the Marine Corps starts their jets from the right side. Which meant I was getting the startup signal from the plane captain before the “go” jets (we were the spare) had started. It turns out one of The Jets had gone down and they needed to take our jet.

So, we unmanned the aircraft letting the squadron crew man up. Then we went back to the BOQ and went back to sleep. It was 2:00 in the morning

Our host marine squadron fixed the jet, and we were on our way. We encountered very bad weather and route back to the West Coast. And ended up at Campbell army airfield. In a driving thunderstorm. With standing water on the runway.

Unbeknownst to us, we encountered what is known as “reverted rubber hydroplaning”.
That means we we inadvertently devulcanized the rubber of our main tires. Looking at them you would never know there was anything wrong.

When we finally managed to make it out of Kentucky(the jet wouldn’t take gas, which required phone calls back to Whidbey to get mechanics to talk us through jumping safety circuits to close a valve blah blah blah.)

Our next stop was tinker Air Force Base Oklahoma where we topped off our gas. Then we proceeded to Cannon Air Force Base New Mexico. We spent the night there while the mission commander called the Commodore to get further instructions about how we were supposed to proceed home.

We were directed to fly to NAS Fallon in northern Nevada, because there was a squadron doing workups there and if we had any further maintenance problems we could wait while they fixed our jet.

As we planned our next leg, we decided that Fallon was a bad idea because the weather was really awful in that part of the world, so we opted to go to Nellis Air Force Base in Southern Nevada (Las Vegas.)

We landed uneventfully but I noticed that as we taxied to the transit line, the taxiway seemed particularly rough.

As we pulled into the transit line the Air Force crew chief marshalling us into parking was shaking his head. After we shut down and unmanned the aircraft, we did our post flight and found the main mounts had no tread. We had left our tires all the way along the taxiway.

This turned into an ordeal of trying to find someplace to spend the night while we waited for maintenance to come from Whidbey Island Washington. Of course the BOQ at Nellis was full so they put us up downtown, not to be confused with the strip in Las Vegas, rather the sort of crappy part of Las Vegas. Three days later, with new tires, we launched.

And lo and behold our jet wouldn’t hold cabin pressurization. Now if this had happened in Florida it wouldn’t be a big deal because you could stay below 10,000 feet. But we’re in Las Vegas and needed to get over the Sierra Nevada some of which has 14,000 foot peaks.

So back to Nellis we go. And proceed to wait for a maintenance crew to return to figure out what is wrong with our jet.

Five days later we finally made it home. And just before we’re shutting down, I do what my previous squadron had always required that we raise the ejection seat all the way to the top to make it easier for the maintenance personnel to do their turn around inspections. As I did that I also locked part of my torso harness under the seat so when the pilot shut the power off I was effectively trapped sitting in a safe ejection seat in a jet with no power. It took them 1/2 an hour to find a power unit to put power back on the jet so I could lower my seat and untrap my torso harness from the ejection seat.

The mission commander meanwhile was having a fiery debrief with the Commodore.

I don’t know why that story just popped into my head especially since I was mostly considering the course of my life.

But that’s just one example of a thousand stories I could tell.

The traveler awaits the morning tide
He doesn’t know what’s on the other side
But something deep inside of him keeps telling him to go
He hasn’t found a reason to say no…

I always felt the need to go. It could be cultural, or it could be genetic. My father and all his brothers were military. Two of my uncles spent four tours in Vietnam.

It’s only realizing that in June it will have been 20 years since I retired from the Navy.

Part of me still aches for that life. But I also realize there’s no way I could do it now.

The traveler is only passing through
He cannot understand your point of view
Abandoning reality, unsure of what he’ll find
The traveler in me is close behind

I don’t have nearly the stamina I had 20 years ago let alone 40 years ago.

So the decision to retire did not come lightly. I recognize that my father, who is only 22 years older than I am, is starting to slip. Which most likely means that in 22 years I will be slipping.

So to quote Morgan Freeman’s characters great line from the Shawshank redemption:

“Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

I’m now contemplating traveling the country a bit via train. My work buddy Jerry and I talked quite extensively about that. He and his wife have been all over the country on a train. Of course he’s been in the company for 20 plus years and has an almost infinite amount of PTO.

But once retired, I too will have an infinite amount of PTO. I won’t be getting paid quite as well, but time will no longer be a limiting factor of where I can go and when I can go there.

On a side, on her way out the door my boss gave me my eval for the year. In the process I got the highest possible raise that the company can give. Which makes me think I should stick around, but these are numbers. I don’t know how much time I’ve got left and I’ve gotta make the most of it.

The traveler is always leaving town
He never has the time to turn around
And if the road he’s taken isn’t leading anywhere
He seems to be completely unaware
The traveler is always leaving home
The only kind of life he’s ever known
When every moment seems to be a race against the time
There’s always one more mountain left to climb
Days are numbers (days)
Watch the stars (are numbers)
We can only see so far
Someday
You’ll know where you are (know where you, know where you are)
Remember, days are numbers (days)
Count the stars (are numbers)
We can only go so far
One day
You’ll know where you are (know where you, know where you are)
The traveler awaits the morning tide
He doesn’t know what’s on the other side
But something deep inside of him keeps telling him to go
He hasn’t found a reason to say no
The traveler is only passing through
He cannot understand your point of view
Abandoning reality, unsure of what he’ll find
The traveler in me is close behind
Days are numbers (days)
Watch the stars (are numbers)
We can only see so far
Someday
You’ll know where you are (know where you, know where you are)
Remember, days are numbers (days)
Count the stars (are numbers)
We can only go so far
One day
You’ll know where you are (know where you, know where you are)
Remember, days are numbers (days)
Watch the stars (are numbers)
We can only see so far
Someday
You’ll know where you are (know where you, know where you are)
Songwriters: Alan Parsons, Eric Norman Woolfson. (Alan Parsons Project)