Crown Victoria pilot.

30 years ago today I was recovering from the amazing adventure of Philmont Scout Reservation, expedition #7-11-B5 at the tender age of 13.
Looking forward to hopefully being a leader with a trek when my son is old enough.

Well, let's see...

I had just finished a scholarship to study in Japan. Michigan and Shiga Prefecture have a sister state relationship and to celebrate its 20th anniversary, the Japan Center for Michigan Universities was started and we were the very first group.

We were in the town of Hikone and there had only ever been 11 foreigners who had been there, prior to the 28 of us showing up.

We started to call their reaction to us, "gaijin shock" which is just foreigner shock, but at the time it was surprising.

Although I had already studied a number of languages, it took me six months to actually be able to really hear it. It was tough, but it was a very good way to learn it well.

Just prior to going there, I had a scholarship to be a "Werk Student" at Bayer Chemical in Leverkusen, just outside of Cologne.

Wow, 30 years have flown by.

On this day 30 years ago I was waiting for August to come around, that was when I was scheduled to go into the US Navy's bootcamp. Sometimes it feels like yesterday, sometimes it's like a lifetime ago.

Thirty years ago, same house and wife. My son was in his 2nd year of college and doing fine. I was driving an 87 Bonneville.

Fifty years ago today, I was in Vietnam.

Workwise, doing Inspection work on road and bridge projects here in Virginia, probably on a paving job.

Married, 2 kids, and doing car restoration work as a hobby, shooting a lot more back then than I shoot today.

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:
I was at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in 1990. Had been selected as a member of the senior management project team for the first engineered refueling overhaul (ERO) of a 688 class submarine. Half million mandays of work were involved. Tons of huge PERT charts were generating as the roadmap showing the resultant work execution sequences (critical paths) and interrelationships with all the tasks involved. We spent almost 3 years planning and commenced work on the USS LOS ANGLES SSN-688 in late 1992. The planned 24 month ERO was completed ahead of schedule and under cost.

That is impressive.

A junior in high school in Seaford, Delaware

Must say I was in a bad place, couple years after a bad divorce. I was with my current wife, but not treating her very nicely. Thank God she put up with me during those times because things are way better now. Don't know how we made it through my shitheadedness, but we did, and I am forever thankful!!!!

Thirty years ago on this day celebrated my wife's 30th birthday in our first house with our two daughters, who were 16 months and one month old.

Today celebrated my wife's 60th birthday in our third house with 5 of our six kids, plus a son-in-law & our granddaughter.

I was working my ass of traveling three weeks out of every month wondering why I even had a condo. Got to travel all over the US and Canada including all but 3 states. Got to meet some great people. Made a lot of money. Got rewarded by my company for working my ass off. Then in a few years I got married and the all work no play just didn't fly anymore and priorities changed. My wife to be did take advantage of a lot of the traveling opportunities I had. "I'm stuck in Tahoe for a week, you want to come out for a long weekend?".

I was sitting in my backyard in a lawnchair under a shady oak tree, sipping a bottle of Corona with a portable radio.I It was a weekend I believe, and I was waiting for emergency radio news flashes, sirens, and the electricity to go out. It was the weekend of the expected Y2K computer failures, and I had spent the last year+ recoding computer application systems and databases to handle the new century. During our status meetings the boss asked if everyone was on schedule with their conversion efforts, and everyone always nodded their heads yes, even though I knew otherwise. It was the kind of organization where executives and managers wanted to hear the right words regardless of the truth, and cow chips rolled downhill pretty consistently with frequent unexpected terminations. Anyway, I had convinced myself that the US and the rest of civilization would hit the crapper with widespread Y2k failures. I went to bed that night wondering how nothing bad had happened and how all the software coverups would eventually come into the light. Well I never heard of any problems at all after that in the news, so I chalked it up to the fact that I wasn't as good a software programmer as I had thought.

Anyway that was 20 years ago not 30. Oops.

My wife's father passed away from cancer on the 24th so I was meeting her and family in Atlanta to support them making funeral arrangements and probably trying to referee the bullshit between my wife and normal siblings and her fucking asshole older brother (who totally abandoned his dad during his illness until the funeral...where he had to be escorted out of the funeral by the Stone Mountain police...the prick tried the same thing when my wife passed three + years ago) This was a stressful time I will sadly never forget ...that's where I was 30 years ago...but things are what they are...good or bad

Mrs df and I were in a bad place.

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
Mrs df and I were in a bad place.

I’m sorry, glad you guys worked it out.

/drift

quote:

Originally posted by MikeinNC:

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
Mrs df and I were in a bad place.

I’m sorry, glad you guys worked it out.

/drift

Thank you, brother. I left the wrong impression. Mrs DF and I were in a bad place together. Our hardship was not our marriage. That is what got us through. We did it together as a team. I will always love her for that.

Summer between 2nd and 3rd grade in beautiful Odessa, TX. Probably playing Nintendo or riding my bike.

July 25,1990 I was going back and forth from my house in Garden Grove to Carson, taking the California Bar Exam.

30 years ago, USAF newly married to my USAF wife and our squadron was mobilizing for a two week field deployment. At this point, we had been re-called and were probably processing our equipment for airlift & parking the trucks in formation, convoy to Venice, Fl where we did our command/control ops for 1 1/2 weeks. (Stationed at Homestead AFB, Fl)

Back to garrison in early August, set-up, tear down again & immediate departure to Saudi for Desert Shield.

Struggling with two options...

1) Continue in the construction business I had been in with Dad since I could walk and ~20 years full time after High School...
or
2) Find a new career.

My Dad wanted to retire and hand 100% of the business to me. I knew he couldn't just walk away from a successful business that he built from scratch after returning from WWII and he had no hobbies... His work was his life... AND, I am not a people person and I knew I wouldn't be happy, or good at, being the front for the business. A man has got to know his limitations!

I ultimately moved on. As expected Dad never retired. No more home building but he still kept 2 or 3 employees doing small jobs, him working every day until just 6 months before his death in 2014 at age 88.

I found the Pre Press end of the commercial printing industry and it suited me extremely well. Thats when I discovered "Holiday" and "Vacation" pay, company paid Medical insurance and Retirement funds! Who knew? But best of all I could walk away at the end of each work day and not worry about what had to be done tomorrow until tomorrow.