My son Chris

 In December of last year, Angie and I were sitting on the porch at a cabin in N. Georgia and she told me that she wanted to fly somewhere with me. Chris has been telling me that we needed to come to Colorado sometime to see his new house. So I texted him to see if he was going to be available in February; after saying that he was, it was a matter of 30 minutes later, we had finalized plans. After we had the plans, Chris asked me if there was anything that we would like to do while we were there. I asked him if we could go to a couple different restaurants, he asked about a couple tours, and I asked if he could show us the United Training Center where he works. After looking into it, he told us that we could go to the training center, we were able to get to one of the places to eat, and he had a couple other places lined up. 

Angie and I had an interesting trip to Colorado. We flew out of Savannah on Thursday afternoon, heading to Charlotte. We arrived late and had to run from the far end of one concourse to the far end of another. If you know anything about Angie and I, you know that neither of us is in peak physical condition. I took the lead with Angie right behind me, and we made it to the gate just before boarding started. The flight out of Charlotte was uneventful, and when we cleared the gate, I called Chris, and he told me exactly where I needed to go. There were a few more calls involved, but not due to issues we were having. We got to where he said to meet, and here he came, rolling up in his cool truck. 

Chris' girlfriend, who is also a pilot for United, was able to get the time off, and she also flew in for the time that we were going to be in town. Erica is a 757 pilot; she is really smart and hilarious. She talks with Angie and me like we're family, and she and Chris get along so well. We first met Erica when Angie and I drove to Colorado a couple years ago; we knew then that she was something special. 

On our first morning, Chris told us that he was going to make breakfast for us. I have never seen nor heard of Chris cooking, but when I heard he was making biscuits and sausage gravy, I was in. Chris did the same thing that I did the first time that I made gravy, he went online and found an easy recipe. I will be honest; when he was measuring things out, I didn't think it was going to come out right...But it was delicious. Following breakfast, the decision was made to go to the Brass Armadillo antique store. Yep, we flew to Colorado to go to a junk store. IYKYK

That night, we had a reservation at the Chart House in Genesee; this is a place that I went to years and years ago that sits on the hill at the crest of I-70 with amazing views. The atmosphere at the CH is kind of rustic and tranquil. There is a large bank of windows that face to the east, and the lights of Denver are so pretty from there. When you are driving to the restaurant, the views of the snow-capped peaks are just plain stunning. The meal was nothing to write home about, but with the excellent service and fun conversation, it was well worth the drive. On the drive home east on I-70, you can see more of the Denver lights. It also gave me time to share stories of when I was younger, the bad accident I saw while driving through a foot of snow on the interstate, the truck that ignored the runaway truck ramp and ended up killing several people, and the kid that I graduated high school with who wrecked his motorcycle at a high rate of speed on the interstate. 

More about the trip in the next installment...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I am that guy

 Over the years, I have questioned many things that people have done or not done to make their situations worse. Over the last couple of weeks, I have seen people who have had to lose parts of their bodies because they didn't take care of their diabetes. I have seen people who have had cardiac issues because they didn't control their cholesterol. I have also seen what happens to people who haven't led the healthiest of lifestyles.  Well, I am here to tell you that I have done all of the above, too.  In 2010, I was doing well for myself. I was running all the time, I would do 5-6 miles several times a week, and once a week, I would do a long run from 11-13+ miles. I lost some weight, and I felt good about myself. I got hurt after running a simple 5k with my boys, which was essentially the end. I did buy a nice bike to ride longer distances with, but unfortunately, I just couldn't make that work for me the way I wanted it to. There was one exception: When I went overseas,...
Read more

I am struggling

 It has been a while since I posted anything and for that I am sorry. I have been struggling in my personal life for quite some time but it has really come to a head in the past several weeks.  I was having dinner with my son Kai and his now fiancé the other weekend and he was telling me about a podcast he has been listening to. He sent me a screenshot of it and I looked it up. The podcast was an episode of the Shawn Ryan podcast, I have heard some of Shawn Ryan's podcasts but mostly shorts on FB or YouTube. The particular podcast Kai was talking about is the one with Navy Captain Brad Geary. Captain Geary is the Commander of the Navy SEAL school and he has been under fire after the death of a sailor who was going through SEAL training. The part of the podcast that really hit home for me was when Captain Geary was telling about when he was in charge of a SEAL team that sustained extensive loss in a helicopter crash. He talked about the difficult decision he had to make to stay...
Read more

Desert Storm(part 2)

SECTION 1 — The Port The flight in was its own kind of stress. Fear wasn’t the driving force, but the uncertainty sat in everyone’s gut. None of us knew what we were flying into, how long we’d be there, or what things were going to look like once we hit the ground. We carried weapons on the plane, packs jammed everywhere, and zero room to move. Every seat was filled. Every aisle. Everything about it said the same thing: this is real now. Everyone thinks “desert” means heat. We sure did. We figured we’d step off the plane and just bake. Instead, we arrived in the dead of winter, and the first thing that hit us wasn’t heat — it was the cold. There was freezing rain, sharp wind, and absolutely nowhere to get warm. It wasn’t what we expected, and that only added to the whole “what exactly are we getting into?” feeling. We lived at the port in a massive warehouse packed with thousands of soldiers. No heat, no privacy, barely enough bathroom facilities for the number of people crammed in ...
Read more