Aabidano wrote:
I have some great memories of my military transfers. Moving from FL to CA we spent 3 weeks wandering across on I80, put 5k miles on my truck for a 2500 mile trip. Coming back we took the southern route. About half way there my son pipes up, "Hey Dad, we're homeless!".
Hehe,
When my dad retired from the military, we took a few months during the summer and traveled around the U.S. (and Canada). I don't recall being exactly happy the entire time but I sure saw a lot of stuff. Things you would never see while flying or if in a rush.
On another road trip we hit up 24 states. Seeing our nation's National Parks with no set agenda or time line is a great experience.
Being a military brat, I flew a lot as a kid. I can't even remember how many times I've flow back and forth to Europe (should say from Europe since I was born there), multiple trips to Hawaii, Australia, etc. Back in the Reagan years and great military contracts, I flew first class. I miss Reagan : ( Thanks for my private school education Gipper while tearing down the wall and winning the Cold War!
On the flip side of first class, I've also flown "Space A" That's military space available...so, for example, if a Tanker has room in the cargo bay for a few passengers, you get to head to Hawaii for like $15.00 (price may have gone up over the years)...now, that $15.00 included ear plugs because you are basically in the noisy cargo bay, sitting sideways along the hull, facing in. No flight attendants!
The bonus to something like that is that I got to watch the refueling of F-4 fighters as they accompanied the tanker along the way.
I took those pictures, except the one of me and the pilot, on one of our trips to Hawaii.
I know...I know...first thing I thought of when I saw this pic before posting it here was the line from Airplane, "have you ever seen a grown man naked?"
Very bad quality picts to begin with then snapped again in bad light on my iPhone. Point is, you don't get to go up into the cockpit anymore. Things like that made traveling fun. Getting to sit alongside the Boom operators on a tanker and waving to the fighter pilots as they refueled isn't the norm but still fun and I'll take a noisy ride like that over a commercial airliner anytime.
Times have changed. The terrorists won when it comes to flight travel for me. I can't stand the restrictions in airports and on planes. I'm not complaining about them. They're a fact of life now but it ruined airline travel for me. Fortunately, I got in a ton of travel back when it was fun.
