On The Fly

In this episode - Goin' to California Prt. 2 . . .      "If you ever plan to motor west Travel my way take the highway that's the best Get your kicks on Route 66." If you remember, we left our heroes passing through Flagstaff, Arizona don’t forget Winona, we saw Kingman, Barstow, and San Bernardino . . . Our California trip included Los Angeles, Hollywood, then we cruised north - up Highway One, past Vandenberg Air force Base, through Big Sur, and across to Yosemite National Park. Stunning California landscapes with unparalleled photo opportunities. Smooth sailing until - we pulled into Oakhurst, CA. on Route 41. The Pinto’s tiny four-cylinder engine seemed to be losing power. “We better check the oil. Hmmm, a couple of quarts low.” “Hate to break the news, I’m thinking Yosemite and San Francisco are out of the question. Our California cruising days are over.” We studied the map for the most direct route home.   “How about Las Vegas? This trip has been a gamble ...

In this episode - Goin' to California . . . Have you ever owned a “lemon?” Sure you have an automobile that’s just a bottomless pit of money to keep it on the road. The car I’m talking about is best remembered for its propensity to combust in rear-end collisions. Yes, you guessed it - the Ford Pinto. We named ours The Mean Green Booger Machine . Back in the early 1980s my best friend, Nathan, and I decided we would embark on a road trip to California, to photograph the country. He had a clever idea, “I’m going to take the back seats out of the car and fabricate plywood beds. When the front seats are folded forward we will be able to sleep in the car very comfortably with backpackers pads and our sleeping bags.” Brilliant! We would save hundreds, well maybe a few bucks, on motel rooms to California and back. So the renovation began. Seats removed, plywood measured, cut, and 2x2 wood blocks screwed into place to keep the boards from sliding around. Nathan's father owned a Skelly ...

“When I get older Losing my hair Many years from now Will you still be sending me a Valentine? Birthday greetings bottle of wine?” . . . The Beatles. Podcast - When I'm 64 . . .  With this pandemic still raging losing my hair is not the issue. It's not being able to get out. This summer vacation (2020) has come to a screeching halt. We canceled our trip to France and were still navigating restrictions. Lately, I’ve been reflecting back on childhood memories. What prompted that you ask? Well, one month from today is When I’m 64 comes true for me. A rather fortuitous time to reflect it seems. I slid down the chute on the 229th day of the year, August 16, 1956. It was a Thursday in Angouleme, France. My father was an MP in the U.S. Army, from rural Illinois. And within three years he moved our small family back to the midwestern town of Cuba. One of my most vivid and fond early memories was the challenge and freedom of that first bicycle. Mine was a red, single speed 26 inc...

Podcast - The Magic of Television . . .  Time travel is possible! Dateline July 16, 2019, 6:32 a.m. PST, 50 years to the day. Once again I’m glued to my television watching the original CBS broadcast of the Apollo 11 launch live streaming on YouTube. In the 1960s NASA’s Apollo program was science fiction come to life. It was July 16, 1969, I was 13 years old, watching Walter Cronkite , on a black and white Zenith console television with complete fascination and suspense; the space program held me captive. As an avid science fiction reader, this was not fiction - but mankind’s greatest achievement. Looking back, humanity can now see the obvious advances in communications technology, medical advances, space travel, and human relations. But at the time, during those early Apollo years, people were enduring simultaneous conflicts with Vietnam, The Cold War with Russia, Civil Rights, and all the political unrest. Television news was rampant with the world’s problems. 1969 was also the...

In the episode, The Idea of Service . . . “All of our income, tangible and psychic, of any kind, comes to us from making the best use of What We Are - as learning, growing, thinking, imagining, productive creatures in the service of others.” Have you ever considered how the fate of one person has influenced your life for the better? Allow me to introduce you to that person, and how through serving others he changed the lives of countless millions. Recently as a volunteer for the Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum, we launched an educational initiative on YouTube entitled The Inside Loop . Using the computer interface, Zoom we are able to interview retired U.S. Marines (in their homes) from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. This got me thinking about a former Marine who served during WWII on the USS Arizona that was attacked on December 7, 1941, in Pearl Harbor.  Killed were 1,177 of the 1,512 crewmen on board at the time, he was one of only 15 marines to survive the attack that ...