Kid Adult of an Adult Kid

Last night as I discussed my adult children's plans for today and tomorrow I kept repeating that they had no plan. While my patient wife Ginger agreed with me, she also asked me if I remembered when we were running around my parent's house with them asking us "What's the plan?" To which of course we had no answer. We had the overarching plan, but none of the details to fill it in. Nothing that showed how we would make it happen. Sort of exactly similar to what my kids seem to have now. A good plan short on details.

It isn't easy. As a parent we would rather take the pain, the inconvenience, the tribulations leaving them the undamaged joys of life. But that doesn't always happen. By 'doesn't' I mean 'can't' and by 'always' I mean 'ever.' It's so easy for us to see exactly what our children need to do yet so hard for us to tell them. We denied that we were like our parents until we grew old enough to realize we were exactly like them. We see our kids are exactly like us yet watch them deny it. 

Personally I was amazed at both how smart my folks were and how quickly they went from complete idiot to genius as I progressed from the ages of 17 to 25. It appears that right now I am smack dab in the middle of that range for my oldest but it isn't satisfying to merely sit back and relish in the amount of wisdom I gain daily without any effort.

My Dad has recommended lots of books to me. A good number I've read, especially The Rising Tide by John Barry. This book tied together so many of my loves from my childhood and life now that it was incredible. In reading it he learned some of the things I knew (namely engineering, the Corps of Engineers, 19th century technology) that sent me down the path I'm on and I learned more about fascinating subjects he knew better including how Huey P. Long and Herbert Hoover rose to prominence and power, how New Orleans lost its place of authoritative control in Louisiana and the US, and a more thorough understanding of how deeply-seated the distrust and hatred of the Corps of Engineers is in the lower Mississippi River.

But this is merely the latest in a long list of recommendations. A much shorter list is the one that I've sent back to him. Last week he came over after we had recovered from our enjoyable flight and among other things he mentioned a phone call he had received for me. This call was about The Third Door. I was able to get into the group of advanced readers for the book. For those in the know, I took the Third Door into The Third Door. Since I was overseas it made it hard to get a physical copy of the book, however, that issued worked itself out and I was able to read it in advance of its publishing.

Phenomenal read. I couldn't put it down from start to finish. Oh, I stopped at times to admire the writing and its impactful words, but I never put it down. When I wrote my reviews I hoped that it might inspire others to read it, but little did I know it actually worked. My Dad in a very matter of factly manner told me that he said it all sounded interesting. He knew what kind of books he recommended to me that i liked and as a result, he figured he might like this one. He got a copy and it is on his reading list.

When we're young we strive to be grown and accepted. We yearn for positions, not necessarily of power, but of influence. To be taken as serious, persuasive, intelligent, perhaps even experts at something. But it doesn't arrive in a bang or with fanfare. The next step on the road of life is merely another step. It is just one more piece of traveled ground. Ground that everyone has to travel on their own whether it takes you further away or closer to home. Becoming a true grownup, or just no longer being a child, never gets easier or faster and no matter how hard we try we will never be able to make the parallel lines cross. We can however marvel in their similarities.

Travel Chicken or Travel Egg

The age old question of which came first, the chicken on the egg, is easy to answer, but recently I added a similar wrinkle to a question I’ve been asking myself for a while. That question is: Do I like to travel and therefore end up finding myself in airport terminals, bus depots, train stations, and truck stops or do I find myself in airport terminals, bus depots, train stations, and truck stops and as a result like to travel? 

By itself It seems a weird question. Who likes to end up in these crowded public spaces that are so vastly different architecturally, functionally, and geographically that often end up being the worst part of the travel experience? My longest work in progress is a story called The Trouble with Travel, parts of which I will begin sharing here soon, but that does not help explain my fascination. It stems more from my desire to look on the underside, or from the outside, with a different perspective and often viewpoint. Case in point, there was no one else atop the Arc d’triumph admiring the drain structures.

Interesting parts of the transportation termini for me include how things flow, the operations, the layout, the method of doing the same tasks repetitively day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, passenger after passenger. I don’t really think anyone who’s gone through engineering school or worked as an engineer looks at the world quite the same way as they did beforehand. In fact, the built environment was viewed differently by us than others before we attended. After attendance we could view it more mathematically, more scientifically, more like the building blocks that make it up. A very common pastime, not just for engineers, is people watching, but engineers often take it to the next level and watch not just people, but how people interact with their surroundings.

So, the chicken to my egg, was posed by my wife: “Do the workers in airports get a bad attitude from the travelers, or do the travelers get a bad attitude from the workers?” 

For the most part my air travels, especially internationally, have been alone without my family. Yesterday was the first time I have flown with my family since we moved to Germany in 2016. It’s only the fourth flight I have taken with my wife, and the first two were before we had children. For many years I prayed that God would hurry up and grant me patience, and after a mere three decades, He did. My patience is evident when I travel. I understand the cause of my travel concerns is not usually the fault of the people I’m looking at and it does no good to take out my frustrations on them. That begins (or continues) the downward spiral quickly. But this trip frayed me. Maybe it’s because I’m taking care of my family, maybe it was just what happened. I’ll continue to evaluate that, but it ranked down there, probably second worst trip ever. Trumping even the only time they lost my luggage.

Since we were traveling together we had to find long term parking which threw in an extra wrinkle. A wrinkle which got me to the airport three hours before my flight. I'm never that early. Standing in the first line we got the notice that our flight was postponed three hours. We had a 5 hour layover in Chicago which I felt comfortable with. Chicago ranks right up there with Frankfurt as airports to avoid. Berlin is a distant third. The delay meant we were down on the layover time but I never let Ginger know I was worried about it. O'Hare left no surprise, in fact it felt as if it were battling it out to take the bottom spot from Frankfurt.

Somewhere between the first check-in line and the third checkpoint we lost Faith’s jacket. If you’re wandering through Terminal 2 at München and see a pink jacket that fits a 7 year old grab it and drop me a line. After the fourth checkpoint I didn’t realize we were locked in to the gate and couldn’t get out. There were bathrooms and one small restaurant but no options. We got to that gate about 1120, so it would have hard to make it there in time for the original 1140 flight anyway but we had never stopped moving. 

Since it was time to eat we hit the little restaurant. But they were out of bread. Bread. A Bayerische Restaurant without bread. This is like a beach without sand. They ran out of bread by 1130, pre-lunch. If they had run out of beer there would have been a coup and you have to worry about those Munchen Putsches. We ate, then walked back to the gate and sat down just in time to hear that we could get a voucher because the plane was delayed. But that had not been our first bit of ill-timing.

At the first counter they gave us two seats together and the third somewhere else. Then for our connecting flight we only had two seats assigned. She mentioned that they only had “paid” seats left so I’d have to get that seat assigned in Chicago. Somewhere along the way Ginger asked me about that. I said that either they’d give me a free paid for seat or they’d pay me to not have three seats. Which would mean that they had two free seats they could give me. The Catch 22s of this flight keep compounding. But in reality, this lack of a seat bothered me because I knew Chicago was ahead of us.

Back to the gate, I talked to a gentleman there and asked if he could get the three of us together. He moved two seats to be together and told me the guy in the third seat was traveling alone. Since I had a similar aisle seat he would probably switch with me, especially when he saw my seven year old. Then he asked if I’d gotten the vouchers. Thirty-nine Euros worth of free food I could only use that day, in that airport, where they locked me down and I only had one place to use it. And I’d just eaten for 33 Euros. 

But things don’t get me down while traveling, we bought 40 Euros worth of candy bars, chocolate, and drinks. By this time my overly patient wife had become short, and my seven year old, who was tired, hungry, and failed to listen when Ginger cautioned her on how much to bring as carry-ons, had just plain lost it. Just before the gate opened I walked back to return the bottles for deposit as they closed off the restaurant so we couldn’t get there from our gate. The ladies we could see told me I couldn’t go through them to get out. I told them, “Thank you, but I’m done with this airport.” Terminal 2 in München is not the joy that is the rest of my European ATL.

I’m American by birth and Southern by the Grace of God, I’m polite, I clean up after myself, and try not to lay on my fellow man. But after 5 hours of lines, problems, family meltdowns, and price gouging my limit was reached. I have not described it sufficient to gain your sympathy, but I assure you I had been generous up to then. I loudly announced that I was about to use the restroom and I was only going to use the wall, not the fixtures. Ginger was not proud. I just said piss on Munich. 

As proof that our experience that day I offer the bus ride from the gate to the plane. Several of the folks on our flight had been meandering through the system with us from the beginning--the parking deck. Another oddity of this flight was that nearly everyone spoke English. And having never met a stranger, I talked to a lot of them. But on the bus ride from the gate to the plane (a new experience for Ginger) somehow the group conversation turned into a bus-wide game of “It could be worse.” Everyone was having a bad travel day. The family from the “other” LA (not Lower Alabama, the one in CA), the lady who was traveling to Albany back from Krakow where here biological (she was adopted) family had 17th century roots, the German family wearing FC Bayern Munchen apparel, the lone motorcycle riding mechanic, everyone joined in. And it was a raucous game. But it got everyone into a slightly better mood because cliche or not, misery loves company.

So the plane pushed away from the gate, late, after having been delayed, and the pilot announced it would be forty minutes before we could takeoff. A few minutes later he came back to announce that we had gotten an earlier departure time, but I noticed he failed to mention a duration this time. After we arrived in Chicago, late. we had no delays, other than just time to move through the crowds. We went through customs, rude Chicagoans barking at travelers doing the wrong things. Got our bags, shuffled around the corner to the out of the way United counter to re-check our bags. I asked the bag guy about the ticket. He said go to the new terminal and they’d fix it but because we did not have much time it was better to be there doing it. We shuffled through another passport check, and then out to get onto a shuttle to the terminal. The only time I have ever been in Chicago without having to literally run from gate to gate was when my end destination was Chicago. This was no exception.

I left my family to rush to the ticketing counter where the United attendant told me I could get my seat at the gate. I was very clear when I said I need three, I have two. She said, “No problem. Go to Security 2.” I asked again, “I only have 2 boarding passes, can I get through TSA?” She reiterated, “No problem, You’ll get your pass at the gate.”

Guess what I didn’t get through.

I went back to the same lady and told her she lied, to which she replied, “I can’t help you.” No shit. Finally got it fixed, then shuffled through TSA, then some other checkpoint. Then there was the sprint. Again I left my family and darted through the crowd arriving out of breath and panting one minute before the gate was closing. Did I mention that last week I hit the twenty year anniversary of the day I stopped exercising? A proud moment for me, but O'Hare continues to be my nemesis in that regard. From the time we landed we never stopped. Not for a bathroom, not to feed the hungry seven year old, not even to put my belt back on after TSA. Constant movement. 

They knew I was coming. These guys scanned my family’s tickets even though they weren’t there. Once we got on the plane I asked the flight attendant to slip me some pretzels early for my daughter. It didn’t matter how long or short the flights were it had been a bad day to travel for all. The three guys from Wisconsin had had it rough. One trucker said he was never flying into Mobile again, he’d drive from Chicago. Three ladies spoke of never using United again. I didn't talk to everyone, but everyone I did shared with me their troubles even though I did not offer mine first.

Friday’s flight was so miserable it made me reconsider my love of George Gershwin. The greatest American composer of all time. The reason Rhapsody in Blue beats out the Star Spangled Banner for best music of all times is that To Anacreon in Heaven is not an American composition, rather an English one. And these United employees made me rethink my love of George.

At the end of the day I walked out of the Mobile terminal, took two steps to clear the doors and stopped. Head rolled back and arms wide open. As I soaked in the all-oppressive humidity I have missed so dearly I could hear my young bride telling me she didn’t want to hear it. She hates it, but she knows I love the humidity. I am a fish who has returned to water. The airport may be 50 miles west and 2 miles north of where I was born and raised, but that minor difference is insignificant in the overall scheme of climate. No matter where I roam, I am home.

Home, with my whole family. The wife I married, the three children we had together, my parents, my uncles, aunts, cousins, in-laws, and every one else. Travel is great, but nothing beats coming home. It’ll fix what ails you. It’ll make up for a miserable trip. No matter which came first or who caused what at the end of the day the scrambled egg eats as well as the fried chicken.

Cathartic Big Boy Toys

As a parent, and as someone who's seen two score and a couple years, I've had occasion to learn that I'd rather something happen to me than to one of my kids, or my wife. It's just easier. Doesn't matter if it's disabling foot pain or a splinter under your pinky nail. We can deal with things that happen to us better than we can deal with things that happen to our kids.

So something is happening to one of my kids. The one that's the most like me. Stubborn, hard headed, defiant, and too smart for her britches. I don't know where she gets it from. Now the other thing I've learned is that I can deal with my wife, she doesn't have to know how I'm dealing with it. Except that sometimes something so big can happen that I can't ignore dealing with it to deal with her dealing with it. If I haven't lost you yet I'm going to change gears a bit.

As a kid, we are almost all fascinated by big earth moving toys. Boy, girl, doesn't matter. At some age someone starts differentiating same as with STEM topics and we become gender segregated, but we all like them when we're little. And sometimes we get to grow up and still play with them.

I am an engineer. I'd say like my father before me, but he was a scientist. More specifically a teacher of science, but he planted the seeds that turned into my drive to be a practicing scientist, because that's what engineers are. We take the tools and figure out how to use them to do the stuff that needs to get done. And implant a little bit of ourselves in whatever we do.

Three smells intrigue a civil engineer: fresh turned dirt, new asphalt, and either a landfill or sewage treatment plant. The last one depends on what you do, but there is a lot of money in designing landfills and sewer plants. Enough that when you see the money you love the smell. But even if you argue about the last smell, you can't get to it without having gone through the first two. And you rarely get the second without the first. Fresh turned dirt has an aroma all its own.

Back when I was still in design and plan production I remember spending three solid days designing one corner of an intersection. The road crowns sloped one way, the drainage ditch another, a pipe under the road yet another, and there had to be room for a traffic signal pole. This was a busy little intersection. After three days I had drawn my coloured lines on my black screen and it was finished. Water would go where I wanted, cars would go where I wanted, and everything would work in the dirt. Then I thought about how it would be built. There were no instructions for the builders, just a drawing and the fact that they knew it was going to work. What took me 3 days of blood, sweat, and tears to design would be built by four guys with a hangover and heavy equipment in less time than it took me to print out a simple set of plans (in my defense, some of the plan sets could easily exceed 1000 pages).

The longer you work in engineering the more likely you are to get away from the engineering and more in the management. I've spent the last few weeks working on spreadsheets, databases, and creating plans for what might happen. I haven't gotten my boots dirty in a good while, so today I jumped at the chance to go with one of my engineers to a job site. We looked at a 900 hp tractor, a massive 200,000 euro (minimum) Massey-Ferguson attached to a soil cement machine that stirs up 40 cm of earth. Cue the Tim Allen Tool Time grunts. There was also a massive Bomag roller with huge whacker packer plates on the back. There may well be a technical name for it, but no one uses it. 

The soil cement machine started up. A joy to watch, churning up the dirt, mixing it with portland cement then spitting it out in a fresh chewed wake of soft material. It was impressive. It was going to be a while before they would be ready to compact the new dirt, but I hadn't seen the compactor at work. I'm the boss, it's good to be the king, I asked them to run it and they did.

Standing there within 2 meters of this machine feeling the very earth beneath me shake as it did its job compacting the dirt so we can put down asphalt was cathartic and relaxing. All again felt right in the world. If only for a few moments I got to stand there and play with the full-sized versions of the Tonka toys I had at the age of 5. 

Eventually I had to go and only the memory of the fact that I get to, as a grown adult, do what I dreamed of doing as a small child remains. I can create and construct and mold the world. Fix whatever ails whatever I face.

Reality returned and I noticed the mud on my shoes, the smile on face, and the fresh mopped floor of my office. Everything will be all right.

Untitled Posts Get Lost for Sure

My webpage is an absolute hot mess. Some pages still aren't working right, most of the old links aren't working. I'm not sure the font is visible, there isn't a picture to be seen (and what's more exciting than text after text?), and at the end of it ll I seem to be a rambling author who occasionally has flashes of brilliance that are true nuggets surrounding by dross.

In fixing this pile I am also re-reading some of the posts I put up previously. Including one where I first landed in Germany. My understanding of the country makes some of my earlier observations much more clear. The only thing that seems really wrong is my thought about the Frankfurt Airport. Although even that has a hint that leads to my current observations about it. 

Two of the posts I want to point out are Fifteen  and New Ixeveh. I have no idea if my new Squarespace hosted site will post to social media like my Wordpress site did. I haven't figured out how (or if) comments work on here, but if anyone actually reads this or those other two posts I would appreciate some feedback. A shameless plug for self-validation? Perhaps. 

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut from time to time, they just don't get as fat as the rest of the squirrels. Maybe I'm pissing in the wind but it still entertains me. Do either of these comments connect with the rest of the post in anyone's mind but mind?

The Third Door

I'm still working on re-doing my webpage, and I don't even know if the auto poster works at all yet, but I have read a fantastic book I want to share a review for. It is called The Third Door by Alex Banayan. I first heard Alex Banayan’s voice on Big Questions with Cal Fussman, a podcast and thought it was just another interview. Not far into that interview I realized it was so much more than that. Alex had written a book. Not just any book, The Third Door. Not very far into the podcast I decided I had to buy this book. By the end of the podcast I could not wait to get out of the car and pre-order the book. When I was offered a chance to read a galley copy I jumped on it. 

When the copy arrived I knew it would be difficult to find time to read, but I opened it and started. Then I couldn’t put it down. So I didn’t. Cover to cover I read every word without stopping. Alex’s incredible journey to make this book was as fascinating as the interviews he made to write the book. 

The gems in this book kept on coming. Like proverbs for the modern age. In so many ways the story reverberated with things I have found over the course of my own life. Except I didn’t learn them from Jessica Alba or Quincy Jones. I may have Spielberged my way into more than one place, but I never Spielberged into Spielberg. But the story, and the lessons, didn’t stop there. Alex took the third door to the mysteries of life and how to be successful.

There are so many nuggets throughout the book it is amazing. So what is the secret? Well, what works for one person may not work for another. Maybe not even for anyone else but it still works and there are lessons to be learned. Tim may do it one way, Elliott another, Larry still a third way, Cal may do it with a grandma’s best goulash recipe but at the end of the day, and the end of the book, there’s a way for you, too. 

Kiss more frogs, get a bigger pipeline, don’t just wonder, make it happen. The secret is in the book. But you have to read it to find it.

It releases in a few days, but until then you can preorder it on Amazon by clicking here.

Back up

After what seems like forever I have rescued my blog from the well entrenched grips of malware. As a part of the cleaning and fixing I am deleting a lot of subscribers because I suspect that one or more of them are the reason for the malware limbo that my website has lived in for way too long. As I struggle to become more technically savvy to keep this from happening again I haven't yet figured out how to just send an email to subscribers but I think making a post will let people know, and those that are actual subscribers and not just weird automated malware providers will see this. I am not deleting everyone, though of the 50 or so names I've deleted so far I haven't recognized any. If I accidentally delete you I'm apologizing in advance and asking you to re-subscribe. As a point of reference, I'll try to finish this and post something new by 11 May.

So look for another post from me before next Friday and if you don't see one, check back at byrdmouse.com. Thanks for your patience and understanding and we'll talk again real soon.

Autobahn Priorities

After about six months of driving on the autobahn I am officially in the "who wants to drive on the interstate system anymore" band-wagon. This doesn't seem like a big thing, but never forget I still call myself a Transportation Engineer. This is a major step for me. On our trip to Poland back a few months I posted on Facebook that I was blowing out the carbs, in my fuel-injected, turbo-charged diesel. Car guys will get the fact that there is neither a need to blow out the carburetor nor a carburetor in my Jetta TDLie. Real car guys can probably correct me and tell me my Smokeswagon Diesel isn't fuel-injected but as I said in the Facebook post: don't harsh my mellow.

During that trip there were times I had the cruise set on 190 kph. With a family of four and luggage to boot in the vehicle. No, I'm not setting any land speed records, but come on, a four door sedan cruising at almost 120 mph. Not shabby by any measuring rod.

Mind you, my self-professed love of the original roadway is not all based on speed. There is a certain joy in humming along at 150 kph (about 90 mph) and just hitting the pedal on the right because you can. But it isn't all love of speed. The fact that people will actually pass police cars is nice. Not shitting in your shorts when you see a police car on the side of the road while you're doing 90 is ranking on the list, too.

Today I was popping down to Munich, about a 200 km drive that we made in 2 hours avoiding a 30 minute traffic jam, and I began to finalize my Autobahn Priority listing. All Mercedes want to be in front of the BMWs. All Beamers want to be in front of the Audis, and the Audis want to be in front of the VWs. I have yet to exactly place the Skodas, Fiats, and Alpha Romeos, and I left the American vehicles where they belong--off the list. Also not classified is who the VW wants to be in front of because as a VW driver myself, I would be polluting my statistical data set. I want to be in front of everybody, I'm just not driving there all the time.

Noticeably absent from the list is my favorite of all cars, the Porsche. Where do they fall in the traffic lanes of the autobahn? In the exact same spot the 500 pound gorilla sits: Wherever they want.

Change Your Liking

Today I got an email from the uncle my cousins and I have called Uncle Doughnut since I was young. I can’t say he’s my favorite uncle mostly because I don’t have favorite uncles or aunts, but he was always the cool uncle. Still is. He is still a bachelor, buys top of the line toys (like cameras, electronics, appliances, etc.), always got us great Christmas gifts whether as individuals or as a group, and on Saturday mornings he brought Krispy Kreme doughnuts. For lunch he brought Desportes’s french bread because when we hung out at Mama and Daddy Byrd’s we usually had some meal that went well with bread. My memory is fuzzy on when, but at some point in the 70s he went to the Canary Islands to live for a while. This was a few years before Aunt Maggie and Uncle Scotty took off sailing on the Robin for 30 years but I fondly recall each week when we found out there was a new post card with a picture of where he or they were or what they had seen. One of those cool Uncle Doughnut gifts was a 12 volume set atlas. Two volumes were the United States, but the other ten were the rest of the world. I never modeled my life after Uncle Doughnut, but to this very day no matter how full I am there is still room for hot Krispy Kreme doughnuts (and peach cobbler but that’s another story), and I love bread. There is a soft spot between my breastbone and my belt line for them. My affinity for these aren’t all because of him, but no doubt he had an impact.

Back to today’s email. It included a link to a 60 Minutes clip about Rick Steves. I had never heard of Rick or his brand of travel books. Then again, until I got here I’d never heard of Rothenburg and didn’t know why my Introduction to Bavaria instructor mentioned that all Americans want to go there. But Rick’s explanation of why Americans should see Europe resonates with me. It resonates because even before I heard him say it, it is my own.

Early on he says that if when you travel the experience isn’t to your liking, change your liking. At about 3:50 in the video it gets really good, and at 4:30 the hook was set. I stopped watching news on the television back in the 90s but I knew 1) the question she was about to ask, and 2) his answer at 4:30. This is why I wanted to move my family to Europe, to get them out of the country to see what the rest of the world is and how it works.

I saw part of the world from inside a tour bus with tinted windows. The buses were an armoured SUV and an MRAP. The windows were bulletproof. But the view was eye-opening enough that I realized that I wouldn’t be a good father if I didn’t show my daughters that despite the fact I wanted to put them on a pedestal they would never change the lightbulb by standing still and waiting for the world to revolve around them.

Rick's reasons repeat themselves. Last week I mentioned to some Germans I work with that as Americans we are arrogantly ethnocentric. Just today I told some other Germans I was glad to be in this country because they have common sense. At the Nuremberg Zoo (Tiergarten Nuremberg) Saturday Ginger and I both saw and commented on things we’d never see in the states. Some pansy would sue because they stubbed their toe on an uneven sidewalk or missing bollard. It was excessive that my daughter jumped the fence to join the llamas in their compound but here, unlike America (more specifically Norte Americano for my Bolivian friend), they don’t protect us from ourselves. The insanity that is the norm that causes us to not know which bathroom to pee in just doesn’t manifest itself here. The reasons TO travel continue to reassert themselves as we DO travel. They are underlined, quotated, highlighted, parenthesized, capital lettered, and away from everything else on the other side. Constantly.

Byrd Boys love Biloxi. I am a fifth generation Biloxian, and all my uncles on the Byrd side spent the majority of their life either in Biloxi or right next door (one lived in Ocean Springs, the town where Biloxi was founded in 1699, another story for another time). I never imagined living anywhere else, and once I left I never imagined living there again. Before I left I saw the first two volumes. I've seen a lot of the United States and love it almost as much as Biloxi. The more I see of the other ten volumes of this giant world the more I realize how small it is. Taking my family out into the great big world is going to show them how small it is, too. Uncle Laurence didn’t make me want to leave to see the world, but he did remind me why I did. Rick Steves reminded me why. We both are doing our part in our own way to make an impact on American narrow-mindedness.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

-Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

Fair warning world, the Byrd's are loose.

P.S. Neither Dad, Mom, nor my Mother-in-law can blame Uncle Laurence, Aunt Maggie, or Uncle Scotty for causing me to move my wife and their grandchildren 5000 miles away. At least until they've come for their first visit and seen the Achtung, the Complicated, the Proper, and the Lovable Chaos for themselves. For my part I can't wait to meet the later or show the former.

Free at Last!

Americans in general are more cognizant of their freedom. We’re taught at an early age freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press and the Bill of Rights. If we’re lucky we learn what that means, otherwise those of us who did learn are subjected to mislead “I’m offended” quotes on Facebook. I will admit though that knowing there is a Bill of Rights is more important than knowing the 3rd keeps us from having to quarter soldiers. Few things are more American than the thrill of the open road. The freedom to move about the country and the countryside is ingrained in us. Especially in the South. Where there are fewer big cities, things are spread out, and we talk of how long between places is in minutes rather than miles. Getting your driver’s license in the South used to be a rite of passage. My daughters didn’t seem to revere it as much as I did, but then again I got mine even earlier than they did.

The Mississippi I grew up in gave licenses to 15 year olds. That is insane, but so is our love of cars. I once joked that we have a 0.95 driver to vehicle ratio in Alabama. No one called me on it so that means either they didn’t catch it or they agreed. Point is we love our cars and the freedom they bring us.

So yesterday mine arrived.

I went down before they opened to start the paperwork to pick up my Smokeswagen TDLie. Fresh off the boat and delivered to me covered in frost and ice, but it was my car. Not a rental, not a borrowed ride, not the government-owned vehicles I’ve been riding and driving in, my car. My little slice of what I brought from America.

After patiently completing the paperwork I finally got to drive off in my own vehicle with a grin splitting my face from ear to ear. People that know me know I smile a lot. This smile was bigger than that. It was bigger than getting my first car, bigger than buying my first car, bigger than driving my first Porsche, bigger than big with elation to boot.

It seems like it should be such a small thing, yet in the land outside my comfort bubble it is a sign that things will return, they’ll bounce back, and I will survive because I am free at last to do what I want, when I want, without having to walk or wait for the bus or someone else.

Next up, finding a house.

It's too late now, Baby!

Today was my first solo trip to Wiesbaden. Quick recap, we flew from Mobile to Frankfurt from 10-11 Jan, stayed in Wiesbaden for a few days, then on 20 Jan my new boss came and picked Ginger, Lizi, Faith, and I up and brought us to our new temporary home in Grafenwohr. While there we’ve made a few quick trips, none too far. Ginger went to the Czech Republic to have her nails done (a story all to itself), and I’ve made a few work trips. This is the second time in two weeks that I’ve been in Wiesbaden overnight for work but my last jaunt was like my other quick trips around the country so far with someone else. Whether I drove or they drove, I was not alone. I wasn’t nervous, but I woke up nearly two hours before the alarm went off and couldn’t get back to sleep. Last night I had arranged to meet up with two friends for lunch. We had met in Kansas City five months ago right about the time I was interviewing and contemplating taking this job. Again, a story for another time. Since the week before we had gotten stuck in a stau (I have got to figure out how to put umlauts in here) near Wurzburg I was afraid I might not make it on time. As a safety measure I decided to take off early to insure timely arrival.

At 0630 I rolled out of the house for about a three and half hour drive. I skipped breakfast thinking I would drive right by the McDonald’s in downtown Grafenwohr. Instead, the GPS told me to turn left instead of right at the first light. Last week Peter mentioned that we could go clockwise or counterclockwise, so I decided to go with the GPS and turned left. There was no McDonald’s for two hours.

When handheld and dash-mounted GPS units became popular I resisted the urge. It was hard because as a former surveyor and someone who played with the technology long before it became feasible for mass consumption this was harder than one might think. But it was mainly driven by the desire that I did NOT want to become one of those people who turned just because the machine told me to. Flashback to this morning, I turned early. No problem, I was headed on the autobahn in the wrong direction (though not counter to traffic so I was safe). My previous training told me to go down an exit, turnaround, and come back. Sure maybe it was 12 km, but I was good. Until I got there. My instinct said turn left, my GPS said right. I didn’t go with my gut. I took the road less traveled.

Needless to say, it did not lead me back to the autobahn.

On my previous drive by idiot box experience back in the early 2000s the machine thought I was an 18 wheeler and took me a long way out of the way to turn around. Thinking that might still be the case I pulled over, turned around and sat perpendicular to the road I had just come from. Twice. Neither time helped. So I drove through some gorgeous country, quaint towns, tight roads, switchbacks, and did I mention it was snowing? Had I not been worried about the fact that I had no clue where I was I could have enjoyed myself. The views were spectacular.

After about 2 hours I finally got back on the autobahn headed towards Wurzburg and feeling comfortable. I made it past the construction and the grosse stau from last week without incident when the GPS unit started telling me to get off at the next exit. I made my way to the side but thought that since there was no big diversion it must be thinking I was on a side street instead of the autobahn. So I ignored it. And found why it tried to direct me off the road.

I used the left lane and passed up a mile or so of traffic stopped in the right lane until I finally got stopped myself. This was worse than last week. I put it in park. People don’t get out of their cars on the autobahn. Today they did. Normally I’m the first to jump out. Having never met a stranger I talk to folks stuck in traffic. But I only do that when they speak English it seems. I couldn’t even tell what they were saying because they spoke in German.

After about 15 minutes I heard a helicopter. Quick aside here. When I was studying for my license they told me that ADAC in this country was similar to AAA in the states. Similar, but like all things German (except the wine), better. This time they mean it. If you’re on a bus trip and the bus breaks down ADAC will come pick you up and take you to a hotel until they fix the bus. Back to today, another difference from AAA, the helicopter was an ADAC helicopter. It was a very nice helicopter, more like Blue Thunder than TJ’s in Magnum PI—nice chopper. Soon I noticed the traffic on the other side of the road was stopped, I guess so the chopper could land.

After about 25 minutes I heard the lady behind me talking loud and saw two guys ahead and to the right of me run around their car like a Chinese fire drill. Two cars ahead someone turned off onto the embankment. I followed.

Now this is the kind of thing I might have done in the States. I don’t know if it was a road, some kind of access, or just the first vehicle melted the snow and drove over the mud to get to the parallel road that was 250 meters away. Either way I got back on track.

It was Level of Service A the rest of the way, to through, and past Frankfurt. I was doing 150 entering some tunnels they built just for noise control. Not walls, not noise attenuation, freaking tunnels, giant tunnels to keep the noise down. In Frankfurt they do have some runways/taxiways over the road, but these tunnels are for noise. One other thing I try not to do here is convert my speed into miles, what’s the point? The limits are given in kph, and I’d rather think I’m going 50 through town than 31. But 150 is still fast. That’s keep the radar detector on and look out for cops hidden behind the trees fast. They use speed cameras here, but that’s a different story. I don’t know how to spot them yet, but they haven’t spotted me either so it’s a draw.

Once I got to Wiesbaden, I didn’t have the address of where we were meeting for lunch, rather I had the address of the District Office so I was a little concerned about how to find where I was going. On the plus side, I was right on time so I called one of the guys I was meeting who wasn’t far behind me. Then, when I got lost, I talked him through how to find me and I followed him the rest of the way in. All in all, an adventure packed day. I’m still not sure why they’ve trusted me with the ability to create my own travel plans or drive my government vehicle all over the countryside, but it’s too late now, Baby! Watch out Deutschland, I’m going to be alles uber.

Yeah, it’d make a better ending to say the name of the song, but that’s in bad taste in this country. I’m slow but trainable.

Still There?

For those who don't know, most of my family and I have moved to Grafenwöhr, Germany. So today (18 Feb) I finally felt completely overwhelmed. A real “WTF am I doing?” moment. Bordering on panic attack overwhelm. Maybe it was the stress of having lived in 5 different hotel rooms over the last 45 days. Maybe it was not having viewed a single new place to live yet. Maybe it is the lack of a vehicle to drive around in. Maybe it was the whole 5100 miles from home in a new continent. But maybe it was just the third meeting in which I was the only non-German speaking person and EVERYTHING was being discussed in German. For some time now I’ve been thinking about re-naming my blog. Over the weekend the inspiration of what to call it hit me: Outside the Comfort Bubble. I am so far outside my comfort bubble it isn’t funny. Today was just a massive exclamation and emphasis of that point.

It’s also an odd point because I started blogging not only because I wanted to write but because I had time on my hands. What I was doing at work at the time was easy. I was on cruise control. My blogging started to taper off when I reached into the unknown. Or as a friend, fellow engineer, and blogger would say I began to stretch myself. Even my writing began to taper off as I further reached with my deployment to Afghanistan. Since arriving in Germany just over a month ago the desire to write, to point out my observations, and just plain express myself has been building but that step outside the comfort zone is overwhelming. I am a sponge soaking in new information and trying to find a way to process it.

There’s the new location, new roads, new rules of the road for driving, new language, new staff, new support staff, new standard operating procedures, almost none of the things that I have taken for granted remain. I remain the most humble person you will ever meet, yet I was good at what I did. In taking this new job and moving most of my family I said, “I got this, watch and see.” Since arriving, I have gone from “WTF!” to “WTF?” What have I done? This is going to be a challenge. This is going to be harder than it already has been. I see that now.

At the end of the day on the way home I heard on the radio Tubthumping. Now it isn’t that I’m a big Chumbawumba fan, but something about the lyrics resonated with my eternally optimistic side. No, it isn’t that I was concocting a session wherein I alternated whiskey drink, vodka drink, lager drink, and cider drink. It is the reminder that I get knocked down, but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down.

It will be a few days before I fix the blogpage. It may be a few days before I post anything else as well. But it’s coming. I am reminding myself as I recently did my oldest daughter of my favorite piece of kitsch hanging in the Biloxi Hard Rock. It is a signed drum head from Alex Van Halen that reads, “Fall down 7 times, stand up 8!”