Fall-Winter 2021 Part 4 - A Wedding and a Couple of Trips

Jim's Daughter's Wedding

In November, I attended my friend Jim’s daughter’s COVID-delayed wedding (Pat wasn’t feeling up to attending).  Below is a picture with my friends Scott and Vi at the wedding.

Scott and Jim (father-of-the bride, not pictured) are my two most long-standing friends.  Scott was actually by first supervisor when I started at Harris Corporation in 1989.  Jim came there to work a little later.  Eventually, after Jim and some others started a company, I went to work for him for a while.

Over the years the three of us have been co-workers, golf partners, Vegas/poker pals and “occasional” drinking buddies.  Scott and I attended a bunch of Orlando Magic games in their inaugural season in semi-obstructed view seats behinds one of the baskets.  As bad as they were, we got to see them win a few games, including over the Michael Jordan Bulls.

Jim moved to Long Island, New York for a few years and got married up there.  In fact, I drove up for his wedding and stayed at his house (once I found it, which took me many hours and is another story) before the wedding.  One of my fond memories is beating Jim at one-on-one basketball in his cul-de-sac on his wedding day—one reason I like Jim is because he is one of those rare people that I can beat at basketball.  By the way, Scott and Vi were nice enough to get married locally, making it a much shorter drive to their wedding.

Delivering Pumps to Eisenhower Farm

Around the beginning of December, my brother Walt told me that, a while back, he had been a awarded a government contract to refurbish some gas pumps for the Eisenhower Farm National Historic Site in Pennsylvania.  The farm is actually adjacent to the Gettysburg battle field and close to Camp David, which, I learned, was named after the former president’s son (look at that, maybe you learned something reading this).

Walt added that the terms of the contract required him to deliver the pumps by the end of the year.  Now, in my experience, deadlines in government contracts are treated as mere suggestions—if something gets delivered, say, 2, 5, or 10 years after the finish date of the original schedule, that’s “close enough for government work.”  So maybe Walt was being responsible or maybe he actually wouldn’t get paid if the delivery was late but, in any case, he needed to run those pumps from sunny Florida to the Pennsylvania winter in a few weeks.  He also mentioned he could use another “pair of hands” to help unload the pumps and couldn‘t find anyone.

Coincidentally, Pat and I had already planned to drive up to Maryland to spend Christmas with her son, Sean-Michael, and his wife, Jordan.  I asked Walt if we could somehow combine the trips, but the timelines weren’t working out.  At some point, I realized I had no schedules to keep and had time on my hands so I volunteered to accompany Walt on his adventure then, shortly after returning, turn around and take the same route back up north.

 I reported to Walt’s house at 5 a.m. on the day of departure and we set out for the night’s destination which was Fredericksburg, Maryland.  I think the trip took about 14 or 15 hours and was reasonably smooth.  Walt did have some choice words for South Carolina (“Suckalina” as he calls it) where traffic ground to a halt a few times.  Not sure why, but it seems I-95 has 3 lanes in every state except South Carolina.

By the way, I did offer to drive some but Walt declined the offer and I can’t blame him.  The last time I drove one of Walt’s vans was years ago when Pat and I borrowed it to pick up some furniture from one of her friends.  They lived on a narrow dirt road with an even narrower driveway that crossed over a ditch.  With little room for error, I backed up slowly and carefully.  I’m pretty sure Pat telling me all looked good was the last thing I heard before crunching into her friends’ mailbox and denting the van. 

Anyway, the trip was fine and we dined on delicacies like tacos at South of the Border and a questionable steak at the hotel restaurant we stayed at.  We had to wrest control of the remote from the old hotel lady in charge of the breakfast buffet so we could switch the channel from Fox News to ESPN and see the NFL highlights from the day before (the TV in the room didn’t get a lot of channels).  When I told the buffet lady I was a Patriots fan she started making fun of Tom Brady because Tampa Bay had lost to New Orleans the night before (maybe she thought he still played for the Patriots).

We didn’t spend a whole lot of time at the Farm once we found it.  Waze had us going in circles and, literally, into the weeds on an unpaved, vegetation-filled road.  But eventually we found it and dropped off the pumps on a crisp, 20-degree morning.  As it turned out, they had lots of helpers there so I probably didn’t serve a great purpose.

While there, Walt was talking to the park ranger about another potential job, refurbishing some cannons for a fort in South Carolina or something.  The ranger said she was surprised they hadn’t asked them about it because, as she said: “We’ve got a cannon shop.”  Well, of course, doesn’t everyone??

Xmas In Maryland

A few days after my return to Florida from Pennsylvania, Pat and I loaded up the car and headed back up I-95.  We drove because our last flying experience was pretty ugly (but that’s another story).  Plus, Pat had the car pretty well loaded down with presents.

Google was telling me the trip would take around 12 hours which looked like a piece of cake to do in a day, especially since I had just done most of the same trip with Walt.  Well, I apparently had learned nothing from my experience with Waze (another Google product) and the trip was more like 16 or 17 hours.  We did run into yet another slowdown in Suckolina but, even after getting through that, our ETA was still a couple hours too optimistic.  Maybe they fail to account for stop lights and things like that.

At some point, having come so far, I decided to just forge on without stopping for the night.  We missed the view from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge because we were crossing it in the middle of the night.

Once we got there all was well and we had a really nice visit and a good Christmas, although it was a bit colder than Florida.  While there, we also had a great dinner at Ruth Chris.

On the way home we missed the view from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge because it was totally socked in with fog.  Anyway, the trip home was uneventful and we got back safe and sound—and much warmer.

Pat getting cozy and admiring Sean-Michael and Jordan's Christmas tree in Maryland