(photo courtesy Leon Hammack)

2275 miles in 49 hours!

That’s right, you read it correctly!  2275 miles in 49 hours in a 2002 Suzuki Vitara, and we lived to talk about it!

It wasn’t originally planned to be a world wind rush through the Southern States, but it turned out to be exactly that.  It was originally planned to be a three day trip, but even that plan was going to be ambitious.

After a rather long day at the Daytona 500, approximately 2 hours of delays while the grounds crew tried two different times to patch a large hole in the middle of turn 1 and 2, we ( my brother Jimmy and I) rushed to our awaiting car to begin the drive back to the West Coast.  By the time that we climbed into our homeward transportation, it was 7:55 pm Sunday evening.

Our plan was to drive about 240 miles to around , Gainesville FL and call it an evening.  But we were still feeling good when we approached Gainesville, so onward we went!  We blew by Gainesville and Tallahassee like animal with the lower part of its anatomy on fire!!   I gazed at my watch and noticed that it was almost midnight. Thinking back on the day, we got up that morning at 4 am in order to be guaranteed a primo parking spot on International Blvd. ( across the street from Daytona International Speedway).  Nevertheless, two hours later (now 2 am) we both ran out of steam!  We found a rest area, pulled the car into one of the parking lanes, grabbed our blankets that we bought the previous day that might keep us warm at the race track, reclined out seats, and commenced to try to grab “a few ZZZZZZ’s.”

Quite to my amazement, the sleep was short lived!  In about 2 hours we were awakened by the sound of rain hitting the front windshield.  We quickly gathered up our senses,”fired” up the Suzuki, and got back on the interstate heading West!  It was now 4 am and we have a lot of real estate lying ahead of us!

Interstate 10 is a long lonely stretch of road to tackle, but we were up for the challenge. The rain posed a small problem, as rain always does, but lasted only for about 4 hours.  Not to be deterred, we were off and on a mission!

The cities clicked off like miles on an odometer, Pensacola, Mobile, Pascagoula, Moss Point (more on these two cities later), Biloxi, New Orleans, Ponchatrain, Baton Rouge, Houston, and San Antonio.  Finally at 10pm Monday night we decided to “shut it down” in Fort Stockton, TX and found a Holiday Inn Select for our sleeping needs.  As a side note, upon waking up  from my fantastic, but short, night of sleep in the Holiday Inn, I felt much much smarter than I did before I went to sleep!  (Reference old Holiday Inn commercials!)

6am Tuesday morning, the wake up call comes!  “Man was that a short night sleep”, I kept thinking as I was in the shower !!!  It is time to get cleaned up, get checked out, hit Mickey D’s for some quick “body fuel”, and get doing a little Steppenwolf!  For those of you too young to understand that reference, Steppenwolf was a 60’s band that sang “Born to be Wild”!!  As in:

“Get your motor runnin’,

head out on the highway.

Lookin’ for adventure,

and what ever comes our way.”

So off we go on our way to Yuma, AZ.  From Ft. Stockton westward the view is the same, desert, scrub brush, barren land, and cowboys!  About 250 miles later we passed through a town that sparked another song in my head, an old Martin David Robinson tune, better known as Marty Robbins, the classic was from the 60’s as well.  It goes something like this:

“Out in the west Texas town of El Paso

I fell in love with a Mexican girl.

Nighttime would find me at Rosa’s contina;

Music would play and Felina would whirl.

Blacker than night were the eyes of Felina,

Wicked and evil while casting a spell.

My love was deep for this Mexican maiden;

I was in love but in vain, I could tell.”

However the song was short lived just like everything else that day, cause we pulling a Hank Snow, “I’m moving on!”!

To sum up the 2275 mile trek in 49 hours it would go like this:

Scenically fast, conversationally great, and the company was the best!  Additionally, overseeing the safety of his two boys, I know, was our dad, Archie Wilson Hammack!!

What an adventure we had!!

TIL NEXT TIME, I AM STILL WORKING ON MY REDNECK!

(photo courtesy Leon Hammack)

Pit road at Daytona International Speedway is looking extremely empty this morning, not pit boxes, no race cars, just plainly, no activity.  That can only be for one reason……..RAIN!

The rain has come to Central Florida!  Although track activities are not scheduled to resume til noon on Friday, it is most likely going to be a wash out.  It would appear that the Nationwide Series qualifying will be cancelled.  The Camping World Truck Series race scheduled to start at 8pm EST is very questionable.  It is all depending when the rain concludes and if the track can get dry in sufficient time for the start time.

However reflecting on the racing Thursday afternoon, it was the most exciting finishes witnessed in years.  The first race was won by Jimmie Johnson by .005 of a second!  That is equivalent to about 4 inches!  For Duel #2 the distance between first place to second place was .015 of a second, about 7 inches!

If that doesn’ excite you, then you need to get involved in another sport, perhaps that Canadian thriller- curling!!

So the activity at the race track is sparse and wet.  It is still to be seen what will happen with the scheduled 8pm Friday night Camping World Truck race, most likely the race will be rescheduled for sometime Saturday.  It will ultimately be the decision of NASCAR and when Speed TV can broadcast that race.

SO FOR NOW, I AM WONDERING AIMLESSLY!

It is 17 days til “The Great American Race”, The Daytona 500, gets under way and the fastest and greatest 43 race car driver drop the hammer  down!  Just thinking about sitting in my seat high above the start/finish line in the Sprint Cup Tower and hearing the rumbling roar of 34,ooo horsepower go hauling by me, makes goose bumps appear on my skin!  Additionally, the view of 43 brightly painted race cars with their sponsors visible for all the world to see, at times, is a vision overload!

All that horsepower, cool paint schemes, and excitement makes me reminisce back to the 1960’s and my high school days.  That was a time when, young boys and older men alike, were enamored with their cool cars!  All that reminds me of the car I owned back when I was a senior in high school, the year was 1969!

My senior year saw me driving and owning a 1955 canary yellow Chevy Bel Air 2 door hardtop.  Man it was a sight to see.  That  canary yellow Chevy was lowered, chrome reverse rims, and what a motor it had.  Under the hood was a 283 cubic inch V-8 that was bored out to 292 C.I, a Holley 4 barrel, and a 4:56 rear end!  It was lightening fast in a quarter mile race!  It was just like some of those songs from that era!

Here is a list of a few of the songs about fast cars that we should all remember:

The number one car song is without a doubt The Beach Boys hit “409″.  The song just  made you want to “save your pennies and save your dimes” so you could by a “four speed, dual quad, posi-traction 409″!

You can never forget Jan and Dean’s hit, “Dead Man’s Curve”.  “I was cruisin’ in my Stingray late one night, when an XKE pulled up on the right, and rolled down the window of his shiny new Jag, and he challenged me then and there to a drag”.  Back then I didn’t know what an XKE was, but I soon learned!

How ’bout The Beach Boys hit, “Shut down”?  “Tach it up, tach it up, buddy gonna shut you down.”  the song talked about the big bad Dodge 413 Hemi and the Stingray Corvette.

You gotta love Ronnie and The Daytonas’ song, “Little GTO”.  A Pontiac hot rod soon to be gone forever!  “three deuces and a fours speed and a 389″.  “C’mon and turn it on, wind it up, blow it out, GTO!”  WOW!

Don’t forget  The Rip Chords tune, “Hey Little Cobra”.  In their song they sang about taking their Cobra to the race track hitched to the back of a Cadillac.  I guess that they had a lot of dough back then!

Oh those hot rod memories are still very vivid for me, how about you?

What is catastrophic zipper failure you ask? Is catastrophic zipper failure any worse than just plain old zipper failure?  What exactly causes catastrophic zipper failure?  Is there an emergency procedure anywhere to help me deal with this unforeseen failure?  Well I searched every available resource and found out that I was on my own!  There was no printed help to be found in any book or in any reference material of which I was familiar.  I was totally on my own to find a solution!  Oh no!

In all my 36 years of being an Air Force pilot and airline pilot, I have never experienced what I endured on Friday.  After a 2 1/2 day visit to Fresno for doctor appointments and Mother , sister, sons, and grandchildren visit, I climbed on a plane to go to work in LAX.  My secure world was about to come totally unglued.

Before I weave to tale of woe, let me tell you what my itinerary for the next 10 days encompasses.  I left Yuma, AZ on Tuesday afternoon, Jan 5th,  headed for Fresno and a doctor appointment and family visit combined.  From Fresno I flew to LAX to start my 3 day trip out to Honolulu.  Saturday evening, tonight, I fly back to LAX arriving at 5:07am Sunday morning.  I am then jumping on a plane from LAX going through Phoenix for the destination of Tuscon, AZ to meet two of my brothers to watch some good old fashion modified and late model racing on Tuscon’s 3/8 mile dirt/clay race track.  I plan on staying with them in Tuscon through Thursday morning, then hop back  on a plane to LAX and, once again fly a 3 day trip back out to Honolulu, Thurs. through Sat. morning.  Then, fly back from LAX-PHX-TUS and catch the last weekend of this big late model racing event.  That is my tentative itinerary for the next ten days!

Now that my itinerary is understood, you will have a better idea of my problem.  When I arrived in LAX I went downstairs to our operations center.  After a conference with the person who deals with medical retirement, I am gathering knowledge for that eventual possibility, I wondered into the Men’s room.  While zipping up my trousers, the mechanism instantly gave me a completely unrestricted feeling.  I thought that felt strange!  So I took a peek down at my zipper only to find that I now have a “gapper”!  I thought to myself, you gotta be s!#!#!#g me!!!!  What are you gonna do now, Captain??

I was in a panic!  I couldn’t get the zipper to reattach and function normally.  Now I have to come up with an alternative plan.  After exhausting all known possible fixes, the only fix that was available to me was to use 3 microscopically small safety pins.  I must now pin the gapping zipper as closed as possible!  This fix was almost totally unacceptable, but what was a Captain supposed to do?

To say that this fix was uncomfortable, would be an understatement at best!  But that is all that I have to work with until I could get to Honolulu and go shopping Saturday morning.

I now must leave the hotel and ride The Bus to the Ala Moana Shopping Center to see if I can find a pair of uniform replacement slacks that won’t cost an arm and a leg.  I am hopeful that I find a pair of pants, and leave the shopping center with a little bit of cash still left in my wallet.

EUREKA, MISSION ACCOMPOLISHED!

I have just returned to my hotel room with a reasonable  substitute for my uniform pants and at a very reasonable price!  In fact, I must have found the most helpful salesman in all of Macy’s!  After I explained my predicament to this young man, he went to work and found me a couple of pairs of slacks that would fit the description I gave him.  After trying both pair of slacks on, I made my selection and I was on my merry way!!

ANOTHER NEAR DISASTER AVERTED!

Today is December 25, 2009 and I sitting on reserve in the United Airlines operations below the 80’s concourse at LAX.  As is the case in most of my 29 years as an airline pilot, I am not with my family on this most special of holidays.  Fortunately, I will most likely get to Yuma by approximately 4pm today.  So there is a chance of a Christmas dinner in my future!

This holiday, in particular, sparks a dichotomy of feelings within my soul.  Because of my job, I have probably spent far less than half of my 29 years in this business at home for Christmas.  I have missed many things with my two sons growing up then, and now I have missed things with my two grandchildren.

Throughout all of my adult life there has been this particular song that comes to my mind each and every Christmas, as I am out flying people to their family’s holiday gatherings.  The song has been around for many, many years.  It has always brought back pleasant memories from my youth gathering around the family Christmas dinner table.  Even tough the early Christmas gifts and dinners were very spartan, Mom and Dad always somehow made it special!  Thanks Mom and Dad!

So I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams!

PS  Pop, I will see you in my dreams, I miss you!

HAVE A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS TODAY!

On this evening in 1980 I was with a few of my fellow coworkers in a bar in Manhattan when New York City and the world came to a standstill!  The TV stations in New York City broke into their regularly scheduled telecast to announce that on December 8, 1980 at 10:50pm John Lennon had just been shot and killed!!

The person who had professed,”Give peace a chance”, had lost his life at the hands of a deranged young man, Mark David Chapman.  John Lennon was gunned down at the entrance to his apartment on the upper West Side of NYC, The Dakota, with his wife Yoko Ono watching helplessly.

It does not seem like 29 years since that night in NYC when the world momentarily stopped!

Rest in peace, John Winston Lennon.

Take a moment and just “Imagine”!

Photo Courtesy of Leon Hammack)

When was the last time that you have travelled on an airplane?  Have you noticed the way passengers try to “stuff’” their over sized carry on luggage into the overhead bins?

When the brilliant airline executives decided to charge extra for the services rendered that were once all inclusive with the price of the airline tickets, air travel changed forever and not necessarily for the best!  The most obvious change is the way that passengers try to avoid checked bag fees by trying to “stuff” their over sized bags into the overhead bins!  These days the passengers throw caution to the wind in regards to the rules on carry on baggage!

They have figured out just how to bypass the charge on checked baggage.  The passengers have figured out that if they can’t get their mammoth bag stuffed into the overhead bins, then the airline will gate check their bags for FREE!!

BINGO! I think we have a winner!

It is absolutely hilarious to watch these people drag their gargantuan bags onto the airplane, knowing full well that it won’t fit into the overhead bins.  When it obviously won’t fit into the overhead bin, the flight attendants will take the bag, put it on the jetway, and then the ramp personnel take the bag and put it into the cargo compartment.  Now they have bypassed and saved the checked baggage fee that is normally charged at the ticket counter!

This has created a bottleneck in the passenger loading process.  The aisles are clogged with people trying desperately to get those monstrosities into the overhead bins.  This is causing delays in the boarding process, making flights late in leaving the gate for their destination.  These same people complain about the airlines’ tardiness, all the while being part of the problem with all their insistence on “stuffing” their stuff into a space that it will not fit into!

We have all seen these inconsiderate travellers climbing on the back of the seats or on the seat itself trying hopelessly to cram all their belongings into the overhead bins like a person on amphetamines!!  These same people are equally entertaining when they try to retrieve their belongings out of that same overhead bin!  All in all, it kind of looks like a Keystone Cops movie from the 20’s and 30’s!!

Are you with me on this?

(photo courtesy of Leon Hammack)

This morning I got up from my hotel bed and decided to head on out on the streets of Manhattan to grab some breakfast.  As I got out of my hotel on the corner of 32nd St and Broadway, I yielded to fast movers, then merged in with the foot traffic.

I made my mind up to go get myself a fresh, hot New York bagel.  So I headed up Broadway to the corner of 35th St. and Broadway to one of my favorite places in this part of Manhattan, The Metro Cafe.  As I crowded into the cafe, I was delighted to hear the New Yorkers bantering with each other, as only they can do!

I ordered up a  toasted cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese, YUM!  Once I received my “treasure trove” I headed over to the cashier to pay.  The 20 something Puerto Rican girl working the cash register mumbled something to me that I couldn’t understand.  I asked her to repeat what she said.  Again I couldn’t understand what she was saying.  I said,”Huh?”  Finally I understood that she was saying my bagel was going to cost me $2.68!  I just then realized that I have been gone too long from New York City, and have lost my ability to discern “New Yorkese”!! ( I left New York City on Memorial Day Weekend 1982.)

Walking back to my hotel room after breakfast, I realized that the sidewalks of Manhattan are very similar to a restrictor plate race at either Daytona or Talladega!!  As I exited the cafe, I had to find a hole in the foot traffic and stick my nose into it.  Next I had to determine just which of the lines were moving , verses stagnating.   So I quickly looked to my left and “whipped” out into that lane and tucked into a good “drafting position” on this heavy guy.

Having a very good knowledge of aerodynamics, after all I am an airline pilot, I knew that the 300 lb dude in front of me would bust a big hole in the air!  Once I was established in the lane I started looking for a new and faster drafting partner.  I slipped in behind this rather fast looking female that had a burst of speed as she passed me on the sidewalk.  Again I tucked in really tight for a few steps and with a huge burst of speed, I blew right by her and caught the green pedestrian light at 33rd and Broadway!

Now just one block away from my hotel, I got “up on the wheel”, I “mashed the loud pedal”, I increased my walking speed!!  Just as I got to the corner of 32nd St. and Broadway, I noticed this little old lady making a run on me on the inside, so I pulled a Carl Edwards and moved down to block her.  She didn’t get out of the gas and before I knew it, she had punted me and it was all I could do to keep from collecting up the other pedestrians into a huge sidewalk crash!  WHEW!!

After I got inside my hotel, I surveyed the damage.  All I got was a doughnut on my right side tennis shoe from her high heel!!  So as ol DW ( Darrell Waltrip) says, “it is success if you can drive it into the hauler”!  I made it back to my hotel without a major disaster!

TIL NEXT TIME, I AM STILL WORKING ON MY REDNECK!