Three Volcanoes and a Memory

One of my colleagues on the west coast got himself hurt somehow. No one knows how he is hurt, or how he got hurt, because he won’t tell anyone. My guess is that it must be a pretty embarrassing story if he won’t share it, but I suppose that is beside the point for the purposes of this story. Let’s just suffice it to say that he is out of commission for a while, and so I was asked to take an install in his region – Portland Oregon.  I got really excited about this when I realized that Portland was only a three and a half hour drive away from where my son and his family are stationed up in Silverdale Washington, and so it looked like I was going to get a company paid trip to go see family!

Here is something that I don’t get to say often – something new happened to me going through the TSA check point in the Austin airport! I had just placed my stuff up on the belt for the X-ray machine when several of the TSA inspectors started shouting and running back and forth. I noticed that at the outlet of the check point, there were a good half a dozen TSA folks there stopping everyone from leaving the inspection area to enter the main airport. There was a TSA inspector standing right next to me and so I casually asked him what was going on. It’s not that I was concerned, I was just curious about it, as after all if this time, it’s kind of rare for something in an airport to surprise me. The man just looked at me though. He didn’t frown, and he didn’t smile either, he just looked at me and didn’t say a word.

‘Well all righty then!’ I thought to myself and turned back toward the area where all of the excitement was. Soon, everyone was calmed down, and we were moving again. Now on the other side of the check point, I was sitting there putting my things away when all of the shouting and running around started all over again. Before I knew it, there was a TSA inspector standing in front of me and blocking my way into the airport.

“Will everyone please stay put for a moment! This will only take a minute and then you can be on your way.” He said loudly and confidently. It was pretty clear that it really wasn’t a request, and so I nodded my agreement to him when he looked my way. In less than five minutes he had given the go ahead to leave the area, and I walked past him as I was leaving.

“So what was the deal?” I asked as I passed by him. “In all of the years that I’ve been traveling through here, I’ve never seen y’all do that.”

“Oh, it’s nothing!” he said with a laugh. “We are just doing some training.”

Since my flight was only set up the day before, long after US Airways awards free upgrades, I did not get an upgrade to first class and so got to ride in the back with the other sardines on both flights. The plane from Austin to Phoenix was filled to capacity, but the flight from Phoenix to Portland had quite a few empty seats. Once the flight was boarded and they were closing the door, I grabbed my things and moved back to take a seat in the completely empty exit row. Feeling kind of smug with my cleverness at grabbing the empty seat that would give me more room and freedom, I was just getting comfortable when the flight attendant approached me.

“Ma’am, I’m afraid that you will have to move back to your assigned seat. You have to pay an additional fee to fly in the exit row.” He told me, not sounding in the least bit apologetic.

“Really?” I asked him, “I’m Gold preferred with you guys and exit row seating is one of your free perks for it.”

“You are welcome to leave the plane and take that up with the gate agent if you like? Otherwise, you will need to take your assigned seat.”

“No worries!” I replied, grabbing my things and moving forward to my original seat. The man in the seat next to mine looked as disappointed as I was when I started putting my things away and took the seat next to him again.

“Yeah, they threw me out of the exit row.” I told him with a grin. He was also gold preferred and so he and I both talked and laughed about the situation for a moment.

I got just a touch of affirmation as I was leaving the Avis Rental car lot at the Portland airport. On your way out of the lot, you have to stop at a small guard shack and show them your driver’s license where they look up your information, print out your contract, and you’re on your way! I handed the attendant my license, and watched him make his way around my car to inspect it. When he got back to the front, he printed out my contract, but hesitated before handing it to me.

“So is this your husband’s license?” He asked me. I grinned, basking in the small victory of knowing that at least one person today had not caught on that I was male.

“No sir, that’s me.” I replied, still grinning.

“Oh! OK. I get it now!” He replied with a small laugh. And then I was on my way.

Never having been to this particular customer before, I decided to drive by their factory on the way to my hotel so that I would know how to find them in the morning.  It was only about three miles from my hotel, so that was easy enough and only took a moment. I did have a bad moment though when our sales manager for this region called me as I was sitting in the customer’s parking lot. Right after I told him I was scouting it out, it occurred to me that if he suggested I go in and talk to the customer, things were gonna get real awkward, real fast. Fortunately he made no such suggestion and so I headed for my hotel.

As always, the clerk at the Holiday Inn was very friendly and talkative. The fact that they are consistently friendly is a major factor in my choice to stay at Holiday Inns, and so that was no surprise to me. I was a bit surprised a moment later during our conversation though, when she told me two or three times that I could feel free to park in the rear and use the back door if I wanted to. As I was walking to the elevator, I thought that this was a little bit odd, because the entire front parking lot was empty and there was no reason in the world I’d want to use the back door or parking lot, but she had mentioned this three or four times. Then it struck me! She was trying to let me know that if I wasn’t comfortable walking past people to go in and out of the front door, I had the option of sneaking in and out of the back one! I didn’t know if I should be offended or amused at the thought of being offered a way to slink in and out of the back door, but in the end, I was grinning as I hit the elevator button. I’m pretty sure that my days of sneaking in and out of hotels are way behind me.

The install that I was there to perform turned out to be a bit of ‘political’ land mine. The customer owned four very old Ozone racks that were built in Germany. The company that had built these systems was bought by a company that my company had later bought. In other words, they were built so long ago, that the original company had changed hands twice in the intervening years. Anyway, when they had ordered a new Ozone system, these old antiques were what they had fully expected to get, and instead, they got my system. This became a bit of a problem, because all of their cabling and feed gasses were set up for the obsolete system, and so were not appropriate for mine. There was lots of back and forth about who dropped the ball where, who had not done their home work, and who was responsible for making it work now that we were stuck with the situation. Ultimately it turned out that their counter parts in Japan were responsible for the foul up as they had spec’d and ordered the system, but had not informed their local people that it was not the same kind of system that they had owned before. Since we were dealing with a language problem (several of their engineers in charge were from Japan and spoke little English) I found myself explaining what we needed them to provide to our system over and over and over. Just when I thought that I was done, they would tell me that there was yet another Japanese engineer that needed to hear this from the horses mouth, and “can you please come back tomorrow and explain this again to smith-san”? Courtesy of the US Army, I have lived several years in other countries where I did not speak the language, and so I have nothing but compassion, admiration, and respect for these men who were in that same situation. There is no question though, that it really made the task a lot harder than it had to be. I had hoped to be on the road to see my son Friday afternoon, but instead, I had to stay in Portland so that I could go in to the customer again Saturday afternoon to explain the situation to the third Japanese engineer that had apparently not been present during the many other times that I had explained it all.  I was not a happy camper . . .

Saturday morning I entered the lobby on my way back to my customer’s factory for a meeting, and much to my surprise, there in the lobby sat all of the engineers involved in the installation. Apparently their engineers from Japan that were here to help install their system, were staying at my very own hotel! We laughed, and I recalled to give a modest bow to their lead engineer, and then we went ahead and had the discussion right there in the lobby. In fifteen minutes I was in my rental car and on my way to visit with my son and his family!

The drive there was absolutely beautiful, and I was reminded of the positive effects of a climate that had so much rain – lots of huge and gorgeous trees! I did indeed get to see my son, daughter-in-law, and my granddaughter and spent the night in their home.  Apparently their cats are poor judges of character, because I spent the night with at least one purring fur ball sleeping on my legs or chest at all times. It kind of made me smile as I’ve missed cats. We can’t have them because my daughter is so allergic to them that the last time we had brought cats into the house, my daughter ended up in the children’s ICU for two weeks.

My Daughter-in-law, Son, and their critter

We spoke of this and that, and then went to see the new “Riddick” movie. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t care what we did, as long as I got to be with them for a while. The next morning we walked through a cute little town where we stopped for breakfast. We had a good laugh as everyone in the small café noticed a young man trying to parallel park a HUGE F350 pickup with a lift kit and knobby tires directly outside the plate glass front. By his fourth or fifth attempt, he had everyone’s undivided attention, and was the sole topic of discussion. After a good seven or eight attempts, and I’m not exaggerating, he at last got it right and he and his girlfriend made their way into the café. As soon as he opened the door, the entire café erupted with applause for his tenacity and ultimate success with parking his land yacht. He didn’t seem fazed in the least when someone shouted “I think you need a bigger truck!”, but his girlfriend looked like she wanted to crawl under the table and die.

Soon enough, I had to tell everyone goodbye and head back for Portland where my flight was scheduled to depart from the following morning. On my way south, found myself grinning when I saw the signs for Ft Lewis. It had been a long time since I’d been in the Tacoma Washington area, and I found myself just a bit lost in my memories as I approached the main entrance. Apparently sometime in the last twenty five years they had combined Ft Lewis with McChord AFB and now call it a joint base. Call it what you will, I had a lot of history there.

(Cue the flashback scene)

A much younger man . . .

In 1986, I had completed my first three year obligation to the Army at Ft Sill Oklahoma and I had decided to get out. It was a stupid thing to do, but I had listened to all of the older guys who had bitched and complained and convinced me that the Army sucked, and that life as a civilian would be SO much better. I was so excited to be going home, that I drove all of the way from Ft Sill Oklahoma to Southern California non-stop. Once there, I spent a good week or so just getting reacquainted with my family, and just being delighted at being back around them all again.

It didn’t take too long though, before I found myself in a bit of trouble, because getting a good job wasn’t turning out to be anywhere near as easy as I had hoped. I sought several jobs as an electronics tech, but I never managed to even get a personal interview. The few phone interviews that I managed to get all went pretty much the same, including one with Martin-Marietta, the company that had made the very missile that I’d worked on.

“What kind of job were you hoping for?”

“Well, I was trained in electronics by the US Army and was hoping for a job along those lines.”

“And what did you work on while you were in the Army?”

“I worked on the Pershing and all of its support equipment.” I replied, thinking that this was going to help me since they had made the darn thing.

“The Pershing?” the interviewer asked, clearly never having heard of his own company's weapon.

“Yes, it is a mid-ranged, mobile, nuclear missile.”

“I’m sorry son, we don’t have any nuclear missiles here . . . “

It didn’t matter that I was trained in electronics, as soon as they heard that I had spent three years working on a missile, the interview was over.

In a month, I was getting desperate to start earning a living, and ended up going to work with a company that installed fencing. All of the guys that I was working with were snorting speed and other things up their noses every morning and then working like dogs all day in the desert heat. Over and over they offered me some, and over and over I declined, not about to start such a bad habit, but trying to keep up with these guys was killing me. I’m not proud to admit it, but after three months of trying to keep up with all of these speed addicts, I eventually let my curiosity and desperation get the better of me, and one morning I said “Yeah, I’ll try it.” Oops. . .

It wasn’t long before I was on the same vicious treadmill that they were on.

-Start the day sniffing shit up your nose so that you could work harder and faster.

-Bust your ass off in the desert heat all day, carrying pipe, digging holes, and carrying buckets of concrete when you couldn’t get a wheelbarrow where you needed it.

-Go home exhausted. They would all get stoned and I would get drunk.

-Get a paycheck to pay the bills and to buy that shit that you sniff every morning so that you can keep up with the other guys.

-Start Cycle over

One morning I woke up, I mean really woke up. I was on a bare mattress placed on the floor of the empty back room of a house that I was renting with about half a dozen others who also could not afford to go it alone.  I sat there for a minute, looking at the mattress, and then looking at the bare room who’s only furnishings and decorations were my clothes piled up against the wall.

“Wow!’, I thought to myself, “Only six months ago I was a respected soldier. I was an electronics technician working on the US Army’s premier nuclear weapon system. I had a Top Secret clearance and the United States of America trusted ME to maintain its nuclear missiles. Now look at me. If I’m not a drug “addict” yet, I’m awful God dammed close!”

That very afternoon I made my way to the local US Army recruiter and re-enlisted.

They told me that they had a position in my career field up at Ft Lewis Wa for me, and I told them over and over that they were making a mistake. My career field only went to maybe three or four different places – Germany, Ft Sill OK, Redstone Arsenal, and maybe White Sands NM. I explained this to them several times, but they insisted that there was a job for me there, so I had them write it into my contract that I would be given a year there.

When I arrived, I was proven to be correct, and it had been a mistake, but they couldn’t ship me off because I had been guaranteed a year there in my contract. Most people are assigned to their new unit in a day, but I sat at the Ft Lewis Reception station for two weeks before the most exhausted looking staff sergeant that I had ever seen approached me.

“Specialist Huddle, can you type?” he asked me. I thought about the ramifications of the question for a split second before I lied through my teeth.

“Yes Sergeant, I can!” I told him with a grin. I spent the next year doing clerical work, which was a LOT easier than my usual job.

Anyway, there was a LOT more to this story, but suffice it to say that after a brief plateau after coming back into the Army, I again resumed my plummet toward self-destruction. I wasn’t about to mess with drugs while on active duty, but alcohol was entirely legal and a very large part of the Army way of life and culture. Pretty much if I wasn’t at work, I was falling down drunk. I’ve had years now to look back and analyze things, and I think that the most significant contributing factors to my self-destructive behavior were my gender issues and the growing conviction that I would be lonely for the rest of my life because of it. I hated who I was, I hated what I was, and I was absolutely certain that I would never find someone that would fall in love with and marry me.

I became fairly obsessed with the idea of ending it all, and I contemplated suicide pretty much every day until I at last decided that I was going to do it – now the only question was when and how. I told no one as I wasn’t out to make a statement, I wasn’t looking for attention, and I wasn’t looking for “help”. I just thought life sucked, would always suck, and I’d rather not, so thank you very much, I’m checking out now! 

This was my frame of mind one Saturday night when I was sitting drunk in my barracks room and playing the guitar. I had just finished recording a guitar track on my little multi-track recording deck, and when I took my headphones off, I heard someone pounding on my door. When I opened it, I found Jerry, one of the few people that I considered to be a friend standing there.

“What’s up?” I asked him.

“You have got to come downstairs and see the girl on CQ duty. She is really cute!” He didn’t wait for an answer; he just grabbed my shoulder and pulled me out of the room behind him, still carrying the guitar that I had been playing before opening the door. When we got downstairs, it quickly became evident that Jerry was setting me up, because one of the cutest girls I had ever seen looked up as we approached and called him by name.

“Hey Jerry!”  She said to him, making it clear that she knew him. I just kind of gave him a “I’m gonna so kick your ass later” look.

“Hey Dawn! This is Matt. Matt, this is Dawn . . .” and then he just vanished. Honestly, I have no idea when he left us, but it sure seemed like he vanished. All I knew is that I was fairly drunk and had just been introduced to a very pretty girl, so my head was in a bit of a whirl. I had always been incredibly shy, and could count the times in my life that I had spoken to a pretty girl on the fingers of one hand, but this time I was too damned drunk to care about that. We made small talk, and eventually I got around to asking her what she was writing, since she had been busily scribbling in a notepad when Jerry and I had interrupted her.

“Poetry.” She told me, looking just a bit bashful herself.

“No way! You write poetry?” I replied like an idiot. She lifted an entire binder full of writing in reply.

“I like to write songs myself.” I told her, lifting the guitar that I was still carrying.

“Can I hear some of your poetry?” I asked.

“Can I hear one of your songs?” She asked, laughing.

She read me her poetry, and I sat on the stairs and played my guitar for her, and that was the start of our family!  About six months later, she and I were married and on our way to Germany where we had our first child. I’ve never felt lost and alone again!

(End Flashback)

I hadn’t planned to stop, but as I passed the freeway exit that led to the main gate of Ft Lewis, I just had to do it. I was in the wrong lane, but managed to dive across traffic and make it just before it was too late. No one honked, and I didn’t hear any locked up tires or breaking glass, so I guess it’s all good! A year or so ago, I had stopped at Ft Sill and they had allowed me in, so I was kind of hoping that I might receive the same courtesy here as I pulled up to the guard at the gate and handed him my driver’s license.

“You  know, I’m not going to bullshit you, I used to be stationed here and thought I’d stop since I was driving by. No worries if you can’t let me in though, I’ll just turn my happy ass around!” I told him. That got an honest laugh from him, but still he shook his head ‘no’.

“I can’t let you in this gate, but if you will turn around, go under the bridge, and then stop at the visitor center behind you, they’ll give you a pass.”

“No shit? They’ll let me in?!”
“Sure! Have a nice day!”

With my heart in my throat, I turned the car around and headed for the visitor center, trying to pull up 25 year old memories to recall how to find the barracks where my wife and I had met. I figured that I wouldn’t have a chance in hell of finding them, and resolved to call my wife as soon as I got the pass and got through the gate. She has a great memory for that kind of detail, and even two and half decades later, I was willing to bet that she could tell me exactly how to get there.

When I entered the visitor’s center, I found a couple of bored looking soldiers behind the counter and headed toward them, but one of them waved me off.

“Would you please grab a number off of the machine behind you?” he asked. I stopped, and returned to the machine that he had pointed out, tugged a tag out of it, and made my way back to him. Once again, I found him shaking his head at me.

“You have to press one of the buttons on the machine.”

That was when I looked down at the tag that I had taken from the machine and discovered that it was blank.

“Oh, so you mean this whole process would go a lot better if I just pulled my head outta my ass huh?” I asked him with a laugh to make sure that he knew I was kidding. Both of the soldiers behind the counter laughed, and assured me that I wasn’t the first to make that mistake.

I returned to the darn machine again, and pressed the button that said I wanted a visitor pass to “Visit Ft Lewis”, and this time I was gratified to see a number printed on the tag, and immediately heard a recorded voice calling my number up to the window.

“What is the purpose of your visit?” The still grinning specialist asked me as I handed him the tag I had just printed out.

“Way back about the time that you were born, my wife and I were stationed here. I just happened to be in the area and thought that it would be neat to take a look around again.”

He looked at me for a few moments, clearly not wanting to say what he had to say.

“I really am sorry, but I can’t use that as justification to let you on post. If you had come yesterday, you could have used visiting the museum as an excuse?” He said this in such a way as to make it obvious that he was giving me a suggestion for the future. The problem was, he had no way to know that I lived a thousand miles away and may never be in a position to be there again.  Considering that this had been a whim, and nothing but a  spur of the moment decision to try and take a walk down memory lane, I was actually surprised at how much it hurt to know that I wasn’t going to get on post after all. I guess my crushed feelings must have shown, because the young man spoke again.

“I really am sorry. . . “ he said with a kind tone.

“No worries. . . “ I told him as I turned to leave. Well, no need to call my wife for directions now . . .

As I approached my hotel in Portland, I noticed Mt Hood off in the distance, and it struck me – I had seen three volcanoes in one day. Mt Rainier, St Helens, and now Mt Hood. Funny, while I had taken the time to photograph the other two, I wasn’t in the mood to take photos of Mt Hood. . .

The only thing interesting that happened on my flight home was when I entered the "Premium Passenger" line to go through the TSA check point at the Portland Airport. When you either fly First Class, or fly so much with an airline that they give you "premium" status, you get to use your very own line to get through security in most airports, and in this case I was doing both since I'm Gold with US Airways AND was upgraded to first class. Usually they have someone screening the folks entering the premium lane, and this was time was no exception – they had a woman about my own age checking everyone’s tickets. I handed her mine and was surprised when she handed it back and told me to get in the normal security line. You know, the line that was at least ten times longer than the premium line?

“Hey, hold on now! I’m preferred with the airline AND I’m flying first class. Why can’t I enter the premium line?” I asked her. She took my ticket back and made a show out of checking it again.

“You’re ticket doesn’t show that you are premium.” She replied. I didn’t say anything, and just pointed to the place on my ticket that clearly said “Gold Preferred”.

“Well you’re not first class!” she replied in a huff, but still allowed me to enter the correct line now. I didn’t bother showing her where it said “First Class” directly under “Gold Preferred” because I wasn’t sure I could trust myself to stay civil if she didn’t stop being a snot.

Mt Rainier

Mt St. Helens

"I'm a doctor, not a brick layer!"

Well hell – I don’t really have a damned thing of interest to talk about but I sort of feel like I ought to write a blog just to let everyone know that I am still alive and kicking.

I have made several trips since my last blog post, but none were made “pretty”. By the way! Did you notice that I usually put the word “pretty” in quotes when I speak of flying pretty? This was to kind of make it clear that I am using it a euphemism for “flying cross dressed”. The phrase “I made the trip cross dressed” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, nor is it in the least bit light hearted or amusing, and so I typically just say that “I flew ‘pretty’ “. Why am I telling you this? Because I apparently hit someone’s raw nerve with the phrase on my post “How to fly pretty”, and she made it a point to let me know that I was hurting women the world over with my use of the phrase and the stereo type that it reinforces. OUCH. . .

The reality is, we are talking about the World Wide Web here, and just about anything that you say or post there is bound to irritate someone, somewhere. It still kind of bugs me though because I know that she does have a bit of a point. I don’t particularly want to reinforce the stereo types that women must be pretty any more than I want to reinforce the stereotypes that men must not be.  In this case, I think it comes down to the intent behind my use of the phrase and I would hope that it will be kept in perspective. Eh, I don’t know if her comment should have hurt me or not, but it did . . .

You know I hate going to the doctor’s office, and especially hate paying the damned bill, and so I usually wait until I have either a serious problem, or several issues that I want to discuss. This time, I had an infection that I was pretty sure was going to need antibiotics and so off I went. As long I was there, I discussed several other issues that I was having, and this resulted in blood being taken, and tests being made. The end result was no particular surprise to me – I have very low testosterone. No worries though, because of course they have a drug for that, and so the Doc gave me a couple of prescriptions and off I went to the drug store. The antibiotics of course were no problem, but the big “T” totally flabbergasted me – the insurance company not only said “No”, but said “HELL NO!”. When I got over being shocked, I figured what the hell, I need it, and so I’ll pay for it myself! Well, that lasted right up until they told me what the stuff costs – over $500 dollars per tube, and presumably I’d need several before it was all over. At that price tag, I decided that I didn’t really need physical stamina, healthy muscles and bones, or a sex drive after all. With so many relatively serious side effects stemming from the issue, I don’t know how insurance can get away with just saying no, but there you have it!

Do y’all recall that my wife and I loaned her car to the father of my daughter-in-law? He had just got a good job and was going to lose it if he couldn’t get transportation to work and back, and so my wife and I talked it over and then took him the car for a few months. Just my luck, but after he had had it for months, it was wrecked less than a week before I was to go pick it up. A woman with a suspended license apparently thought that she was too good to wait for traffic, and tried to make a left turn in front of oncoming traffic with predictable results; she was hit by two cars, one of which was mine. My in-laws were shook up and on the verge of shock but otherwise all right, but the car is totaled. Honestly, the car being totaled kind of pleases me, because I hated the darned thing. It was a Dodge Caliber that we had purchased a few years ago because it had seemed like an intelligent car to get, with a good amount of room, and good gas mileage. The thing is, its mileage really wasn’t all that good, it’s suspension sucked from day one, and it had already been wrecked once.  As long as no one was hurt, and the responsible party had insurance, I considered it to be a blessing that the darn thing was totaled and the insurance company would have to give me its book value.

(Note:  I literally just received the check from the insurance company between typing the last two sentences! YAY!)

It has been a pretty scary few months trying to use my classic Mustang as a daily driver while my wife’s car was on loan. The Mustang is over 46 years old and something new was going wrong with her pretty much every couple of weeks. Add to that the fact that I can’t get full coverage insurance on her unless I agree not to drive her more than about two thousand miles a year, and you have the makings for a nervous breakdown each and every time I drove her to work or to the airport. Now with my wife’s car totaled, I suddenly found myself in need of a more practical car and so it was time to do some car shopping!

I had pretty much decided that I was done choosing cars that were supposedly an intelligent buy, and this time I was gonna go for a car that I didn’t mind making the payment on – a modern Mustang! I have rented modern Mustangs several times in the last few years and really liked them. They feel solid, well built, and have plenty of get up and go. The price really isn’t half bad either, given the quality of the car, and they get surprisingly good gas mileage.  Of course you have to remember what I’m comparing them to when it comes to gas mileage – my 2002 F150 that gets 16 to 17 MPG, and my classic Mustang that gets 13 to 14. A modern Mustang that gets an average of 24 MPG is a fairly dramatic improvement by my standards. Oh, and if you wanna see some funny looks on people’s faces, try driving a 46 year old classic Mustang into a Ford dealership!  Half of them rush to you to talk about the car, and the other half rush away, prolly terrified that you’re gonna try to use it as a trade-in.  

I spent a couple of days doing some homework online, and so far the best deals I’d found online were from Avis and also one from a huge local car dealer. Avis looked like a pretty good deal, with a base 2012 six cylinder going for around $22,000. The local dealer had a 2010 6 cylinder with all the bells and whistles for about $19,000.

I spent the day going from dealership to dealership, and most of the stops went much the same, with salesmen eagerly staring at my classic as I parked, followed by a good ten minutes of oohing and awing over her, and then being told that they couldn’t beat the deals that I’d found online. At long last, I stopped at Mak Hiak Ford where I hit pay dirt! They had a red 2012, 6 cylinder Mustang with all of the bells and whistles going for $19,000 and boy is she pretty!

So what do y’all think of my Ford driveway and its newest edition? I like to sort of think of them as mother, father, and baby:

Oh, and do you wanna talk about good timing? Yeah, as I pulled out of that dealers lot with my classic, the suspension was making an AWFUL knocking/Creaking sound. I haven’t had the heart to crawl under her yet to see what’s wrong now, but it seems to be a good time to have another car to fall back on!

Things are so slow in our industry right now that my company shut down for this entire week to save money. They have done this a few times in the last couple of years and it is kind of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it is scary as hell that the entire company is better off shutting down for a week than working, but on the other hand, I’d rather have them do this than to start laying people off.  My father-in-law, a mason, was complaining that his current job was killing him since it was in really rough terrain, where he couldn’t get his truck, equipment, or materials anywhere close to where the work had to be done. This left him facing the need to carry over two tons of large rock and other supplies by hand several hundred yards up and down steep hills in the over 100F Texas heat. I figure what the hell, I owe him for all of the things he has helped us with, and so I volunteered to help him out for the week. He looked at me with a bit of skepticism as he knows that my job is not physically demanding, but he was desperate and accepted my offer. I have got to tell you, that was a pretty tough week, because it was damned hard work, and damned hot weather to do it in! Still, there was no way in hell I was going to look bad in front of my father-in-law and his colleagues, and so I got into my best old Army mentality and did my best to kick it’s ass. I moved the vast majority of that two tons of rock myself, and then spent each day playing “helper” for him and trotting all of his equipment back and forth every day, keeping him stocked with rock and mortar,  and learning a bit here and there from him. At the end of the week, he told me at least a dozen times that he was both deeply grateful and deeply impressed with how hard I had worked. Most of the men that he had hired through the years hadn’t come close, and considering that I usually make a living sitting behind a desk, he was more than a bit impressed.  What I didn’t tell him was that I was so exhausted that I’d come home, showered, eaten, and gone straight to bed by about eight every single night. But hey, it was mission accomplished – I’d finally got the chance to repay a little of the hard work he had done for us and managed to impress him while I was at it. The thing is, I almost wish that I hadn’t, because now it absolutely haunts me to know how terribly hard that poor man has to work for a living. He is almost 70 years old, and trying to keep up with him for one lousy week completely kicked my ass. I just can’t understand how he can do this day after day, after having fought cancer twice, surviving a major motorcycle accident that almost took his leg, and having four hernia operations, and all of this in the last decade. I gotta tell you, my getting paid well to travel the country in air conditioned airplanes and airports looks REALLY good right now!

These heels were made for walking!

Before leaving the house for the airport at a bit before 6AM, I glanced out of the window to try and make sure that I wouldn’t cross paths with my neighbor and friend across the street. I didn’t figure it would be an issue since he normally leaves for work at about 530 AM, so I was kind of surprised to see that his car was still parked there. That’s not such a big deal these days though as I am driving my classic Mustang, which I keep parked inside of the garage. I just warm her up, and then hit the automatic door opener and I’m off in a flash!  

I got a few miles down the road though, when I thought that I saw his car coming up behind me. It occurred to me that if he passed me, the rabbit was gonna be WAY outta the hat, because there was no way he wasn’t gonna notice the Mustang. In the past, if we had passed each other while I was driving my F150, that one could have been played off, because the F150 is about the most common car on the road. When you’re driving an antique car though, not mention an antique car that he had personally bled his knuckles working on, there wasn’t gonna be any confusing it for someone else's. I was already doing 70MPH in a 65 zone, and sat there contemplating flooring it to be sure that he couldn’t pull alongside. After all, there are a few advantages to driving a sports car, and one of them is the option of going fast if you wanna! Still, the more I thought about it, the more I thought that it was a bad idea. I was already speeding, and if I got pulled over going much faster, it could be a very awkward and expensive morning, so I chose to just suck it up and deal with it. If it was him, he and I would have to have a talk when I got home, and that was all there was to it. You wouldn’t believe the terror and relief that flooded through me when the car passed me and I saw that not only was it not my neighbor, but was in fact a Texas Highway patrol! If I’d been stupid and floored it, I would have been nailed! Every once in a while I get lucky and make the right call.

Once I got my car parked at the airport, I headed for the elevator and was relieved to see a gentleman already in it and holding it for me. As it started to rise to the third floor, he looked at my huge suitcase and then at me.

“Wow, with a bag like that, you must be going on a long trip!” he said with a smile.

“Well, it’s either that, or I just carry a lot of clothes!” I replied, and was happy to see him give an honest laugh.

After I checked in with the airline, I made my way to the TSA inspection area and traded a few words with the inspector there.  He’s been working there for as far back as I can recall, so he and I definitely recognized each other.  I asked him about the new “TSA Prescreened” process, and he told me that his check point wasn’t equipped for it, but that if I wanted to, I could go down to the next checkpoint.

“Nah, I’m already here, so I’ll just deal with it! Thanks you so much for the info though!” I told him.

“You’re most welcome sir!” he replied with a bright and friendly smile. 

“Sir” he had said. . .

“POOF” vanished any hope or self-delusion that I might have actually been passing this morning. Oh well . . .

I had a long walk to make it to my connection in the Salt Lake City airport and so found myself walking on several very long moving walkways. If you have never seen them, just imagine a flat escalator and you will have the picture. As I was stepping off of the second of these walkways, a young lady stepped along side of me.

“You know I’ve gotta say that I’m impressed!” she told me with a friendly gleam in her eyes.

“Really?” I laughed. “How so?”

“Those are some tall and pointed heels you’re wearing and I kind of expected you to have some trouble with them.” 

“Nah, it just takes practice, practice, practice!” I giggled.

When I got to my gate, I didn’t have more than a couple of minutes before they started boarding, and so soon I was handing my ticket to the Delta rep at the gate. As usual, she passed it under the bar code reader, it beeped, and she wished me a happy flight. I had gotten maybe twenty feet down the ramp when she started calling out behind me.

“Ma’am!?” she called out to me. I turned and walked back to her.

“Yes?”

“I’m so sorry. What was your first name please?” she asked, looking both contrite and confused at the same time. OK, so then and there I knew what she had called me back for – the first name that her machine had helpfully displayed for her, clearly didn’t belong associated with a female. There were about thirty people gathered right around her, so I really didn’t want to blurt out my first name as she had asked.

“My last name is Huddle.” I told her with a smile.

“Ah! Ok, I got it!” She said with a relieved laugh. I’m guessing that a good look at me, along with my voice and confirming my last name, was enough explanation for her to figure out what I was. Funny, I started the day off absolutely certain that I wasn’t fooling anyone, and yet here was obvious proof that she at least had had no clue that I was transgendered. Go figure . . . 

I had failed to qualify for an upgrade to first class on this trip, and so I was flying in the back in what I like to fondly call the “cattle class”. I’d just stored my things away and made myself comfortable when I heard the flight attendant talking to two rather large women a few rows up from me. From what I could gather, the bulkhead seat that one of them had been given, was a bit different from the rest of the seats in that instead of having a center arm between the seats that could be lifted out of the way if desired, the seats had a solid and permanent divider between them.  Given the size of the woman, not being able to lift the center divider out of the way was gonna be a problem.  I guess I was too obvious in paying attention to the conversation, because the flight attendant saw me looking their way and stepped back to me.

“Miss, would you mind changing seats with her so that they can sit together? The other lady is in the seat next to you.”

“No, I don’t mind at all.” I told her, and gathered my things up, and stepped forward the two or three rows. The two women look horribly embarrassed and thanked me several times as they made their way past me. As the second woman passed me, she turned around and spoke to me with a laugh in er eyes.

“It’s probably better for you anyway,” she said with a grin and with a heavy Hispanic accent, “She would have smooshed you!” I was so delighted that she was trying to keep things cheerful despite her clear discomfort and embarrassment, so I didn’t hesitate to laugh with her.

“Nah, not at all. You are most welcome.” I replied with a laugh, and patted her on the shoulder. I really did feel bad for them though, because they honestly were not that darned large. The airlines have gone way overboard these days in trying to cram more and more seats into the limited space, and even relatively slim folks are crowded and cramped. For someone with just a few extra pounds, flying must be a complete nightmare . . . 

When the rental car shuttle bus dropped me and a dozen others off at their facility, I outsmarted myself into a tour of the San Jose airports parking garage. Avis had informed me via email what space my car was in, and since I didn’t have to worry about going to the counter, I just decided to step away from the crowd headed that way and simply walk directly into the parking area. The joke was on me though as apparently the rental cars are kept several floors up, and you have to enter the area where the rental car counters are just to get to the elevator. By the time I had realized this, and discovered that there was not a single elevator in the garage area, I was pretty well committed to walking completely around the exterior of the facility until I could enter it from the other side. So much for being clever . . .

The following day I met with my customer to repair their FTIR and she started off by making me a nervous wreck when I called her from their visitor entrance.

“I’m glad you’re here!” she told me with an excited tone. “I hope you don’t mind, but we have our FTIR expert here from Michigan and she wants to watch what you are doing and ask you a few questions.”

“I don’t mind at all!” I replied with false enthusiasm, because usually this is bad news for me and for the job I have to do. Often, when a company flies their expert in to “work with me”, it means I’m going to have to multitask, and try to concentrate and figure out what is wrong, do what is needed to fix it, and all of this while explaining everything that I am doing to their expert and answering their questions. Fortunately this didn’t turn out to be so bad, and she asked reasonable questions, and seemed to understand that there were times when she would have to step off a little and let me think, and so I was actually done at about 2PM. 

I’m not sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing, but my hotel in Dublin CA was only a block from a strip mall where there is a DSW shoe store, a Ross Dress for Less, and a Marshalls.  With an afternoon to myself, I chose to spend it shopping, and I found several really awesome deals! At DSW, I found a pair of $70 Mary Janes on sale for only $13! They had two straps, and this didn’t exactly delight me, but you sure couldn’t beat the price, and so they went home with me! In Ross, I found several dresses that I tried on, and three that I bought. One of them was a pretty awesome purple dress that I intended to wear for my trip home. It was a size 14 and actually just a little large for me, but not too bad, and so I grabbed it! In Marshalls I didn’t find anything for me, but I did find a couple of really cute outfits for my 10 year old daughter. I guess I did good because she gushed and squealed when she saw them.

The San Jose area is one of those places like Virginia and WA D.C. where traffic can be a real nightmare. I’ve had times where it took me two hours to go only twenty miles, and so I made sure to leave for the airport the next morning about four hours before my flight, even though the airport was only about thirty miles away. Well, either my caution was unnecessary, or traffic doesn’t start until after 6AM, because I really hit none to speak of. I was at the airport and standing at the Delta counter with more than three hours left before my 10AM flight.

“Oh hi, and welcome back! It’s been quite a while!” The Delta rep who had spoken was a young woman in her mid-twenties I’d guess, and I did not recognize her, but she had obviously recognized me!

“Well thank you! You must have one heck of a memory!” I replied. She just kind of waved at me and I realized that she was on the phone, and had apparently spoken to me during a lull in the conversation. Now though, she was clearly engaged with a customer on the other end of the line and so I just waved hello back at her.

As I made my way through the TSA inspection point, there were two young ladies standing behind me, and I am guessing that they were probably sisters. Both topped out at less than five feet tall, had long glossy hair, and the same tanned complexion. In short (forgive the pun), they were perfect and adorable.

“Now just remember not to sweat!” one of them told the other with a laugh. “That’s really nasty when you’re stuck on an airplane!”  I turned around and grinned at her.

“Oh thanks! But no pressure right?!” I told her with wink and everyone laughed. That comment came back to haunt her a few minutes later though, because as I sat on the other side of the check point putting my shoes back on, I watched her get flagged for a random inspection.

“But I’m going to miss my flight!” she gently complained to the inspector.

“Nah, this wont take more than thirty seconds and then you’ll be on your way!’ he assured her as he swabbed her hands with a cotton stick and placed it in a machine.  By this time I had my things together and as I walked past her I smiled.

“Don’t forget not to sweat!” I told her and batted my eyes at her in an exaggerated fashion to let her know I was teasing. She actually busted up laughing so I guess she thought it was amusing too. You know Karma is a bitch though, and I shouldn’t have teased her about her predicament because my day went straight downhill faster than a greased bowling ball after that.

As soon as I sat down in the gate area, I got a text from Delta telling me that my flight was seriously delayed, I was going to miss my connection, and they were trying to rebook me. Usually when I get these messages, it is complete with the new flight information and this was the first time I’d ever received one that just said that they were trying to book me on an alternate flight. This didn’t fill me with confidence and so I went ahead and called Delta.

I spent over an hour on the phone with them, and most of that time was him telling me that he didn’t have any options other than a very late flight that would get me home after midnight. Eventually, he ended up cancelling my flights entirely, and booking me on their competitor US Airways!  Now I made my way back out of the secure area and then made the long walk clear across the terminal to the US Airways counter. The man there told me that I was out of luck as far as them getting my baggage retrieved from Delta and moved to the US Airways flight, but he assured me that I had plenty of time if I wanted to go back to Delta and try to get my bags back from myself. So I made yet another very long walk to the other end of the terminal to retrieve my bags, and much to my surprise, they actually did go and get them for me. I really hadn’t thought that they would! Towing my heavy bags behind me, I yet again made the long walk clear across the terminal.

Going through the TSA checkpoint for the second time in an hour, the inspector did kind of a double take when she saw me.

“Welcome back! Long time no see!” she told me with a laugh.

“Well, you know I just enjoyed this process so much the first time that I thought I’d do it again!” I told her with a laugh, and then explained what had happened while she inspected my ID. Oh, the good news? US Airways gave me upgrades to first class on both flights! Yay!

Something's Burning . . .

So not what, a week after saying that I thought I’d pretty much had it with flying pretty, guess what I find myself doing? Yepper, I’m sure that you guessed it . . .

I made several trips the old fashioned way, you know,  dressed like a dude, but it was killing me. I spent each and every trip obsessing about it, envious of the ladies, and feeling sorry for myself. After three or four trips this way, I decided that I’d had enough and so got back onto the horse. 

Given that I’ve been suffering from a fairly serious lack of confidence, I decided to wear one of my favorite outfits that I felt confident in, and so out came a purple top and my black Palazzo pants.

When I parked my Mustang in the airports parking garage, I was gonna stop and take a photo or two of a beat up, wrinkled, old cross dresser in front of it, but as soon I opened the door and the heat came flooding in, I knew that was outta the question. It was so hot that in the brief period it took me to gather my backpack up, I was already feel perspiration forming on my forehead. No way in hell I was gonna stand out there in that kind of heat trying to snap photos. I would have smelled like a goat by the time that I got into the airport!

My confidence got a quick boost when a man stepping off of the elevator as I approached it actually jumped back to it and held it for me as I approached, towing both of my large bags behind me. I thanked him and then made my way to the check in counter at Delta. One of the gentlemen at Delta that has always been remarkably friendly with me greeted me at the counter, and I was amused to see that he had gone entirely bald and apparently chosen to shave his head. I couldn’t  help but grin, knowing that under my wig I was every bit as bald as he.

“So, umm, is it just me, or have we gone a bit shiny up top??” I asked him with a smile, and while patting my own head with my hand.

“Yeah, I finally gave in and went ahead and shaved it!” he replied with an embarrassed smile. He was so clearly embarrassed by my comment that I felt guilty for having made it, but it was too late now! He has been checking me in at Delta for years now and knows exactly who and what I am, so I almost told him that I have the same problem, and wanted to tell him ‘I feel your pain brother!’ but it just seemed wrong so I let it go . . .

I was working at the Purdue University where they are experimenting with rocket propellant and using our equipment in the process. At one point we stepped away from the area where we were working, and when we returned, we both smelled something burning. I made sure that the smell was NOT coming from the FTIR that I had just repaired, and then I started throwing my test equipment and tools back into my box. She just looked at me kind of odd.

“You guys work on rocket fuel here, and now we smell something burning and can’t figure out where it’s coming from? Yeah, I’m getting the hell outta here!” I told her with a wink. Once she started laughing, I figured the joke was over, and started pulling my equipment back outta the box. We never did find out where the burning smell was coming from, but I haven’t seen any news stories about the university going up in flames, so I assume it’s all good . . .

I’ve always been embarrassingly honest in my blogs, telling the good with the bad, the proud with the embarrassing, so I see no point to not telling it exactly as it feels and seems to me these days. On my flight home, I had the overwhelming feeling that those that I encountered knew exactly what I was and were just tolerating me. Very few people bothered to speak with me, and those that did, didn’t seem all that thrilled about it. I don’t know if that is real and accurate, or if it is just in my head, but there you have it. I feel torn between a rock and a hard space when it comes to flying pretty now. On the one hand, I often feel like I am nothing more than a chubby old man wearing a dress these days, but if I don’t fly pretty, I am fairly wracked with depression and envy. Can’t really win with those choices!

Well hell . . .

So not a week after posting that I think I may stop flying pretty all of the time, where did I find myself on Friday? Yeah, browsing through a sale at DSW Shoe Warehouse and buying two pairs of $80 heels on sale for $15 each.

That was the good news.

The bad news? I also bought two size 14 dresses at Goodwill and they were too freaking small! In a year or so, I've gone from a size 12 to the point where a size 14 is too small. That SUCKS!

Just about done . . .

Well, the more I think on it, the more I think I am just about done traveling transgendered. For the last year or so I’ve been growing increasingly unhappy about it all. It’s more than just my vanity and my unhappiness at growing old and wrinkled too, it’s more about the way that I feel, or don’t feel, while traveling these days. It used to be that I would grin like an idiot for the entire day that I was traveling, feeling absolutely thrilled to be spending a day out in the world as a woman. 

I felt pretty.

I felt happy . . . 

For at least the last three or four trips though, I’ve felt like absolutely nothing more than an old man wearing a dress. I’m not using that as a figure of speech either – I mean it quite literally; I have felt like nothing more or less than a man wearing a dress. 

For me there is no joy in that, there is no feeling of wonder in it . . .

Even were I not feeling this way about myself, I suspect that I will stop writing my blog soon, because let’s face it – how many ways can I tell essentially the same story over and over before I get tired of writing it and you get tired of reading it? In the early days, everything was new and exciting. People were not so used to seeing people like me, and so there was much to write about and many fun things that happened. These days I’ve pretty much seen it all, and most of the people that I interact with have come to know me, and so very few things occur that are worth writing about.

So I’m not quite calling it quits just yet, but it is coming soon my friends. . .

Oh – here is a pic of an old dude who flew to Detroit this week in a skirt:

Nothing interesting happened.

No one said anything in the least bit amusing to me, and I said nothing of interest myself.  It was just a dude who wore a skirt while traveling to Detroit. . .