Blog 557 – 02.26.2017

My Life On The Road

In anticipation of my “marching orders” on a new work assignment I am packing up my things and and trying to write a couple of blogs ahead to have to post while I am traveling. I am so grateful for computers, tablets, and smart phones that make it so easy to write a daily blog and stay in touch with my friends around the world. I love my life on the road and hope I get to continue it for some time to come.

A few days ago on Social Media, someone posted a long list of states, countries, and a few cities with a little symbol of an airplane pinned next to the name to indicate that they had been in that place. They suggested that for fun you copy and paste the list and repost it with the places you had been so marked. They went on to say that the average person living in the U.S. could only mark eight. Wow, I roughly counted about sixty that I had marked. I failed to erase the planes from two that I had not been to yet but if I have enough time and the opportunity I hope to see them and a lot more.

As a poor boy growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee my one claim to fame was that as a small child I had lived with my family for a couple of years in Detroit, Michigan and had driven across Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio to get there. Of course, I had no recollection of any of those travels, just stories my parents told me. Up until I graduated high school and joined the Army on my eighteenth birthday I had only been in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, at least
that I could remember. My first military assignment was to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Before my three year enlistment was up I would add, California, Hawaii, Guam, Okinawa, South Vietnam, Japan, South Carolina, and North Carolina to my list of “been there” places. Since those days I have visited all fifty states and eleven other countries. Carol King once sang, “I sure hope the road don’t come to own me.” Perhaps it is too late for that in my case. I find myself three or four months in to any new travel assignment itching to see what is around the next bend in the road.

Many people dream of buying a travel trailer when they retire and seeing all those states that they have not visited yet or of taking an around the world cruise but if indeed I ever retire it will be to a writer’s cabin in the mountains to share the adventures of a lifetime on the road. I paraphrase the Life Is A Highway song, “Life is a highway and I want to ride it all life long.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White