The Stirling Code gets broken
Why I’m headed down Interstate 5 on a family road trip this long weekend
Good Morning! Welcome to Aug. 29, 2017! What’s that? You’re not wanting to come to grips with the fact that in just a few days time it will be September? And with it the realization that fall is getting ever so closer? Me? I’ve been shuddering for days now. The start of September means Labour Day. It signifies mom, dad, kids, family dog, friends and relatives are planning to venture out, one last time for 2017, and enjoy a long weekend trip away from home. The last one of this year.
My question has always been how can you enjoy a trip ‘down the road’ when it will take you five times longer than normal to get there? I could never see the point, and never subjected my family to any long weekend freeway parking lot frenzy.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been in that mad house many a time. But then, the wheels under me numbered 18, 22 or more. I was still NOT a happy camper, but because I was making money, not spending it, the bite was not quite so painful. I was even more tolerant of the fools all around my rig.
But guess what? On September 3, I will be driving south on Interstate 5, and not in a big rig, but in a four-wheeler. I know, you’re wondering why I am going totally against the Stirling Code of Conduct. Blame it on my best friend from high school.
Charles (Chad) Edward Burkett, grew up on Long Island, N.Y., and he and his family moved to Manlius, N.Y. some six months before my family moved there from ‘The Rock.’
Teenagers. Neighbours. Same school. Same age. Same teenage likes and dislikes, and an instant friendship blossomed and flourished. We’d disappear with our 22s in search of pop cans. Borrow one of the mom’s cars, and go to Green Lake for swimming with buddies. It was what teenagers did, and I hope, still do. Having fun, being totally carefree before reality and life-in-general gets in the way.
We graduated from the same high school, and then off to start the process of trying to figure out how to make a living without asking for handouts from mom and dad anymore.
I went back to Canada, but stayed in touch. Letters. Snail mail. Phone calls.
Some four years after grad, I went back to New York for a family event Chad was hosting, but then life got in the way of our friendship again. The years, like the miles, quickly rolled passed.
Life took many peaks and valleys, but the new age of electronics came to the rescue of our friendship.
Not sure if it was Chad or me, but somehow, we hooked up again, and sort of thought we had found the right person. One phone call (new and different telephone numbers from our university days), and two words into the call we knew it was “the same guy.” Strange how the mind never forgets the important things that you unknowingly store away, the sound of a voice being the one to which we both responded to.
We quickly caught up on who’s new in the zoo. Who has how many kids, grandkids, wife’s name, and career, and then the two very important and very relevant questions. When are we going to hook up, and when are you going to retire?
Chad has four kids. Beat me by one. One of his girls moved about an hour away from us, here on the Wet Coast, but in the Excited States. Chad and his wife are coming to check out the daughter’s new home, and invited us to come visit.
That’s the kind of invitation one doesn’t have to check with the wife first before answering in the affirmative. Nor follow the Stirling Code of Conduct, at least the line about never travelling on the highway during long weekends.
I’ll tell you one more thing.; there will be man-hugs and handshakes, but definitely, no weeping. I have to draw the line somewhere, even if it’s been almost 50 years since the two of us set eyes on each other.
The Code would have it no other way.
I could fill a newspaper with stories about life on the road, but why not share yours? Send them to Driving editor Andrew McCredie at amccredie@postmedia.com.