Roadrunnin'

A million miles of vagabond sky
Clocked up above the clouds
I'm still your man for the roaming
For as long as there's roamin' allowed

Mark Knopfler – ‘All the Roadrunning’

After several decades of oft-times intensive short, medium, and long-haul business travel, I was fairly certain when I left my last employer in 2003 and moved to Red Bluff to open my own business that I would not be called on to make any more long-haul business trips. I didn’t really want to travel like that anymore, especially since 9/11. Been there, done that, and bought numerous tee-shirts.

But as soon as we think we are done with something in our lives, God, the universe, or whatever we care to call our higher power has a way of winking and nodding in our direction. That cosmic joke may be on us.

In 2007, the economic crisis came along, the real estate market tumbled, and my small business—tied to real estate as it was—fell right along with it. Unlike many who were less fortunate people, I had the good fortune to find a small but growing company in the local area that needed my skill set, and they hired me over three years ago. It’s been a good match, and the job hasn’t entailed much travel. At least it hadn’t until my employer was acquired by a much larger China-based firm last month.

The good news was, the new parent company intends to keep our local unit running and so our jobs are safe—at least as safe as jobs really can be in today’s world. However, I, along with several other people at work, was told to get ready to travel to China. Our new parent company had much to show us, and much for us to learn.

So, last week, I traveled to mainland China to visit our new parent company’s headquarters and then returned. It was a total distance of over fifteen thousand miles and over thirty hours spent airborne, and a bunch more hours spent sitting in airports waiting for my next flight.

Never say never; don’t even let yourself think it. The universe may have plans for you that are beyond your ability to foresee.

I’m a Mark Knopfler fan from way back in his Dire Straits days, so it was only natural that I had some of his music on my new Apple iPad purchased for my trip. Flying home, sitting in the cabin of a 747-400 with the window shades pulled down somewhere high over the trackless Pacific Ocean, I passed the time listening to music. Mark and Emmy Lou Harris harmonized melodically in my headphones as they sang Knopfler’s song ‘All the Roadrunning.’ In that moment so far away from home, the lyrics of that song and their performance spoke to me in a special way.

I reflected back on my roots growing up so long ago now in Tennessee, in a tiny little town named Livingston in the foothills of the Appalachians. Sixty plus years later, and Livingston is not much bigger than it was when I was a boy.

Sitting there on that Cathay-Pacific 747-400 jet as it powered eastward towards California and home, I recalled my youthful frustration that my family never traveled or went anywhere to speak of. Other people I knew travelled and saw wonderous things far far away. Would I ever get to set foot out of Tennessee I wondered; would I ever see what was ‘over the next hill.’ In those days, it seemed like I had never been anywhere, and had no prospects of ever going anywhere either.

As my life has worked out, I can now look back and say with no exaggeration, ‘boy did I ever see what was over that hill!’ Out of fifty states, I’ve been in all but three: Hawaii, Idaho, and Vermont. I’ve set foot on four of the world’s seven continents: North America, Europe, Oceana/Australia, and most recently Asia. Almost a million life-time miles in the air travelling to a host of places: Helsinki, Turku, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, London, Paris, Geneva, York, Dublin, Sydney, Melbourne, New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Anchorage, Juneau, San Juan, Caguas, Nassau, Hong Kong, Hangzhou.

In reality, I am beginning to get a little long in the tooth to do too much of’ ‘road running;’ it takes more out of me physically than it used to. But sitting there last week on that airplane crossing the vast Pacific ocean yet again, and listening to those lyrics, it struck me that that the love of travel to faraway places is in my blood; it’s in my DNA.

“I’m still your man for the roaming, for as long as there’s roamin’ allowed.”