Central Coast Senior

Yesterday was a big day. With my vacation over I had to return to work. I went in to say my goodbyes, turn in my badges and retire. After 26.5 years with Boeing I was ready to move on and do something different.

I should have known that my plan was doomed to fail as I couldn’t even get to the office without having to sit in a back up on the freeway so that Caltrans could fix some guardrails. So after 15 minutes of crawling on the freeway like I was back in southern California, I was able to complete my journey to VAFB.

When I got to work, I could see that I was going to be missed. I walked to my office and there taped to my door was a big sign that stayed WELCOME BACK!! And then below that in smaller print they added “Now go home” Obviously I was going to be missed. It was funny my office was really not my office anymore. You could tell because clean!! Definitely not a workspace I would have been using.

My plan for the day was to go in spend an hour or so saying good bye to people and then go to lunch with Dawn and Frank. Figure in by 10 and out by Noon. A two hour day in the office seemed perfect. Well I was surprised, how difficult it was to actually say good bye. Everyone I met wanted to talk for a bit and it was a real pleasure spending time talking with them. It’s funny I liked everyone it seemed a little bit more than normal and I figured that was because I could see them as people and not coworkers. On this day I didn’t need anything from them no status, no paperwork, and It made a difference. The bad part of that though was that my in by 10 out by Noon suffered. It took me 3 hours to actually walk around and talk to all the people and it made me realize 2 things. 1) that I really had worked with a great group of people. And 2) getting out was the definitely right thing to be doing. The actual sign out process took all of 5 minutes, way simple.

So after driving away for the last time, I met with Frank and Dawn at Rooney’s in Orcutt for a quick lunch, only lasted 4 hours and between the drinks and the food we had a great time. They told me how sad everyone was that I wasn’t there and that people from the program in Huntsville were sorry that I was gone. Hard to believe, but maybe…

So as I was saying goodbye to them, we agreed to try and do this once a month just so we could stay in touch. Definitely looking forward to that.

And the part about my legacy? It seems one of my phrases that I used to explain life at work has begun to show up on white boards in offices throughout the building. And the phrase?

You have no friends at work…..

Go figure.

After the 3rd grade , I don’t have many memories of the 4th grade. But when I hit the 5th boy did I start to have fun. I mean how many people can actually claim that they had the ability to fly like a bird!! My method was pretty straight forward, I would get on the swing and after getting it going really high I would launch myself from the top of the arc and begin flapping my arms like mad.

And since I hung there for awhile, it was obvious to me that I was flying. The best part was that over time, my memories of this somehow managed to improve the experience to the point where I was able to actually control my height and stay up waaay longer than science would say was possible. I even have memories of performing this feat by leaping off of the pull up bar. I also remember the landing being a little more painful than normal.
And for the record there are witnesses, lots of them. Now I suppose you think if this were the case I would have names to associate with this event. Well I don’t, what 5th grader would take the time to record the names of people witnessing their flight? After all I was pretty busy flapping.

I don’t remember there names. But trust me they were there.