Crew photo 1977-8, Minot AFB

These color photos replaced the B&W photos in the crew lounge.  I took this with me the day I left Minot.  The 235 alerts were over.  The late night training rides and standboard evaluation rides in the trainer were over.  Seven highly qualified ratings and two qualified ratings and no busts helped my career immeasurably.  I had three commanders, Bill Graham, Dan Gurganus, and Tim Sholtis.  I had three deputies:  the guy I cannot remember from Oregon, Pat "PJ" Johnson, and Jake Gladden.

 

When I left, I drove south from the base, through the town of Minot toward Bismark.  I listened to Jimmie Rodgers "The World I Used to Know" on my car cassette recorder.  I took the highway across the lower part of North Dakota, turning south to pass through the eastern edge of Iowa and Nebraska until I finally arrive in White Cloud, Kansas, to spend a couple of days with Grandma Breeze, Uncle Robert, and Uncle Hap and Aunt Doris. 

 

I then drove across Kansas toward Colorado, arriving at the Fedrizzi's house late one afternoon in Colorado Springs.  I checked in at the Academy the following day.

 

There was, of course, no way to know what lay ahead, that my career had little more than a year and a few months left.  But that I would remain in Colorado for the next three decades and more.  That I would live in Colorado Springs until jobs took me to Denver and then to IBM, north of Boulder.  That would eventually force me to sell my house in the Springs and live in Denver permanently.

 

We almost never have the luxury of living our lives over at any stage, undoing our mistakes, or at least one major mistake.  For years I would imagine myself returning to teach at the Academy--I had no idea under what circumstances or when.  I certainly never imagined that I would have two opportunities to apply, but be turned down both times, in 1994 and then again in 2011.

 

You sort of have to learn to defer your dreams not just indefinitely but often permanently. 

 

I wrote the following in the first RAoF book, A MILE-HIGH SAGA: 

 

"Greg occasionally wonders if he might ever have the opportunity to lift himself up above his existence and look at the entire span of his life.  Would he, in fact, be viewing a complex maze, one with several, built-in possibilities he'd never noticed?  Or would he see but a single path possible, circuitous perhaps, but puzzling only in its direct simplicity, like some grand connect-the-dots drawing?  And what kind of picture would his life's efforts reveal when all of the dots are conjoined?  Right now, however, the image seems incomplete, unfulfilled.  Several dots must still be out there, lying unconnected, he believes, waiting for him to make the junction."

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