Yikes!!

Thanks for the post, Jim. It was good to see you as well, and the espresso was much needed since I had to drive back thru NYC to get to New Jersey!!

Yes, i just "assumed" Fred was current on the firm's folklore relating to the basketball - it never occured to me that he was not aware of that "tradition." (See previous post!!) Those were certainly different days....live and learn!!

Worlds Collide!!

I was playing with a quartet last night at a relatively new restaurant in Clark, NJ - and was very happy to see Ruth and Carlos Pinto who just happened to "drop in." We were sitting there talking about the very large property this place was on (there was a nine hole golf course here as well)....Ruth asked me, "Don't you remember this site?? We worked on it back in the Hart days." Turns out we were at the old General Motors Clark Assembly Plant, that was closed years ago and capped with soil to create a golf course...we did some of the preliminary work on the site for GM, and it became one of the models for the NJ Brownfields Program. There's no escape from this "business." (We did stick to the bottled water, however.)

"The Right Stuff"

Most of you know of my love and fascination for "all things flying" - so, you can image how I felt attending my godson's graduation ceremony at Shepperd AFB in Texas over the weekend. Matt finished his primary training and now moves on to fly F-16s at Luke AFB in Arizona...there was a red-carpet day on Friday for family, and we were able to tour the base and see some of the equipment up close - I got to sit in an F-15, a B-1 bomber, and spent some time in the T-38 simulator (and didn't crash it!!).

The graduation ceremony was very well done - the military sure knows how to run these. There is an old tradition in the Air Force - a pilot never wears his first set of wings. In a private ceremony (pilots only) he breaks them in half, keeping one half and giving the other to a best friend or relative for good luck and safe-keeping. The halves are never to be brought together as long as the pilot is alive - after that, they are reunited for good luck in the next life. I'm sitting here looking at half of Matt's wings - he presented them to me at the end of the night - I nearly keeled over.

Please remember all our brave men and women in the military as you read this, and give them our full support!!