Wednesday, August 30, 2023

REMEMBERING MY TIME DRIVING FOR THE STRATFORD AIRPORTER

It was a cold gray, windy, damp, and drizzly morning, feeling like late October.  Knowing Pheebs and I wouldn't be stopping for a walk anywhere we took the Jeep for a drive into Bayfield to drop a book off at the library for Kelly.  Needless to say, the Jeep started okay.  I couldn't drum up any photo enthusiasm so the only photo I have is the header pic showing an old dead tree down across the road just east of our Park's entrance this morning.

Facebook threw me a 2010 memory this afternoon reminding me it was 23 years ago today that I made my last trip toToronto's Pearson International Airport when I drove for the Stratford Airporter.  Here is a paragraph from my 2010 post. "It was 10 years ago today that I worked my last day for the Stratford Airporter.  That marked the end of my years there.  It also marked the end of the many hundreds of thousands of miles I spent in the madness & chaos of Canada's infamous 401 super highway.   Known for having the heaviest traffic in all of Canada, I fought my way in & out of Pearson International Airport day after day running the gauntlet of endless heavy truck traffic & frenzied drivers.  Always under heavy stress to get my passengers to the Airport on time in one piece and to catch their various flights to destinations all over the world.  Unpredictable winter storms day or night & punching through heavy morning fog.  Rain, sleet, freezing rain, no matter.  People had to make their flights on time or lose expensive vacations.  Businessmen could not afford to miss meetings in Dallas, Vancouver, Atlanta or London England.  It was an extremely stressful job but I loved it then.  I was very good at the job knowing all the shortcuts to the airport between Goderich and Toronto.  I knew the alternate routes and the alternates to the alternet routes.   And I knew the traffic patterns like the back of my hand.  For the most part I had developed sort of a sixth sense as to what other drivers were thinking & doing before they did it.  I could slip through traffic like a ghost in the night.  In the 13 years I worked that job I do not recall ever having any of my passengers miss their flights.  Oh, the traffic stories I could tell.  It was a crazy time back then & so different from the relaxed lifestyle I live now.  To this very day, I still avoid driving through major cities or heavy traffic areas but when I have occasion to do so I trot out my old driving skills and shift into my Airporter mode and get on with it."       

Al's Music Box:)) Travelin' On by Hagood Hardy from the 1975 album, 'The Homecoming'.  I've always liked this little-known song by Hagood Hardy.

GROANER'S CORNER:((  While enjoying an early morning breakfast in a northern Arizona cafe, four elderly ranchers were discussing everything from cattle, horses, and weather to how things used to be in the "good old days."  Eventually, the conversation moved on to their spouses. One gentleman turned to the fellow on his right and asked, "Roy, aren't you and your bride celebrating your 50th wedding anniversary soon?" "Yup, we sure are," Roy replied.  "Well, are you gonna do anything special to celebrate?" another man asked.  The old gentleman pondered this for a moment, then replied, "For our 25th anniversary, I took the misses to Tucson. For our 50th, I'm thinking about going down there again to pick her up.

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- My wife says I only have two faults.  I don't listen and some other stuff she keeps rattling on about.

- "I started dating a zookeeper, but it turned out he was a cheetah."

- "The most British thing I've ever heard?  A lady who said 'Well I'm sorry, but I don't apologize.'"

- "Last year I had a great joke about inflation.  But it's hardly worth it now."

- "I thought I'd start off with a joke about The Titanic just to break the ice."

- "I entered the 'How not to surrender' competition and I won hands down."

- "Nationwide must have looked pretty silly
when they opened their first branch."

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