Chapter 11: What is the Farthest You Have Ever Travelled?

Here is another vague question. I guess that I could simply answer “7,404 miles.” I will instead talk about some long trips I made. The distance has no bearing on the subject.

The first long trip I remember is driving from Seattle to Ionia, Michigan. The driving time would be about 34 hours, but with stops at Yellowstone National Park, Mt Rushmore, and some roadside attractions, it took about four days. It might be hard to imagine a family with four boys and two parents spending four days in ’49 Ford, but you can watch the 1983 movie, “Vacation” with Chevy Chase, to get an idea. Well, it wasn’t that bad, but it was a little frustrating at times. “I’m hungry!” “I have to go to the bathroom!” “Are we there yet?” “Jimmy’s poking me!” “Are we there yet?”

My longest trip was probably from Seattle to Vietnam. First, I flew to Travis AFB located near San Francisco. From there, we flew to Viet Nam via Wake Island, Guam, Yokota Air Base in Japan and finally landed at Cam Ranh Air Base in Viet Nam. We had to stay overnight at Wake because out plane had an air-conditioning problem. There is nothing to do on Wake unless you like swimming. It’s all beach and runway. The runway on Guam was interesting. There is a cliff at the end of the runway that drops down to the ocean. When taking off, the plane kind of dips down toward the water before it finally starts climbing. The first thing I remember after landing in Viet Nam was when they opened the plane door. It was like opening a can of coffee and you hear that “pssshh” sound and smell the fragrance of the coffee grounds, except, on the plane it was the humid and strange smell of a very foreign country. We had to stay overnight at Cam Ranh. They put us up in tents. There was so much sand that there were boardwalks going everywhere. A few of us were sitting on the boardwalk having a smoke when we saw flares being dropped from gunships circling the base. We could also see the planes shooting toward the ground with red tracers. (The gunships were AC-47 Spooky a.k.a. Puff the Magic Dragon.) It was at this point that it really hit me that I was in a war zone.

While being stationed in Okinawa, I was able to take a ride on the USS Blueridge. This ship is a command ship that provides command, control, computers and communication for a group of naval ships. The Navy had what they called “See to World Cruise.” A select number of Air Force, Army and Marines were allowed to travel on the ship to see how it functions. Different cruises would travel to Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or the Philippines. I was lucky to get picked for a trip to Taiwan. They traveled slowly to give each group a chance to have a tour of the different areas on the ship. We arrived in Taipei on the next day. The ship is small, but it was very interesting to see how many computers were on board and how they controlled other ships during battle. During the tour, the ship captain announced that they would be dropping trash off the stern, or back end, of the ship. (This kind of surprised me, dropping plastic bags of trash into the ocean. I am sure that they have stopped doing that to help keep our oceans clean.)

Anyway… we were told that a Russian “fishing trawler” a.k.a. spy ship, had been “shadowing,” or following, the Blueridge for a while. The Blueridge is home ported at Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan. When the ship was in international waters, the trawler would follow them to try to get information. When they reached Okinawa, the trawler remained in international waters and then continued following them once the Blueridge was in international waters again. The trawler travelled parallel to the Blueridge. But, after dropping the bags of trash, the trawler moved to the read of the ship and picked up all of the trash bags to look for classified info. Such a fun job!

The only person I knew on the ship was Captain Carl Puckhaber. We worked in the same squadron on Okinawa, and we are still friends now. He was with two other officer friends and we all went to town, in Taipei, to do some drinking. It happened to be a Chinese holiday and the hotels were pretty much booked. One of Carl’s friends spoke fluent Chinese. Through him, we were able to find a hotel. Before leaving the ship, we were told to return to the ship by 8 a.m. to get an update on an approaching typhoon. At that time, they told us that it looked like the typhoon changed course, so we were free to back into town. The officers I was with wanted to take a nap before going. A couple of hours later, it was announced that the typhoon changed course again and was headed to Taiwan. Ships do not want to be in port during a typhoon because they would be damaged banging into the docks, so they started preparing to head back to sea. I don’t now how they did it, but everybody got back to the ship before we set sail.

At first, we headed toward Okinawa, but the typhoon started traveling the same direction. We changed course to Kyushu. After about 8 hours the typhoon changed course again and it was safe to go to Okinawa. We rode the typhoon for almost 24 hours. While walking down the corridors on the ship, it was like climbing a hill, then running down the hill. Each section of the ship had heavy thick doors. You had to be sure to close the door and rotate a handle until it locked. This was to prevent the whole ship flooding in case of an accident. While eating, you had to hold on to your food tray with one hand or it would slide off the table. The most exciting thing was that I was able to go to the bridge during the typhoon. We climbed up most of the way inside the ship. On the main deck we had to go outside for a short distance then climb some steep steps to enter the bridge. This is where they “drive” the ship. It was like in a movie. The bow of the ship would go high in the air then came crashing down. The water would spray up to the bridge’s windows. Large life rafts were secured with very thick rope to the railing of the ship. The sea waves were so strong that I saw one of them ripped off the railing. A sailor, with a rope tied around his waist, had to crawl out and resecure it to the deck. I now understand the power of the wind and sea.

We slept on bunk beds. I had the lower bunk. If I slept on my side, my shoulder would hit the bunk above me. If I slept on my back, with my legs straight, my feet would hang over the end of the bed. I am glad that I didn’t join the navy. It was a great experience, but once was enough.

This is kind of long, but I will tell one more “long journey” story. When I was stationed at Nellis AFB in Last Vegas, I decided to take a trip to West Virginia with two friends of mine. One of them lived in the West Virginia panhandle and the other lived nearby in Pennsylvania. My friend’s father inseminated cows for a living. He had a “herd” of bulls in a freezer in the trunk of his car. When a dairy farmer had a cow that was “ready,” he would head to the farm and inseminate it. It was rather interesting to watch, but I don’t think that I would want that job.

We left Nellis AFB in Nevada and drove straight through to West Virginia. We started by driving through Arizona and New Mexico then slowly headed north. We didn’t want to drive through Colorado because of a big chance of snow in the mountains. We only stopped for gas and bought some bread, bologna, chips and soda and ate in the car. Driving east wasn’t so bad. The person riding “shotgun” would keep the driver awake and the third person could take a nap in the back seat. We would rotate drivers every two or three hours. Once we stopped on the freeway in Ohio. It was before sunrise and we were all tired, so we got out of the car and ran around the car in the freezing cold to wake up. By chance, there was a cop car on the other side of the fence watching us. He turned his spotlight on us and asked what we were doing. We told him where we came from and going to. He advised that we get off the freeway and get some sleep. Of course, we said “OK” but continued driving. We got to our destination safely. The driving time was about 30 hours. Returning to Nellis was more difficult. One of my friends picked up his car, so there were three of us with two cars. When we got to the final mountain range that we had to cross, it started snowing. We didn’t have snow tires or snow chains. We were tired but we kept going so that we wouldn’t get snowed-in on the mountain pass. Once we started descending the mountain on the other side, the snow stopped. Another safe trip completed.

Below are photos of an AC47 Spooky on the ground and another one firing tracer rounds outside of the base. The ship is the USS Blueridge with Mt Fuji in the background. The car is a 49 Ford that looks similar to the one we had when I was a child.