It's not just about the jets

Sea & Shore, Fall, 2004 by Kevin R. Sandlin

That conversation was my first clue things would be different on my trip home. I checked out of the BOQ that morning and was on the road, wearing all my heavy-weather clothing, except the dry suit. I really was enjoying the ride.

I got to watch the sun come up while heading toward Miami, Fla., and found myself grabbing a late lunch in Melbourne, Fla., eight hours later. "So far, so good," I thought--prematurely. By the time I hit Jacksonville, Fla., it was starting to get cold, and I could see some rain in my future. As I headed to Savannah, Ga., it was starting to get nasty, and I was wondering if pushing the situation was such a good idea, but I pressed on.

Now I remember that any time there's a doubt, there's no doubt--right? Around midnight, I was very wet and cold, and I needed to stop a bit to rest and to recover some warmth in my body. I realized how hard it is to ride at night, especially in bad weather. It's even tougher when tractor-trailers whiz by, and you get caught in their airstream. They can shake you up pretty good. Try doing all this while riding with one hand on the throttle and the other cleaning off your glasses so you can see. Oh, and I almost forgot the construction zone--complete with cones and a ditch on one side--that wasn't well lit.

Suddenly, all I could think about was an old church joke: At 45 mph, you're singing "Just a Closer Walk With Thee; at 55 mph, you change your tune to "Nearer My God to Thee;" and, at 65 mph, you switch to "Lord I'm Coming Home!" That's how I felt. I think I was more scared at that point in my trip than I've ever been in an airplane, and God was hearing about it as I rode.

Once I made it through the construction zone, I stopped for another long rest and thaw-out period. As the sun came up the next morning, I was almost to the end of my interstate travels and ready to finish out the last five or six hours on smaller roads. I wanted to get home really bad, and nothing was going to stop me. Even as I was writing this "there I was" story in my head, I didn't stop and heed my own advice. I made it home around 1230 that day, more than 30 hours after I had started.

After spending an hour in the shower, thawing out, I began to reflect on what had happened over the last couple of days and how close I had come to planting myself along the way. I compared my ride on the Harley to a Tomcat flight and found lots of similarities. I learned many good, albeit old, lessons, starting with the problem of get-home-itis. How many jets have we lost this way? How many of our Sailors haven't come back from holiday stand-down because they pushed themselves too far and left this earth behind?

If it's so cold you have to wear your Navy-issue anti-exposure suit to survive, shouldn't that fact be telling you something? We use these suits to keep us alive in emergency situations, and here I was, wearing it voluntarily for a motorcycle road trip. Did I break my crew day? Absolutely! What's a $50 hotel room for six or seven hours, compared to a hospital stay?