Fifteen Days and a wake up

I remember some events in my life when I was a day counter. Do you remember the times as a kid you were counting the days until Christmas morning? If you were like me you were also counting the hours Christmas Eve so that you could get up and see what Santa brought.

As you neared the end of a school year you were counting the days until the summer vacation started. Your senior year in high school those last days of the beginning of the rest of your life moved so slowly. Looking back you now wished they moved even more slowly.

I posted the title to this chapter of the blog on my Facebook page and Harvey Carsey knew immediately the connotation. When you got to Viet Nam you usually came up with a short timers calendar that you would mark off in reverse order of how many days before you could go home. The last day was always a wake up and not a full day because that is the day things began to happen. When you got down to less than 10 days and a wake up then you were known as a single digit midget. When you obtained that status nobody dared mess with you. You were going home and usually did not hit a lick at a snake the rest of the time.

Well, that is how I feel about this trip to Big Bend. It is countdown Christmas, summer vacation and in a small way freedom bird day from Nam. I am ready to go and this will not be anti-climatic. One of our contributors on Big Bend Chat has a website that he posts pictures of Big Bend. His name is Tom Avery and I thought I would include a link to his website so you could see what a beautiful place it is.

http://www.thomasjavery.com/proj_big_bend/index.html#0101