Today would have been my father’s 73rd birthday and was easy to remember given the more famous man he shared it with!

He passed away three weeks short of making 71 and his birthdays since have been wonderful days to remember the good times we had together and share one with the audience.

If you ever visited with him, you’d learn quickly that he was a tour guide that could pack the maximum number of activities in the minimum amount of time. He used to joke that he was the best tour guide Disney couldn’t afford and there was plenty of times he showed how true that was.

But his best tour guiding had to be the summer of 1982 when I was able to visit for two weeks whilst he was stationed in Heidelberg in what was then West Germany.

Even now I’m still amazed at how much he packed into that visit…we wandered all over from Frankfurt to Garmisch with stops in Oberammergau and the Zugspitze (we darned near got trapped at the summit as a snow storm a few thousand feet below us started moving up toward us…we were on the last cable car down the mountain and the unlucky ones who missed it were trapped for a couple of days!).

Then it was through the Brennerpass through Austria to Vipiteno Italy and back (we think they were smuggling things in the hold)…then back to Heidelberg long enough to catch a coach to Paris.

Our bus got robbed after the Louvre and getting back into Germany in these pre-Schengen times involved a hat circulating round the bus about four times to bribe the border guards as the burglars had gotten our driver’s passport.

Then back once more to catch a tour bus along the Rhine and then into Belgium and the Netherlands to catch the old ferry from Vlissingen across the North Sea to Sheerness England for a quick day trip into London.

I’ll never forget that trip across the North Sea that night. The pool in the bottom of the boat was like a wave pool with the 12-15’ waves we were taking from the very stormy weather outside. Let’s just say I’m still amused that my tough as nails Special Forces dad met his match on that boat…to be honest, he never really was a sailor even when he owned a speedboat of his own. Stan Rogers was definitely singing about him that night:

Oh the waves inside me belly
were as high as those outside…
and even though I’m never seasick
I lost dinner over side…

The motorway into London was a crash course in colourful German from a driver who did not think much of driving on the left or speed limits or English drivers for that matter. And then our tour guide Aunty who had us running from Buck House to Horseguards to catch the Changing of the Guard.

And then it was quickly back to Heidelberg for a couple more days before flying back to North Carolina.

What a whirlwind tour of most of Western Europe hitting pretty much all of the high points…I can’t remember ever being so exhausted in my life. But I wouldn’t trade that two weeks of exhaustion and traveling to rival the Amazing Race for anything…

Thanks Dad! 🙂