I’ve been blessed with a lot of road trips–playing music with my band-mates in a lot of places around the country, family vacations, mission trips to the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and more. The road trip that comes to mind as I sit down to write this post is an odd little trip I took to Fort Collins, Colorado in 1989, to spend a few days with my friend Jim (a drummer I played with for a number of years), and to visit a friend who worked at Hewlett-Packard (HP).
Earlier that year I was talking with my good friend, Phil, from church, and I mentioned that I was thinking about taking a short trip to Fort Collins to hang out with Jim. He said, “Oh! When you’re there, you should look up Jerry–he’s been working at HP in Fort Collins and I bet you’d get a kick out of touring the HP facility there.” (Phil knew I worked with computing and technology, and he was right–a tour of an HP factory sounded like fun.) I said, “That’s a great idea–who’s Jerry?” Phil said, “You’ve met him–he attended church here when he was in grad school a couple of years ago.” A little embarrassed that I couldn’t remember that, I said something like, “Oh sure, that Jerry.” Phil went on: “I’ll send you his contact information and maybe you guys can get together when you’re in town.”
I emailed Jerry on Phil’s recommendation, and he said he would be happy to give me a tour. I sent him the dates when I would be in town, and a few weeks later I was on the road to Fort Collins, beginning early in the day. Since I was traveling alone, I decided to take the scenic route, driving on U.S. highway 36 instead of I-70; It’s a longer trip, lengthened by numerous small towns along the way, but I wasn’t in a big hurry, and I imagined stopping at pawn shops and finding a vintage guitar or amp or something. (I didn’t actually do that, but I kept my eyes peeled.)
I arrived at Jim’s place late in the afternoon, and we went to dinner with his girlfriend (and future wife, Sue), and then went and saw “When Harry Met Sally” at a local movie theater. The next morning I went to breakfast at a little hole-in-the-wall café where Jim advised me to order the fried cinnamon roll. I did, and it turned out to be an enormous cinnamon roll, split into a top and bottom half and fried in butter, then served on an wide oval platter, with a small pitcher of warmed icing to pour over it. And yes, I did eat the entire thing.
Jim had to work, and I had arranged to see Jerry at HP around mid-morning, so I drove to the HP facility and checked in at the office, explaining that I was there to see Jerry. A few minutes later, Jerry appeared, but I didn’t recognize him, because, in fact, Jerry and I had never actually met. Phil had been absolutely certain that Jerry and I were at least acquaintances, but it was immediately clear to the both of us that we were complete strangers to one another. After a few awkward moments and chuckles at our strange predicament, Jerry said, “So, would you like a tour?”
I did, of course–I’m a nerd, after all, and the HP factory was a nerd paradise. Jerry took me on a quick walk around the facility, which was laced with wires embedded in the concrete floors, which were used by the four-wheeled robot carts to transport equipment and materials and mail and other stuff around the plant. The carts were little flat-bed jobs with a taller structure at one end with a device on it that looked vaguely like an oversized HP calculator, which was used to program in the destinations of the carts.
We eventually came to Jerry’s area of the plant, which was the reliability testing area. There were several large rooms full of what looked like fancy stage keyboard stands, each one holding several pieces of HP computer hardware–laptops, desktops, various peripherals, etc.–all of which were powered up and operating, and attached to various other bits of equipment that presumably were logging things like operating temperature, time between failures, power consumption, and probably a bunch of other information. Jerry explained in some detail what his role was in setting the gear up for testing and generating the required reports.
Jerry was a great guy–we had some awkward small talk about his time in grad school at KU, and his time at the church we both had apparently attended, and speculated briefly as to why we had never actually met. After a few more laughs and promises to stay in touch, I thanked him for an interesting day, and I was off to Jim’s place for another day or so before heading home.
(Sadly, I’ve never had any other contact with Jerry since–it just seemed awkward and weird.)
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(Posted in response to 1/13/2024 prompt)
doug heacock: words 