My Travels #13

June 1994. Katowice, Poland. I get a lot of grief for this picture and a lot of teasing. No, I was not in the CIA.

My company was expanding in Europe. I was part of a 4 person start up team. We were tasked with bringing four, new distribution centers online and enabling selling, distribution and financial processes before summer’s end.

Therefore, the start-up team decided to survey all four Poland locations (Kielce, Rzeszow, Lublin & Opole) in one day. This would require us to travel all over the country from southern Poland to central Poland, to eastern Poland, to western Poland and back to southern Poland. We could not do this in one day by train, hence

the need for a helicopter.

Just so you know, I dissented to that mode of travel. I hated riding a chopper when I was in the military and my attitude about riding in a chopper had not changed.

Nonetheless, I was out-voted and there you see me standing in front of it about to board. The word reluctance did not begin to describe how I felt about that journey.

We left from Katowice, Poland, visited all four cities, mapped out our strategy and flew back to Katowice. The pilot was very talented. He did buzz jobs over the rolling hills. Many people on the ground cheered us on. My team had fun looking at my face turn beet red as we sped up and down over each hill. They asked if I would need a stretcher when we landed. I told them I was okay. I was, after all, okay.

We finished our project that summer in record time largely due to the assessment we made on that day.