It was not long after I first started with Garvey did Mark decide to by the ol’ “King Air”, a semi nice, but well used, turboprop, commuter airplane. As a company we looked at it as a way to save money when we salesmen would travel to anywhere east of the Mississippi. At that time I was never big into planes, but Mark, that was his bag! He loved it; my big dilemma was to learn this odd business from the best source, I’d have to be making as many sales calls with Mark whenever possible, which meant we’d be takin' the plane! Mark and I had a good run of business in the Ashville, NC area for about a year so, we’d fly down in the plane about once a week or so… make our rounds in a day and fly back. It was like the life of the rich and famous for a guy like me, first real job, barely old enough to rent a car, but was traveling in a our company jet with the president of the company. Now being from the west coast and never had been introduced to southern culture, Mark made sure I got a true taste of the south. So we’d land the plane, make the sales calls and if they went well, we'd hit the gas station to refill the rental and it always went like this… I’d be driving, so I’d fill the car with fuel, Mark would dash into the local mini-market and grab: 2 Moon Pies, 2 RC cola’s, 2 tallboys of Budweiser and some snacks for the pilots. I swear it was the same run every time. So in time, after almost choking at 10K feet on the driest snack cookie I’d ever tried, I began to appreciate the taste those things. As time passed we had this weekly routine dialed in and funny thing was that plane was wearing off on me and it had turned from a white knuckled adventure to into a way to sleep in a little longer in the mornings or even sleep off a long night but my favorite part of this was the flight home… we’d talk about life, family, golf, business plans for the west coast office, accumulator designs, line design, production line theory, with the guy who knew it all.. Just Mark and I… looking back on it all, I’m not sure if my daily routines will ever be as fun or thrilling as that time with Mark in my life. But inside, I swear every time I get in front of a customer and the meeting goes well, on the drive home to my office, I think about those times and if feels like yesterday, but it had to have been almost 6 years ago. One of these days I’m going to stop: pick up a Moon pie, an RC and a tallboy, and get back in the car and just ramble out loud about things.