077.366 - 2016 project and Ron Slovikowski

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

Ron Slovikowski

the other story.  I had known Scott Asnin about ten years when he called and asked if I wanted real work.  how did we get there?  that's a long and complicated story and probably irrelevant to this appreciation.  suffice it to say that Scott got me hired by Martin Marietta near Denver, and introduced me to Ron Slovikowski.  what did we three have in common?  we rode Honda motorcycles; each of us worked on some aspect of exploring space in which we were experts without knowing it; we all worked at Martin Marietta; and we lived in (Scott) or near (Ron and I) the foothills of the Colorado Rockies.  some days we rode to work together, some days we met at Martin Marietta, each with his own story to tell.  as it turned out, Scott was sane but Ron and I were not.  Scott eventually decided to carpool safely while Ron and I daredeviled our ways to work and home.  we found several more or less parallel routes, and maybe a dozen just plain silly ways to get to work and home.  we were in our early thirties, no longer quite invulnerable, but not ready to admit it.  we saw and heard and smelled essences of the Colorado foothills that could only be experienced from a motorcycle seat.  (well, just maybe from horseback, or walking.)  and we survived.  and all three of us were sent to Los Angeles to work on the Viking project flight team.  southern California let us fly our motorcycles over new terrains.  but those are the circumstances of our friendships.  for what do I appreciate Ron Slovikowski?  for all I learned riding beside or behind him, the outer limits, I think, of riding a motorcycle and surviving.  Ron had done graduate work in mechanical engineering, had experience working on sailboats, played guitar, loved finding new people to prove himself against.  he also taught me to watch networks in office politics that I hadn't imagined.  our life-paths untwined, but we kept in touch.  he has been busy doing things I can barely imagine, and I suspect I've returned the favor, but we still email.  Ron Slovikowski, another good friend for a really long time!