These are the people who we instantly connect with and the connection never weakens. No matter the years or the miles apart, the resonance friendship never degrades. I have been fortunate to have many of these in my life (#blessed).
Some are probably thinking, "But Cale aren't those your closest friends?" Good question nameless reader, but I say nay. A close friend to me is one who we make the time to see either weekly, monthly, or yearly based on proximity. A resonance friend is a different breed.
I will explain this context in great detail using the following anecdote. In order to give a starting frame of reference: I consider Jason Voss from my previous post to be one.
I packed up my beam machine and left College Station to meet up with another; Christopher Robinson.
This is the friendship that began my brain bubbling with the notion of the resonance friendship. I met Chris at reception (good ol' 30th AG to those of you in the know) for basic training back in 2008. In my 6 year army career (to include 2 deployments, my tutelage under at least 1 megalomaniac, and my graduate level study at Ranger School) reception was by far the most miserable period. Weird sleep deprivation for in-processing tasks (hair cuts, briefings, and line standing), the slow revelation that I knew nothing about the army, and being surrounded by others which knew less: these all coalesced to make reception into a special type of misery.
Luckily, I was older than the average GI Joe. This gave me one decided advantage: I knew bullshit when I heard it. Well, I usually knew bullshit when I heard it. Chris was older as well, so we were able to chat about topics other than our inevitable 50 year army commitment.
It sounds like the beginning of a wonderful friendship, right? Well we hung out for all of 3 days and then shipped off to basic. We were in different platoons in basic training, which meant we saw very little of each other.
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| This is the last time I saw Chris before we met back up in San Antonio. This is basic training graduation circa 2008 with our good friend Robert Chiang holding down the middle spot. |
Let's move this story along 2 years.
I am a fresh faced Lieutenant on my first deployment, slowly learning the ways of war on my patrol base south of Mosul, Iraq. Chris is keeping army jets from colliding from the control tower in Mosul. We became aware of each others' close proximity and scheduled a meet and greet. However, this meeting never came to fruition.
Pretty anti-climactic eh? Well let's fast forward to the more recent past. When I started this blog I initially posted my route so old friends could contact me. Many of them did. Chris, however, was not one of them.
The end.
Just kidding, he let me know that he was in San Antonio, so I penciled him in for the post College Station trip. This was my first San Antonio trip as an adult.
I met up with Chris at his place and we began by chatting. We talked about the different paths our army careers had taken. The experience of an officer is much different than that of an enlisted soldier. I would hear this tale at few more times on my trip. It is 100% true. I can say with absolute certainty that I would be a different person if I had enlisted rather than commissioned.
Following a few war stories, we hopped in the car and headed to a local brewery called Freetail Brewery. It was a brewery with some rocking food (the brisket cheese-steak was so nice I had it twice) and some really nice beers. They had 3 sours on tap, if you know Cale Bakken, you know he's a son of a gun who likes his sours. We drank, we ate, we got some cigars and returned to Chris's place.
We talked all night, we smoked all night, we drank all night, and I woke up the next morning feeling a full cigar enhanced mega-hangover.
Now this is where the story loses its force. Old friends falling back into an old rhythm hardly makes for a good read. We didn't go anywhere, we just drank, and talked for 2 days and 2 nights, and it was great fun.
San Antonio ended unceremoniously. There was no grand farewell, there was no grand blow out night; it wasn't need. It was a great time, chatting and chilling with a friend. Allow me to apply an old adage to resonance friendship. "The ability to pickup where you left off" is the enduring characteristic of a resonance friendship, be it 15 minutes or 6 years.
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| According to Google this is a map of San Antonio . . . allegedly. The red pin to the north is the part of San Antonio I saw. |
Since this is a pseudo-travel blog here is my final analysis of San Antonio: No idea. Could be a cool city, could be the worst city in the U.S. I have no idea. I saw Freetail Brewery, which was rocking.
So,
My reformed take on San Antonio: Freetail Brewery is awesome. That is all.
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