The benefits of carrying a big time piece

Run for your life, it's an atomic clock!

The benefits of carrying a big time piece

I spent most of my military days fighting the Soviets. Between wars that we sponsored and fought, or they sponsored and fought, we were engaged in gathering a lot of intelligence about what they were up to. And whatever they were snooping into, we did the same. If we had to fight them, we needed to know their strengths and weaknesses. It was a period known as the Cold War. It still goes on today.

I was a small link in the intelligence chain. Nobody ever sat down with me and said “About the work you're doing...” and then proceeded to tell me who, what, where, when, how, and why my activities were connected to the Soviets. They didn't have to. I wasn't selected to do work with some connection to intelligence gathering because I was stupid. Not me. I was a sharp cookie. Still am.

Oh, I am not going to give away any secrets—even those that are 45 years old. This is just a fun story that accompanied one part of that bigger story. It's one the boys in the Pentagon and elsewhere would not understand. Here's one secret I will let you in on: I was and remain smarter than them. Shhh...don't tell them. Nothing is as fun to watch than some average klutz who thinks he's brilliant. It's almost like watching Mr. Bean.

Enter the atomic clock. It was a big box weighing in at 215 lbs. It had blinking lights, and a time readout. It looked sort of like those crude detonation devices you see on television spy shows. Carrying that big box through airports and onto commercial planes put the spotlight and the focus of many travelers entirely on me. So I had to have some ready answers. The public watches those shows also.

Back in 1969 there were no quartz clocks or watches. Today, probably 95 percent of them run on those timing devices. So did this big box. It had the added feature of a cesium beam that stabilized the quartz oscillator to about one part in 10^-12. In common terms, it would not gain or lose more than 1 second in 30 thousand years. Put them all together and...ouila!...you're in the atomic age with the atomic clock.

A small benefit to lugging this behemoth around was that it had to go in the first seat in first class. The FAA insisted that it go there for safety reasons. That meant we (my fellow sleuth and I) also rode up there where the food is better, the seats are larger, and the air is snootier.

We landed in Panama. It was hotter than a habanero on a hot day. We had been alerted that we might be able to seek some solitude from questioning passengers by trying to sneak the clock into the VIP lounge, the only air conditioned room in the airport. I selected the most gullible looking clerk, flashed my official passport at her, and whispered that we needed to get our government device into the a/c of the VIP lounge pronto. It was a matter of high priority.

The VIP lounge had comfortable lounge chairs. And the margaritas seem to taste so much better when they are delivered by an attractive lady. Let's call this benefit #2.

Did I mention it was January, and the temperature at our departing location was somewhere around zero. We were heading for Chile and out to Easter Island where the temperature was in the 80's. To me those numbers rang out with “mini vacation time!” Well, yeah, but business first.

The beaches at Vina del Mar were a beautiful white, and the ocean was the deepest blue you are likely to ever cast your baby blues upon. And I never saw so many lovely ladies in bikinis in my life. With palm tree beach huts sprinkled here and there, each serving up cold drinks, it was quite a break from shoveling the icy pavement in the northern U.S. I think this qualifies as benefit #3,

Our $25/day per diem allowance let us stay at the O'Higgins Hotel, a luxurious place by anyone's standards. One evening, we plugged our oversized baby into the wall socket to keep its batteries charged before setting out to explore the city. If the batteries ever fell below a certain threshold, we had to abort the mission. The risk of the clock drifting was too great, and the data it supported would be of no value. So we were very careful to always keep it plugged in except for brief intervals.

Apparently while we were out gorging ourselves with steak and savoring Chile's finest wines, the hotel manager made his rounds and noticed a light on in our room. He knew we were gone, so he entered the room and turned out the light. He didn't know it, but he also broke power to the clock. So while we were wining and dining and becoming ambassadors of good will amongst the natives, our clock was drifting toward dooms day. If its charge ever entered the “red zone” our goose was cooked.

We arrived back at the hotel as the rest of the world's clocks neared the witching hour, and approached our room. We could see there was no light shining from under the door. Holy shit balls! Our clock was running on its batteries. We flipped on the lights and ran to the battery readout. It was close to disaster, but still in the green zone. We powered it up higher and went to bed with visions of being beaten senseless by ugly men in masks wielding rubber hoses.

We flew out to Easter Island in a C-141, a new jet cargo plane. We were the first jet plane to ever land there on their ultra short runway. Our pilot was such a showoff that he made about 10 or 15 “touch and go” landings on the runway just to show everyone how a super plane with an even better pilot could land anything on it. Apart from the moai (the large stone carvings) it was hot, with many sheep, a few horses, billions of flies, and a small group of natives. The temperature is a constant 89 degrees year round. One whirlwind tour in a jeep and we saw it all. The few Americans there had to stay for 13 months. I was the lowest ranking American there, but me and my clock got the only air conditioned trailer on the island to sleep in that night. No time to ponder the mysteries of this place. We were in and out in 24 hours.

I had to fly back on that long flight seated next to Miss Texas, roughing it up there in first class. The attendants thought we were a couple and kept serving us the best Chilean wines and winking at me. One even tucked us in together under a soft blanket. I was about to explain when Ms. Texas snuggled closer and whispered “It's OK. Nobody's perfect.” Well, how could I argue with that logic? Benefit #5.