A Time to Ride — It Begins!
A bicycle tour of Louisiana’s longest Main Street. Remembering my ride in 2009.
Not sure where the idea for this ride came from, but I wanted to do something that I would remember after my career at Dow Chemical, where I was a Process Control Specialist in R&D. With the economic downturn, Banholzer (R&D VP) used this to shut down the R&D site in Plaquemine Louisiana, along with other satellite sites, which he had been wanting to eliminate, and I got caught… It had unofficially been planned for me to move to the Freeport Texas site and continue my role leading the Gulf Coast R&D Process Control and Automation group, but my manager was unable to convince upper management that my departure was a mistake. The official edict was all R&D personnel at the Plaquemine site were gone. No exceptions. I worried that he was going to damage his own career but there were advantages to him being located in Europe, which acted as insulation from his management in Michigan.
In the end, it all worked out. I was retired for exactly one year and rehired in Texas to the position that I was planning to relocate to. I was paid a generous severance package that basically was equivalent to my full salary while I was away. After I was rehired, my old group referred to my time away as a sabbatical. When I told the story, I always said I was…
