Live is a very individual experience, and our life’s experiences such as where we live, and who we meet help define just who we are, or who we become.

 

I was born in 1966 in Fond Du Lac Wisconsin and I spent the first 16 years of my life traveling from place to place state to state, meeting all types of unique people from all walks of life. My parents were divorced when I was about 5 years old, and I was brought up by my mother to be a very independent person and I was given unprecedented trust at a very early age.

 

Before the age of ten I had climbed mountains, learned to ski alone, camped, fished, hiked, spelunking (exploring caves and mine’s for miles underground), parasailing, and even climbed an ice age volcano alone.

 

From age 4 to 10 I had lived in the following states (some more than a couple times)

 

Wisconsin

Indiana

Illinois

Utah

Alabama

Oregon

 

As you can imagine with living in so many states I got to meet a great many people, but as a result I did not get to make a lot of good friends.  I spent a great deal of time observing people and how they treated others and I often didn’t like what I saw, so I became a friend to the underdogs.  I thought to myself that everyone needed friendship, no matter the gender or race, and I found that the friendships that I developed were as strong as anything you could imagine because they were based on not what they could do for ME, but what I could do for them, and the friendship was returned 100 fold, but as always it was time for me to move on and start over again.

 

At age 11 my mother re-married (an abusive alcoholic) and we moved from Salt Lake City Utah, to Long Beach Calif. And it was like moving to mars (it’s easy for me to remember the year, because it was 1977 and Star Wars just came out).  Now I wish I could say that I loved Calif. But that just was not the case.  Sure, riding my skate board 22 miles to the beach for the afternoon was nice, but gangs were a problem, and crime was everywhere (the first two years there I was mugged 3 times).  My first job was going door to door in East LA trying to get people to subscribe to the LA Times (without a bullet proof vest!) But as luck would have it I stayed in one area for two years and started to become part of the in crowd at school, but by chance I met a kid (a new kid) that had all the same classes as I did and his name was Thomas Edward Carlson, and he mentioned that after school he would come on over to my house to see where I lived and I said no problem, but I have two dogs, one a German Shepard (man eater) we kept in a cage in the back yard, and a small dog that could only nibble on your shin, which kind of worried him and I asked why, it was at that time he pulled up his pant leg to reveal extensive scars on his lower leg, and he explained that when he was 2 years old he went down to the basement to find a toy and used a gas can as a step.  The gas can fell over and the gas was ignited by the water heater pilot light setting his pants on fire and causing very extreme scars (back in 1968 there were not a great deal treatments for burn injuries, and while he had the option of receiving a skin graft he ended up not getting one).

 

Me and Tom had a whole lot in common, and had the same likes and dislikes, and in fact we were the same height and build with the same hair color (but I have blue eyes and he had brown). We looked so much alike that everyone just assumed we were brothers (sometimes twins). I never thought that burns were a big deal, but I learned that the scars affected people in ways I didn’t expect.  One day several kids came up to me (mistaking me for Tom) and asked what happened to my leg.  This first caught me off guard and puzzled at the same time, as I got a brief glimpse at what Tom was going through without really being him, because we were now in high school, and showering a school had a lot of the kids pointing, staring and asking questions based just on a scar, which made him very uncomfortable, to the point I felt he was making it a bigger deal than it really was, yet understanding that while the scar never bothered him before even being in public on the beach, it was still something he needed to deal with and being a teenager it was something that was always on his mind.

 

Tom ended up moving in with us (problems with his family), so we ended up becoming brothers after all.  In 1982 two significant things happened.  4 days after my 16^th birthday I went skydiving (a couple years earlier I was flying gliders) and became one of the youngest skydivers in the state.  This was back when the chutes were round, and VERY heavy.  I jumped at Paris Valley Calif. Using a 28 ft elliptical 7TU (red, white, and green) and jumped out of old ugly (a rather worn DC-3), and I remember that when we got in the plane there was the Navy Skydiving Team already sitting there and giving us a hard time.

 

We went up to 4,000 feet and the was told to stand up (try standing up in a plane pulling 1 G wearing 70 lbs of gear!) we were hobbling to the door and the Navy guys were cheering us on, and three at a time people were jumping, then the long wait while we go around again and 3 more would go.  It finally got down to just 2 of us left and I was rather terrified at the time, but the person in front of me was raring to go, and when the camera was on me I just said NO WAY!, but then I thought to myself, how could I explain why the 68 year old lady in front of me was not afraid, and I chickened out?!?!, so I thought I would just wait until I got to the door and then break the news that I was not going to jump, and all of a sudden the jump master said in the door..  the old lady got in the door and the jump master said GO! And the lady jumped head first out the door (not what you want to do) and I heard “get in the door” and all the training we did had me in the door and I looked at the jump master and said “BUT”, and I remember hearing GO!, and the training kicked in again and before I could stop myself  I had jumped , and it was at that time I said to myself “why the hell did you do that!” but once again the training kicked in again and I started the count, and I swore I counted to 20 two times before the chuted, but when itthere was no mistake what was happening…

 

Try tying a rope (really tight) around your waist, over your shoulders, and between your legs.  Then imagine what it would be like to be traveling 100 miles per hour and to have that rope stop your fall in 3 seconds…  Folks…  let me tell you that your nuts take several minutes to turn any color other than blue after the chute, yet it’s one of the happiest times in your life, and it’s about that time you remember to look up to see if the chute hadd correctly (not damaged) and lucky for me it was a perfect chute.

 

And the second significant event was a few months later we moved back to Wisconsin, to start life over again, but this time Tom came with us, but after a year Tom did end up returning home to his family when he learned that I intended to join the Army, and he felt that Calif., was more of a home for him than Wisconsin, and left, so I lost a very good friend and a brother on the same day, and as I expected we didn’t maintain contact and never really talked to each other again.

 

It was in 1985 that I finally joined the Army and it was fulfilling a lifelong dream for me of being in the military. I went to basic training at Fort Knox, and AIT at Fort Lee (adding two more states KY, and VA to the places I have lived) My main duty was Unit Armorer, which means I was the gunsmith of the unit.  I maintained and repaired all our weapons (350 M16A1 Rifles, 6 M203 Grenade Launchers, 6 M60 Machine guns, 6 M1911A1 Pistols, 2 M3A1 “Grease Guns” sub machine guns, and 6 M2HB Browning 50 caliber machine guns, but I also worked with mines and Anti-Tank Weapons.  I would have to say I really enjoyed my work, but 5 years later and everything changed as I ended up getting sent to the Gulf (one of the first 2400 troops in country) for Desert Shield, and then Desert Storm.  After living through that for a year I was sent home and returned to my job working as an Ammunition and Explosive Expert in the military (working directly with the Pentagon) and once again I was enjoying my work, and became one of the top 3 in my field in the world.

 

It was at that time that I realized that once I left the Military I would have a hard time finding work as an ammunition and explosive expert, so I switched to computers due to my training as a system administrator running an Intel 310 Multi-user system running Xenix (Xenix came before Unix), so a became a Unix SA, and then a Shell Programmer.  While I could go into great detail of my Military career, which spanned 18 years, I’ll just end it hear stating it was time to leave.

 

After desert storm I started racing motorcycles on the grand prix roadrace tracks and was doing very well considering I was running a highly modified 1985 Kawasaki Ninja (a 6 year old bike at the time) and out of 50 racers I always came in around 17^th place, but I had gotten to the point of 2^nd place finishes on that bike and always felt safe on it even running all out dragging my knee around a corner at 150 MPH+.  I had gained sponsorships and was doing fairly well considering the bike was so old.  The old Ninja was replaced with a new 1994 Ninja ZX-6 after a fire in the pit had caused extensive damage to my leg, ending my racing season, and during recovery I forgot that the bikes are not allowed to run anti-freeze, but not before an early freeze destroyed the block.

 

The new bike was a real rocket (the fastest bike on the track), but even though I had don extensive modifications to the bike it still had handling problems, and unlike the old bike which bounced, weaved, bucked, and slid all over the place, but still felt like it would never hurt me, the new bike always felt like I was playing with dynamite with a short fuse.   It would scream down the straightaway at around 180 mph and would pull so hard (due to the ram air) at 150 mph that you had to hold on for dear life! 

 

At the track, turn one was a real mind blower, and to make it around the corner I would be in 6^th gear, and had to blip the throttle for one second to slow down enough (never use the brakes) but when the engine would come back to life it was like kicking in the afterburners and this would throw the suspension off every time, which at those speeds was dangerous, but I didn’t get time to work that out before the first race.  The first race the flag went down and I had a terrible position (last) but within ½ a mile I was in first place, and buy turn 3 I was ahead by a good ways, but at turn 6 everything changed when my rear tire lost traction causing me to high side (big ass crash) and I was out for another season due to a broken ankle (the bike was not in great shape either).

 

Through all the seasons I raced I only had two crashes and several close calls, but the injuries I sustained on the track from crashes were nothing like the injury I sustained off the track while refueling while practicing for an endurance race.  The idea is to hold off until your tank is just about dry and then come screaming into the pit area as fast as you can and stop at the very last moment (this was based on a specified time on the track) , and then fuel is dumped into the tank 4.5 gal of high octane race fuel (My tank held 4.8 gals) and under normal circumstances the timing would have been correct except I was able to do a substantial amount of drafting (sticking 2 inches from the rear of the bike ahead of you, which cuts the drag and reduces fuel consumption) and that resulted in having a considerable amount of fuel left in the tank.  When I pitted the fuel was dumped into the tank and it promptly overflowed running down both my lower legs and onto the hot exhaust pipes and ignited setting the bike (and me) on fire.  The problem was I was in VERY tight leathers which can take a very long time to remove, so simply taking off the burning leathers was not possible..  The next option was to drop and roll, but the pit area was full of 5 gal cans of racing fuel, making that a poor option unless I was to cross to the close side of the pit area covered in nice green grass, but once again a bad idea because in order to get to the grass I had to step in front of the race bikes traveling close to 130 mph (lucky for me this was the slow zone), so the only thing I could do was run 50 yards to the gravel and put out the flames there.  Now it took far less time to actually do that then for you to read it, but even though I get the flames out quickly it resulted in 3^rd degree burns to my left leg and 2^nd degree burns to my right.  What I didn’t know is that the leathers were still holding in the heat, so while the flames were out I was still being burned. Which meant I was out the rest of the season.