Peace Corps

Wow, there's so much going on right now I don't even know where to start. There's the election, the financial crisis, the proposed government bailout of the finanicial crisis, bank mergers, my GMAT studies, Russia going totally cold-war style on us, dogs sleeping with cats, full moons sleeping with half moons (those trampy half moons...), and basically just widespread panic (not the band) and chaos.

So I have to ask: What better time to join the Peace Corps? No seriously, I'm applying to the Peace Corps. Not because of all the turmoil, but because I've always wanted to do something like this and I realized that if I don't do it now, I'll never do it. Yes, I realize that I didn't go to Berkeley. Yes, I'm aware that I don't have 9 bumper stickers on my car consisting of Obama, DMB, some clever left-leaning slogan, and no less than four totally obscure bands that make me totally cooler than all those people that blindly listen to mainstream music. Yes, I work for a very large bank. Yes, I believe in capitalism and free markets (except.. ahem.. in times of financial crisis.. BAIL US OUT, MAN! I'm not even kidding!). No, I don't think civilizations should all revert to times of less innovation when we all ate with sticks, slept on rocks, cured seizures by bleeding people out, and died at age 23 of some very curable illness.

Sticker I will never own:

Unlike most of the left-wing liberals that join Peace Corps for lack of anything better to do, I think the experience I have could actually benefit young, fledgling economies that just need a little direction. And in the process, I get the opportunity to experience a totally different culture and make a difference in the world. It's a pretty good deal, and it sure beats grinding out the next 2 years in a cubicle.

So I'm applying to begin service next summer, which means I have a little less than one year to sell all my furniture, wrap up my position at work (and train someone new, no doubt), and generally just prepare for 2 years in what will probably be a third world country. I can't wait.

It's funny, when I look at my own personal timeline all layed out it all makes sense. I don't believe in fate, mind you, but the circumstances have come together nicely for this adventure. The main piece was my move to Dallas, which I think I have hated so much that it drove me to explore some pretty extreme options; options I probably wouldn't have considered in the comfort of Charlotte, North Carolina.

So preparations, applications, and essays are underway and I will update along the way.

"One ticket out of shit-head town please."

I've decided that not only is Dallas ugly, flat, materialistic, and hotter than satan's asshole, it is also completely overflowing with douche-necks. To make matters worse, many of these may be disguised as normal people who you thought you might be able to talk to without pushing them down and then jumping out of a 42nd story window.

I must confess that I've become mostly immune to the douchebaggery of Dallas folks. It's like anything, I guess, you just get used to it after awhile. Like if you lived in an 8' X 8' cage with chimpanzees, you would soon become accumstomed to having feces flung at your face-holes upwards towards a dozen times a day. I mean, you probably would never grow to actually enjoy it, but most likely after 9 months or so you would just wipe it off with a discarded organic banana peel and go right back to trying to convince that damn monkey cage zoo keeper guy to let you out of the cage. I mean seriously, why are you in a frickin monkey cage in the first place?

I say "mostly immune" because sometimes things happen to mentally bring me back to reality. It could be something simple like spotting yet another group of mid-20s skid marks wearing those trendy, hard-core ultimate fighter/skater/ass-neck t-shirts with the old english lettering on them and "distressed" neck holes. Are these guys serious with their effeminate gucci shades, paint-splashed jeans, and randomly anonomous tatoos? How far will some people go to blindly follow fashion trends? I'm forced to wonder.

I try to stretch my immagination to come up with something that might be even too outlandish for even the most devout Maxim reader to get behind. I picture a group of four of them all gathered around a glass coffee table - all with the same pommade faux-hawk haircut and tribal armband tatoos - staring blankly in GQ at the latest bloody chicken feather shorts trend that is sweeping Hollywood. They will all waffle around spinelessly, not wanting to commit one way or the other until the boldest of the group decides that, yes, this trend is sure to catch on and it's far better to be on board and safe than to be left out in the cold wearing last years cargo shorts.

Anyhow, I digress.

Sometimes it's a much more significant event that makes me want to throw whatever will fit into the trunk of my Jetta and burn $4.00 gas as fast as my accelerator peddle can pump it till I'm clear of this state. I had one of these events last weekend.

I went out last Saturday night to grab a beer with a buddy of mine. It was kinda late and I was a little tired from spending the day with my friend Brianne and her family, in from Charlotte for the weekend (not to mention running 12 miles and swimming 2000 meters). I decided to meet him out because I'm trying to build some friendships here in D and he's always seemed like a pretty stand-up guy. We ran the OKC marathon together, he works long hours at a highly-respeced Dallas hedge fund, etc.

Anyway, somehow the conversation switched from the uber-hottie in yellow that we were both commenting on that was sitting across bar to, of all things, religion. I may have made some sort of less than favorable comment (this is most likely) about christianity like how they would eat their babies if jesus made a holiday for it, to which he half-heartedly agreed, but then followed up with the ubiquitous, "But I mean, you're not an atheist or anything, are you?"

Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech.

But not really, because I've gotten used to this. Having lived as an atheist in the south and now in Texas, you get challenged to say the least. Responses range from mild discomfort to out-and-out rage; the latter being my favorite because at least it's real emotion, and by far the more comical.

First of all, I just have to say that's it's always baffled me the way people will flippantly throw this question out there. "You're not an atheist are you!?!?!?!?" It's as if they were saying something like "You don't masterbate to photos of school bus fire victims do you?!" You know, something totally incomprehensible instead of something completely rational like the idea that maybe your life is not controlled by some bearded, mythical figure that lives in the skies and whose presence is only collaborated by a book that was supposedly written over a thousand years ago and which can be completely dissected and disproved any which way you would like. Unbelievable for sure, but I'm not even to the good part yet.

"Yes," I said, "I'm an atheist." This was followed by a few basically ignorant questions from him like, "Well, what do you believe in then?" and something about a "temple" or something that some group of atheists he had supposedly known had supposedly had that they "worshipped" in. I tried to answer his questions with as much patience as I could muster, finally realizing what it's like to be a preschool teacher when your smartest kid says something like, "Why is clay made out of clay?"

He must have been sensing my utter contempt and disdain for his position and his questions, because he decided to bust out what I can only assume that to him were the big guns: "Well, what about all those people you hear about who decided they were going to be atheist and then all this bad stuff happened to them and their families and stuff. Like really bad, horrible things. Doesn't that scare you?"

Even now I have to wonder what he thought as I stared at him, completely slack-jawed and in total disbelief of what I had just heard, eyes glossed over as my mind ran rampant with 3 hours worth of responses I could lay out at the feet of this simpleton like so many gift-wrapped mice brought home by the family cat.

In the end, my response was a very simple, "No, I've never heard of that." At this point we changed the subject and went back to being two agreeable chaps in a Dallas sports bar, drinking a couple cold beers and enjoying the scenery. One more building block of a new friendship had been added, and we have yet to see if all the blocks will stack up or not. Some of the good blocks may be our mutual love of running or maybe a few really good jokes that totally land with both of us - you know, the kind that envoke that deep down laughter that you get maybe a few times a year - and those blocks are solid. Other blocks, like religion, can be wild cards. Sometimes the thrill of the debate can bring you closer together, at least for awhile. Sometimes though, it can be an insurmountable barrier, never to be overcome.

Basically, no matter how hard you try, though, you cannot use rationality to debate irrationality. It just doesn't work.

I have seen the promised land, and it is good.

Where to begin? I guess I should start by informing you that this promises to be a very, very long post. But there's really nothing I can do about that. I was in New Zealand for two unbelievable weeks filled with skydiving, glacier climbing, cave river-rafting, hiking, trail running, exploring, bungee jumping, and driving on the wrong side of the road (by our standards anyway). So step off, because I've got stories to tell.

I guess I'll start with my flight across the pond from San Fran to Sydney. I overnighted in my ol' stompin' ground of Charlotte before setting out on my journey so let it be known that I had quite a famous time boozing and catching up with some of my old QC amigos the night before I flew out. This worked out in my favor though, as I was so dehydrated from the night of cold beers and merriment that I think I only had to pee about 2 times in the next 30 flight hours. Seriously, comments were made upon landing by the people sitting next to me. "Did you even get up once during the flight?" the fat-neck, red-nosed, boring guy sitting next to me asked. "We were beginning to think that you don't have any normal bodily fuctions." (this is a direct quote). I had actually gotten up once, when they were both out of their seats no doubt rifling through the other passengers' carry ons or feeling up flight attendants in the lavatory. I didn't feel they needed to know this, so I told them that I actually hadn't peed since I was 4 years old and I was flying to Sydney to see a world-renowned pee specialist and thank you very much for brining it up and making me all self-conscious and stuff about it. As I had hoped, that was the last time I had to talk to them.

I had a 12 hour layover in Sydney so I decided that, instead of getting hammered in the airport bar and spending 8 hours naming the ceiling tiles, I would catch the train into the Circular Quey and see some sights. I bought a day pass for the train from a very attractive but quite smug Aussie girl who may or may not have ripped me off as A.) She thought I was a really stupid American, and B.) Being, in fact, a stupid American, I hadn't really had time to cement the whole exchange rate thing thing yet. Is 13,000 Australian dollars about right for a train ticket? Oh well, it doesn't matter now.

This part of the journey worked out quite well, as the Circular Quey (pronounced "key") has pretty much all the marquee Sydney sights like the Sydney Opera House, Royal Botanical Gardens, and Sydney Harbor Bridge. As luck would have it, they were actually hosting an open water swim competition on the day I was touring, so I of course watched a bit of that. An open water swim in the Sydney Harbor? Are you kidding - is there a better place anywhere?? Anyway, pictures:

So anyway, out of Sydney and on to Wellington, New Zealand where my good buddy Scott lives - working in a blood bank, playing in a band, and basically just loving the shit out of life since he moved there about 2 years ago.

Wellington is a pretty cool city. It's nestled in the hills of the lower north island and it's the cultural center of the country. It somehow manages to be very modern and hip and totally laid back at the same time. Let me explain a little bit about the culture and lifestyle in New Zealand. First of all, houses and cars are not all brand new and shiny. People live in nice places and they take care of their shit, but nobody is trying to have a super fancy 3,000 square foot house and two lexus SUVs. The cars on the road are, for the most part, a little bit older and fairly small. Almost as if - gasp! - they're used for transportation instead of status symbols. People have jobs and careers, but there is really no judgement placed on what a person does or how much scratch they bring home. You could talk to a Wellington native for hours on end, and they might not once even ask you "what kind of work" you're in. All in all, it's probably not a bad place to call home.

This is the city, along with the view of the bay from Scott's patio:

Not bad.

We went on a hike through the hills and mountains one day and got some pretty spectacular views.

After a couple fun-filled days in Wellington it was off to Queenstown, a city in the South Island that is billed as the adventure capital of the world. More on that later, but I must also say that Queenstown has some of the most breathtaking scenery and views I have ever seen in my life. It's sort of hard to explain, but everything is so stunningly beautiful that's it's almost frustrating. You look out at the picturesque mountains and bluer-than-blue lakes and I think a part of you knows that there's no way to convey this sight to others, and that even your own memory will probably not do it justice over time. Anyway, for what it's worth, here's some of the better shots:

Now as I mentioned, if it's adventure you crave, Queenstown has everything you could want just short of live human hunting expeditions. My first foree into this smorgasborg of excitement and sensory overwhelment was the Nevis Highwire bungee jump ( http://www.bungy.co.nz/index.php/pi_pageid/29 ). This is the 3rd highest bungee jump in the world. At 134 meters (439 feet for the lay-person), you get an 8.5 second freefall before the cord even begins to break your fall and you can stop crying like a 7-year old girl.


The routine goes like this: They put you on a bus and take you up a very narrow, winding mountain road on the edge of a cliff that the bus may or may not topple off of, depending on the driving skill and current level of sobriety of Nash, your long-haired, hippie burn-out bus driver. When/if you make it to the top, you're shipped via cable car to a steel room haning over the middle of a gorge above the Nevis River. It looks a little something like this:

Once you're "safely" in the hanging room platform thingy, they begin tossing people into the canyon. There are glass sections of the floor so you can spend most of your waiting time looking down at the bottom of this canyon, just in case you hadn't already shat your pants in fear. When it's your turn to be hurled off the edge, they strap your feet to the cord, walk you to the edge of a 2 foot square platform and tell that they are going to count down from 4. At 1, you are to dive into the canyon, headfirst, completely defying every self-preservation instinct you have ever had.

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Okay, this post has been sitting unfinished in my "draft" section for just a shade over four score. I'm not going to finish it. The trip was unbelievable from beginning to end, and this was about the middle of it. I decided I would either delete it or post it, so here it is.

New Zealand, Bitches.

I'm preparing for the biggest trip of my life. Well, thusfar anyway.

I'm leaving for New Zealand in just over a month, and while I'm fairly resolute that it's only the first of many adventur-tastic journies, it's certainly the longest and largest and most badassedest trip I've been on to date, and there is a certain amount of planning involved in a trip of this magnatude. In fact, I've done some rough, back of the envelope calcuations, and the amount of planning falls somewhere between the amount of time Britney Spears spends thinking of ways to not totally embarrass herself (zero minutes) and the amount of time that Fox news spends presenting fair and balanced views of how John McCain is more qualified, less black, and less womanly than all of the democratic primary candidates combined (23,569 minutes to date).

To be perfectly honest, the trip is a little intimidating. There is so much unbelievable scenery in New Zealand, and so many thrilling activities that I'm concerned I won't plan right and will end up blowing the whole thing by doing something like spending 2 weeks getting boozed up at a pub in Auckland with a group of Irish tourists. Well... maybe this wouldn't be that bad. Are they mostly chicks? Hot chicks? Like maybe an Irish cheerleading squad who are all mad at their boyfrieds, vulnerable, and bi-curious? I'm just sayin', there are worse ways to spend a vacation..

Whatever, I digress. Whenever I start to get these worries, I pull up a picture like the one below, and I know that if I spend just one hour of the entire trip gazing blank-eyed like special-ed kid in AP Calculus at this type of scenery, that it will be worth all the scratch I spend to get over there.

Yes, I know, it's pretty unbelievable.

So anyhow, planning is in full swing. I've bought an 80 liter backpack to allow me to carry all my junkage around on my back, of all places(!!) and to "tramp" at will. (that's New Zealish for "hike" - those crazy kiwis sure do have some silly words!) I've bought a 2 gig memory card for my trusty camera, which if I understand correctly should allow me to take approximately 3,000,000 high-resolution pictures before I even need to worry about memory space. This is good because I've been known to be quite the shutter-bug at Irish cheerleader orgies. I bought a Lonely Planet guide to NZ that will tell me the best spots to rest my frame and get my grubbage on. I have not found the red lights district chapter yet, but I'm guessing it's just indexed weird so I'm not really worried yet.

There are still things left that I need to pin down in detail like my skydiving, bungi jumping, glacier climbing, spelunking, and hiking tour up the west coast of the south island, but it's all underway. I've also got to get some sort of rough game plan for my smash-and-grab tour of Sidney, Australia on my 12-hour layover there. I'll be good-goddammed if I'm going to spend that in an airport bar drinking stale Rolling Rock and listening to some Finnish douche-bags discuss the rise and fall of Portugese soccer.

In case it's not obvious, I can't wait!

The Big D(eeeeez Nuts)

Well I guess I'm firmly planted in the Big D, although I'm still trying to gain traction in this 32,314,778 horse town. I've officially consolidated into one living space, taking early leave of my ultra-swank temporary corporate housing in favor of having at least one pair of matching socks in just one central location. It was hard to give up the car-wash showers and living room-to-kitchen monorail, but I'm a one-residence kinda guy, even if that residence is filled mostly with self-assembly Target furniture.



I think I'll like it here. And I'm not just saying that because I watched that "Optimism in the Face of Unbelievably Bad Situations" documentary 10 minutes ago and I'm all jazzed up on coffee and Adderall. There are things I've found that I'm definitely impressed with (the amount of plastic surgery per square mile is not one of them, but I'll get to that).



Here is one:



This is White Rock Lake, and while it's true that it doesn't always look quite this "nut in your running shorts" spectacular, it's actually a pretty good place to run. This is a good thing because I've got to have decent running circumstances or I go crazier than a taunted San Francisco Zoo tiger.

There are a few things, however, about the Big that I find a little unsettling, if not downright abrasive. They are as follows in no particular order:


Concrete/Roads/Interstates/Shopping Centers/Toll-Ways as far as the eye can see


Seriously, it's friggin' concrete jungle. Anyone who tells you differently is either lying to you or crazy. Either way you should push their face into the ground and run away. I've never seen so many Bed Bath & Beyonds in a 2 mile radius. I guess if I have some sort of bath-mat emergency I'll be all set as long as I can figure out which 3 toll roads connect to the highway that leads to US 35E-W-NS-Business-E. But if I miss it I can always make a left and catch Mockingbird S and loop around on the Dallas North Tollway and HOLY F I'M LOSING MY MIND!!!!


What could be worse? How about:


Blind, All-Encompassing Materialism


It's been said that there's more plastic surgery per square mile in Dallas than in L.A. I don't know if that's true or not, but I have noticed that the douche-bag factor here is extremely high for a state that is technically below the Mason-Dixon line. This city is all about what you're driving, what you're wearing, where you live, who you're banging, what the person you're banging is wearing and driving, and so forth. Personality is an afterthought and the concept of intellect seems to be avoided like the plague. Unless you don't drive a Mercedes E-Class that is, then it's obvious that you're just stupid.


Anyway, with all this obsession with appearances and what-not at least the people must be pretty fit and active, right?


Wrong:


Texas is One of the Fattest States in the Union


Tenth fattest in 2007 to be exact.

Nobody here really seems to care about fitness. Maybe it's because you can get 8 lbs of beef brisket for $0.35. Or maybe it's because there's plenty of room in everyone's Ford F-750 dually trucks to comfortably hold all the love handles and double chins you can squeeze in there and still fit comfortably into those over sized Texas parking spaces (this is true - these parking spaces are GIGANTIC!). And even if it doesn't fit, well hells-bells, just drive 3 blocks down the street to the next Target. I hear they have oatmeal cream pies on special and all the cashiers are Texas natives.


But at least everyone is friendly, right?:


Hi! Okay, never mind I guess..


So far I've waved and/or smiled at every runner I've passed (which, granted, is not that many). I've yet to even get an acknowledgment. I mean, I'm getting totally ghosted here. Maybe I've been spoiled with all that southern hospitality into thinking that people shouldn't give you the stink-eye just because you said hi to them out there on the street. Call me ol' fashioned I guess.

So, in summary, there are a few things in the Big that I've got to get used to and/or change. But, I like to consider myself somewhat of an adaptive and resilient creature and I'm sure I'll make Texas home. It's always tough when you're in a situation where everything around you is new and different. All your familiarity and comfort zones are stripped from you and you're forced to build new friendships, find new places, and just generally situate yourself again in a place that is much bigger and flatter than those quaint Dilworth streets that are quickly seeming like such a distant memory..

QC-ya!

Well my time in Charlotte has officially wound down to the last few Sweet Carolina moments. If my time in the QC was a roll of toilet paper I would officially be well into the frustrating little gluey pieces that stick to the roll to tell you that, A.) It's time to change the roll, B. )There's got to be a better place for the spare shit-tickets than all the way down the hall, and C.) You thought you were a gambling man but three shreds of Charmin to cover 4 fingers going into the black lagoon is a little too much risk. Think about it. Or don't, I really don't care either way.

It's funny when you reach a point in your life that is undeniably a turning point. I mean, there are always those times in your life that you can look back upon and say, "Hmm, that was a real turning point." But usually you didn't know at the time or you were too stupid or too busy watching Behind the Music to realize that you were undergoing a metamorphosis or a life changing experience. But sometimes there are those hard breaks that you know without a doubt will lead to major change, whether good or bad. These changes could be any one of number of things including but not limited too} (sorry, I lost use of my colon key for some reason) Losing all your physical belongings in one very stupid but totally ballsy spin of the roulette wheel; Being unwittingly swept into a world of snuff porn with a ring leader named PitSmack; Winning the lottery.

While my turning point did not find it's roots in anything this exciting, it is without a doubt staring me right in the face like an Ultimate Fighting champ, and I've either gotta start swinging or catch a flying knee to the chin followed by a merciless onslaught of taped knuckles to the face-hole region.

I'm moving to Dallas in exactly 2 days and it promises to be quite a shock to the system. I'm officially in the "What the fuck am I doing?" stage. Hopefully not to be followed by the "What the fuck have I done and what was I thinking?" stage. And I really, really hope not to be followed by the "How the shit did I get to be a lonely, middle aged, friendless gas station attendant" stage.

I guess maybe it's normal when you're moving on to take a look at everything that you have that maybe you've taken for granted, and that no doubt you will miss. I've made lot of friends here in Charlotte in the 3 and 1/2 years I've called this city my home. I've changed a lot as a person. I've grown and matured. I've become a runner, and that is a big part of who I am now and something that I'll always be.

I've also learned a lot of lessons. I've felt a lot of pain, and a lot of happiness, too. I've spent countless hours trying to know who and what I want to become, and I like to think I've gotten closer to some of these answers, although I also think I've learned that part of life is the constant reinvention of these questions based on who you actually have become, and what you have accomplished. I've learned that you can live like a king in a old dilapidated townhouse, and you can feel like a hopeless prisoner in a plush gated community. I've learned that there will always be people that want you to do or be one thing or another, and as long as you try to appease everyone you will always be in constant struggle between two forces. The only way around this friction is to do what YOU want to do, and not what anyone else wants you to do. I've also learned that this is much easier said than done. I've learned that it's best not to judge others, although it is always one's instinct to do so. I've leaned that good music is sometimes hard to find, but worth the digging. I've learned that one can survive the absence of TV, but you will be forced to be alone with your thoughts and this can be a scary thing. I've learned that good beer is worth the money, but cheap beer by the bucket with a group of close friends is really hard to beat. I've learned to stay close to your family and to remember where you come from. Trying to be someone you're not is like trying to keep Dick Cheney away from a "Shoot Your Friends in the Face" convention. Impossible.

I guess in summary I've made a pretty good run of Charlotte. She's been good to me, and I've been good to her (although sometimes she complained about the "love taps"). But I'm the type of guy that likes to move on before the rigamortis sets in. So, good or bad, I'm off to the Big D. I like to think it will be an exiting new chapter of my life, but who knows, it could really suck...

Airplanes Are Cooler Than Pedandtic Ramblings

I was originally going to write this post about the difference between living one's life based on the practicallity and reason of a classical mindset versus letting the free-wheeling fancy of romanticsm guide your rosy and hemp-laced life. Then I almost vomited all over my keyboard at the thought of how wrist-slittingly boring that post would be. I for one would rather punch myself in the nuts repeatedly than listen to some ass-bag blogger prattle on about how hard it is to decide between art and function. But the segway to aeroplanes? "Are you drunk, stoned and collaborating with one of your illiterate retarded Malaysian hookers again?" you might ask. No (and she's Tai godammit - that's the last time I'm going to correct you. Next time it will be a knee to the kidney, no questions asked).

Actually, airplanes are one of the few things in this world that transcend the boundaries between classical and romantic ideals. In a classical sense, the principles of flight have been designed on very brilliant yet surprisingly simple concepts of physics. In addition, a functioning airplane makes such efficient use of resources and mechanical and electrical systems as to be able to cross continents and oceans, carry hundreds of people or thousands of pounds of cargo, and break sound barriers (not all at once of course).

But airplanes and flight are also very romantic by nature. After all, what better instrument of ultimate freedom and individualism? Flying thousands of feet above the earth's surface with total control of your craft and the direction you will take is not only totally empowering, but quite liberating as well. As a pilot, you cut your own path, and the world is but a canvass beneath you, changing at your whimsey and providing scenery and perception impossible to an earthbound man.

So that's the segway, dammit, but it's not really what I want to write about.

This past week I was able to spend about 5 days in Tennessee with my father, whom I respect, admire, and strive to be similar to in many aspects of my life. My dad is a retired airline pilot who now works for the FAA. His career has literally spanned all facets of aviation, including single engine flight instruction, carrying the mail (one of the most dangerous flying gigs around, for those of you that don't know), corporate flying, airline executive, airline flying, airline training, and now working for the watchdog - the FAA.

My father has been able to acheive great things in his life because he had three things: Dreams, goals, and the ambition and will-power to make things happen for himself. Growing up I know we weren't wealthy, but my family was always well provided for. I don't recall my father ever bitching about how he had ever been slighted, wronged, or short-changed for any reason. I remember him working very hard, flying long trips, fixing things, building things, loving my mother, and somehow still spending ample time with me and my sister. All this, and I can barely find time to take my dog for a walk. Unbelievable. My father never drank, never smoked, dipped, chewed, swore, hit, yelled, or threatened. He was never shady and he never disappeared for days at a time.

What were his vices? What were his releases? To be honest, I don't know. One might be tempted to classify my dad as a puritan or straight-laced. But this is not the case either, as he has always had a great sense of humor and the quickest of witts. One of the most light-hearted and jovial men I've ever known, my images of him mostly consist of him laughing at some random joke or something he did that was goofy as all hell.

I realize that I'm probably biased, but the fact of the matter is that my dad is one of the best men I've ever known. I look at his life and his experiences (aviation was only one of many careers my father held) and can't help but feel... small. Or maybe one-dimensional is a better description. I guess I just feel like my father knows so much about so many things, and I (along with my generation of young men) am on track to a lot about a little, at best. Cultural changes, or a tragic change in the composition of today's men? I don't know..

So I had set out to write about airplanes, and the fact of the matter is that I had the time of my life in Tennessee flying with my father. My pilot's certifications as well as my love for of aviation were reborn and I can't wait to get back into the skies and behind the throttle. But as I write this I realize that although I have developed a love for airplanes and aviation, perhaps it is my admiration for my father which has been the catalyst for my love of flying, and the reason I can't wait to get back in the air to see if maybe, somehow, I can compare to him and the things that he's done both in the skies, and with his life.