LIVING A LIFE LESS ORDINARY

8 Dec 13
Kandahar, Afghanistan

I think those are reserved for Dahleen and me.

While looking ahead to the next chapter in our lives, I started thinking about how un-ordinary it is for folks to desert their lives on land and live full-time on a boat cruising about the tropics.  While there are more people doing it than you would imagine, it is still definitely the exception, rather than the "norm". 

As I thought about the future, I also reflected on my past....it too is a little un-ordinary.  

• ·      Army commission as a LT at age 25; 
• ·      Army flight school at age 27.5; 
• ·      Flew thousands of hours before retiring with 25 years service; 
• ·      Started a second career as a general contractor;  (I enjoyed it a lot and was more successful than I should have been....timing is everything.);  
• ·      Learned to scuba dive at age 46; 
• ·      Bought a 42' sailboat at age 50 with VERY little sailing experience; 
• ·      Took off across the Atlantic (Gulf Stream) to the Bahamas for 6 months after basically never having sailed out of Charleston Harbor before;
• ·      Started missing flying after, basically, 9 years of not flying and became an EMS pilot flying one of the most fun aircraft in the world (Bell 407); 
• ·      Bought 3 Harleys at age 53 having never ridden a motorcycle before;
• ·      Bought a motorhome and traveled all over the country as a float plot flying EMS;
• ·      Went to Afghanistan at age 56 flying a Huey gunship, working with some really "special" people;
• ·      Just recently bought the next cruising boat, and now counting the days till we push away from the dock to....

LIVE THE LIFE LESS ORDINARY.

P.S.  Almost all of the above un-ordinary events were shared with my wife, Dahleen, who is as adventurous as I am, if not more so.