My Life

Looking back on my life (and my previous post) I can say that, truly, my life has been an adventure. Not like climbing Mt Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary, nor like crossing the Pacific Ocean with Thor Heyerdahl on the Kon-Tiki. But it has been an adventure in its own way.

Oh, I was going to cross the Pacific. I went to a business that sells sailboats and bargained for a 27-footer. We came to within $500 of making the sale, but I wouldn't go any higher and the seller wouldn't go any lower. So that failed negotiation doubtless saved my life.

I was trapped in a freight elevator while trying to erect an antenna for a pirate radio station. A walkie-talkie saved me. (This was long before mobile phones.)

I was a design engineer for a company that created an ABM (anti-ballistic missile system). The project ended when we were stabbed in the back by the government.

I was a design engineer for a company that created mobile, self-guided, security robot systems. The company ended when we were stabbed in the back by the government.

I was—wait a minute, do I detect a trend here?

I've been to the top of the Empire State Building. (But then, who hasn't?) I've been to a show at Radio City Music Hall. I ate a meal at one of the Automats in Manhattan. (They're all gone now.) 

I bought government surplus electronic equipment and repaired it and sold it by mail-order. (Remember mail order?) Large tractor-trailer freight trucks used to pull up in front of my house. I'd be waiting with a wooden crate and a bill of lading.

I spent a winter in a cabin on a lake. The cabin was without heat and without insulation. Wide cracks between the floorboards allowed icy wind to blow under the house and blow the carpet off the floor. The shower stall was sheet metal and the faucets always froze at night so that in the morning the faucets wouldn't turn. The house was so cold at night that a glass of water would freeze solid. I slept under an electric blanket turned up to maximum, with several more (non-electric) blankets piled on top of it. An igloo would have been warmer. Seriously.

A friend and I built an electronic "bug" (radio transmitter) and a receiver for a man who was convinced his wife was plotting to have him killed. He wanted to eavesdrop on her conversations. The bug worked far better than we had hoped. I don't know what the man discovered about his wife. I left that town and drove a camper van around the country, and never returned to that town.

I learned transcendental meditation while on a trip to Hilton Head Island. I drove over the Rocky Mountains. I drove across the Great Plains. I rode an aerial tramway (video) to the top of Mount Sandia. (There is, or was, a restaurant up there.)

I drove from Crescent City, California, to Los Angeles on the Pacific Coast Highway. 

I've flown on big jets, twin-engine puddle jumpers, and single-engine Cessnas. I've had adventures in boats on the James River and on the Chesapeake Bay that I don't want to repeat.

I've done much, much more—including things I can't write about. Okay, maybe my life hasn't been an adventure. But I can't help feel that it's been different. Very different. I think this life was supposed to teach me a lot. And I think I've learned a lot. I hope so, because I really don't want to repeat this life.

Were that possible, of course.