I was born at a very early age.

   Seventeen years later, I escaped from Grand Prairie, Texas by quitting high school and joining the Army to avoid the draft.
   There's nothing wrong with the above concept. The Army at that time offered a two-year enlistment with a choice of jobs if you could qualify for your choice.
   That option seemed better to me than being drafted, being sent to prison for refusing to serve, or sneaking across the Canadian border with -- at that time -- no chance of returning to the US without being imprisoned.

   After the Army I tried to attend college, but anti-Vietnam war sentiments made the early seventies a bad time to be a recently-discharged veteran in the United States.
   Unable to reach those who had truly instigated and directed the war, protestors set their sights considerably lower and settled for harrassing anyone known to have served -- willingly or not -- in the military.
   After my car had been vandalized in a campus parking lot a second time -- "baby burner" scratched into the paint, tires slashed, windows smashed -- I decided to postpone college by visiting Europe for a few years.
   For the record: I never burned babies, nor did I rape and pillage. Such activities never fell within my military job descriptions.

   In Germany, I took a job as an ambulance driver at 2nd General Army Hospital in Landstuhl and signed up for USAFE college courses at Ramstein Air Force Base.
   A few months later, I was recruited as what was then called a "local hire" to work as a courier and provide impromptu assistances for people involved in intelligence work for the US government in Western Europe.
   When USAFE course labs in three subjects became locally unavailable, I again put college on hold. My off-base employers saw this as an opportunity to expand my job, so I left the ambulance position to work full-time for that agency.

Current Interests:
   Motorcycle touring. That blue box on the Vulcan 1500 Classic is a cooler. The big green boxes on the Vulcan 750 are 30mm ammo-can saddlebags. Panels on the front forks deflect wind around me well enough that I could wear my cowboy hat at 130 MPH, but I'll admit nothing here.

Sports:
   Nowadays hang gliding is becoming as regulated and lawsuit-conscious as all the other sports. Click the last pic on the left to see how we did it before bureaucrats took over. Yes, Connie, those are combat boots.
   Except for women's beach volleyball, team sports bore me.