Self Portrait - Heading West Across Canada
A lot of people these days seem to have a bucket list of things they want to do after they retire. However, there is a problem with this idea for Christians, as retirement is not a concept in the Bible. The only time it is mentioned is in reference to the Levitical Priests, who were instructed to retire from their regular service at the age of fifty, but even then they would “assist their brothers”, as long as they did not do the work themselves (Numbers 8:23-26).
There is nothing wrong with having a bucket list, as long as what is on that list was given to you by God. Otherwise it just becomes another way to try to control our lives and do what we want to do. In my case, God knew He was going to have a big project for me at the end of my life. In preparation for this, He gave me many exciting adventures when I was young so I wouldn’t be resentful when I was working harder than ever, and other people my age were travelling or playing golf. Just in case, He also made sure I didn’t like golf! Here are some of the high points of my life before I fully gave myself to Christ:
Moving
I have moved 45 times in my life, and have lived in twelve states. Growing up, we moved every year to two years as my father climbed the corporate ladder. After I was on my own, God still seemed to keep me on the move. While moving that often is hard, especially on children, the fun part is that when I am talking with people about where they have lived, I can often say that I lived there too. The most amazing “coincidence” occurred when I was talking to a couple at a Bible Study in Arizona. We discovered we had both lived in Des Moines, Iowa, and then realized we had lived in the same house!
Survival Training
I was a Boy Scout and liked hiking and camping, so one summer I attended the Outward Bound Survival Training School in Minnesota. This program starts with two weeks of training, followed by a two-week 300 mile canoe trip through the Boundary Waters and Quetico Wilderness Areas in northern Minnesota and Canada. At the midpoint of the trip we each did a three-night solo in the wilderness with just a Bible, bug spray, a tin can, four matches, a little fishing line and a hook. No tent, no sleeping bag, and no food. Some of the guys had a hard time with this, but I am very comfortable alone. I built my shelter, and then followed a series of old beaver dams up to the current residence of the beaver and hung out with him as he was hard at work pulling branches into his pond.
Getting My Pilot’s License
I always struggled in school. While I would do well on tests, I found it very difficult to concentrate on my homework—something now defined as Attention Deficit Disorder. Like most people with ADD, there was one subject I could focus on for hours, and for me that was flying. I read about flying; I dreamed about flying; and when I was 16, I got a job at an airport as a “line boy” sweeping the hanger floor, polishing airplanes, and pumping gas.
My parents were thrilled when I got the job until they learned I was going to be paid in flying lessons—a lesson for every 2.5 days I worked. I soloed when I was 16, got my Private Pilot license when I was 17, followed by my Commercial license, Flight Instructor rating, and finally my Airline Transport Pilot rating. Over the years I worked as a flight instructor, charter pilot, corporate pilot, and commuter airline pilot. Eventually I got a job as a simulator instructor training corporate jet pilots, and this led to training all branches of military aviation in Aircrew Coordination Training. That in turn led to providing Error Prevention training to major corporations, and gave me the knowledge and experience I needed for what God has called me to: encouraging Christians, especially Catholics, to give themselves totally to God--seeking only His will for His kingdom and His glory.
Hitchhiking Across Europe
One summer while I was in college, I did a trip across Europe that had its own set of adventures. I started in England, where I stayed for a week with friends of my father in London. My cheap charter flight arrived too late to take a train to where they lived, so I spent the first night sleeping on a sofa in a condemned apartment building. I don’t remember how I ended up there, but I do remember sitting on the sofa thinking that I would go ahead and open the bottle of Parepectolin I had brought in case I got diarrhea from bad water or food, but suddenly I realized I wouldn’t need it, and ended up bringing it home unopened.
Flying the Airliner to Finland
After England, I headed to Finland to stay with another family my father knew through his business dealings. On the flight to Helsinki on a DC-6 four engine propeller airliner, I told the stewardess (that’s what they were called back then) that I was a pilot, and asked if I could visit the cockpit, and the captain said that would be fine. When I entered the cockpit, the copilot and the flight engineer were playing cards in the back. The captain got up, said “You sit here,” and told me to fly the airplane, pointing to the radar and telling me in his heavy Finnish accent, “That is Russia – do not go too close!” Then he went back to play cards with the other two pilots!
I had my first sauna in a traditional wood burning sauna on the shore of a fiord in Finland, complete with birch branches to whip ourselves with. We had been in the sauna only a couple of minutes when I asked my host how long we stayed there. He replied, “Until you start to sweat very much.” I replied, “Like I am?”, as the sweat streamed down my face. After the sauna we jumped in the cold water of the fiord to cool off.
Flying in the Cockpit to Copenhagen
Next I took a ferry to Stockholm, where I was going to catch a flight to Copenhagen. When I went to buy my ticket at the airport, the flight was full. I pulled out my pilot’s license and asked if I could purchase the jump seat in the cockpit. They said that was fine, so I flew from Stockholm to Copenhagen in the cockpit of a Caravelle, which was one of the first jet airliners.
Fun in Munich
From Copenhagen I set off to hitchhike the 1,500 miles across Europe to Greece—in one week! I had an interesting experience at the Hofbräuhaus in Munich. I was looking for someone who spoke English and found a group of Americans on the third floor, complete with a little American flag. I quickly discovered they were not giving people a good impression of Americans, so I took the little flag in hopes people wouldn’t realize where they were from and headed back to the ground floor. I spotted a 90-year-old woman dancing on a table with a rose in her mouth and figured that would be a fun group. I spent the night wandering around Munich with this great bunch of Germans and Canadians, arriving back at my room at dawn.
A Flying Cow in Yugoslavia
The most interesting part of the trip was hitchhiking through communist Yugoslavia. I remember riding in an old pickup truck with an equally old farmer. In our sign language conversation, we shared that we both liked bread, so he opened up a dirty handkerchief and shared his wonderful home baked round bread lunch with me. I had another interesting sign language conversation with a group of teenagers riding in the back of a grain truck, literally sitting on the grain. That night I ended up in an area with no place to stay, so I slept in a corn field.
My second day in Yugoslavia was more exciting than I had bargained for. I was in the cab of an old dump truck riding down the main highway, which was a two lane road paved with cobblestone. I was wondering if the truck had any brakes when the driver pulled into the other lane to pass some cars stopped up ahead. At that moment a German Mercedes, whose driver must have thought he was on the autobahn in Germany, appeared headed directly towards us at an incredibly high speed. The dump truck driver started to pull back into his lane, realized he couldn’t stop in time to avoid the cars now right in front of us, pulled back into the other lane, and collided in a glancing head-on collision with the Mercedes. The Mercedes went off one side of the road, and we went off the other side into the ditch.
Other than a few glass cuts I was not injured, but as they removed the people from the Mercedes, one was dead, another was obviously dying, and two others were seriously injured. All the traffic in both directions was blocked, and as I waited for the police and ambulances to arrive, I planned to tell them I was in the dump truck. However, an hour later nobody had arrived yet, and as people cleared the highway, I realized I had no idea what the authorities would do or how long it would take before I could continue my trip, so I stuck my thumb out and the first person that made it through picked me up. As we continued south on the highway, I was obviously pretty shaken by the whole thing, but glad to be safely on my way again. On either side of the road there were fields with cows in them, and I was enjoying the scenery when suddenly a cow up ahead spun around and raced toward the road. The cow collided with the car ahead of us and literally flew over the car I was in.
We were fine, but I was beginning to wonder if I would make it alive to Greece. My last ride was with a German couple in a Mercedes driving very fast, and I sat in terror in the back seat with my bag jammed into the space between me and the front seat to try to save my life if we crashed. When I finally arrived in Thessaloniki, I had had enough of hitchhiking and decided to take the train to Athens. The other people in my compartment were amazed that I slept almost the entire way! I visited several Greek islands and then made it safely home.
Riding a Motorcycle Around the Country
The next year I saw the movie “Easy Rider” and got the urge to do a motorcycle trip, so I got a Kawasaki 500 (one of the early two cycle "rocket ships") and set off from Boston with a friend on a Kawasaki 350. We headed north to Quebec, then west across Canada to Vancouver, camping out or staying with people we met on the trip. From there we headed south on the Pacific Coast Highway. We were riding across El Gran Desierto (The Great Desert) in northern Mexico at night because it was so hot, when my friend fell asleep and crashed. He was ok, but his bike was not, and that ended the trip for him. I continued up to Wisconsin to visit my parents, and finally back to college in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for a total of 13,000 miles in three months.
Custom Designed Paths
The result of these and other adventures is that I am very happy to focus my time on my calling to encourage Christians, especially Catholics, to fully surrender to God. This is not to say this is the way everyone should do it. This was God’s path for me. Some people are called to totally consecrate their lives to God very early in their lives. Others, like myself, are led to give themselves to God later in their lives, but not as a consecrated religious or priest. We each need to pray that we will be aware of God’s guidance and fully accept whatever path He might have for us. That is what this website is all about!
There is nothing wrong with having a bucket list, as long as what is on that list was given to you by God. Otherwise it just becomes another way to try to control our lives and do what we want to do. In my case, God knew He was going to have a big project for me at the end of my life. In preparation for this, He gave me many exciting adventures when I was young so I wouldn’t be resentful when I was working harder than ever, and other people my age were travelling or playing golf. Just in case, He also made sure I didn’t like golf! Here are some of the high points of my life before I fully gave myself to Christ:
Moving
I have moved 45 times in my life, and have lived in twelve states. Growing up, we moved every year to two years as my father climbed the corporate ladder. After I was on my own, God still seemed to keep me on the move. While moving that often is hard, especially on children, the fun part is that when I am talking with people about where they have lived, I can often say that I lived there too. The most amazing “coincidence” occurred when I was talking to a couple at a Bible Study in Arizona. We discovered we had both lived in Des Moines, Iowa, and then realized we had lived in the same house!
Survival Training
I was a Boy Scout and liked hiking and camping, so one summer I attended the Outward Bound Survival Training School in Minnesota. This program starts with two weeks of training, followed by a two-week 300 mile canoe trip through the Boundary Waters and Quetico Wilderness Areas in northern Minnesota and Canada. At the midpoint of the trip we each did a three-night solo in the wilderness with just a Bible, bug spray, a tin can, four matches, a little fishing line and a hook. No tent, no sleeping bag, and no food. Some of the guys had a hard time with this, but I am very comfortable alone. I built my shelter, and then followed a series of old beaver dams up to the current residence of the beaver and hung out with him as he was hard at work pulling branches into his pond.
Getting My Pilot’s License
I always struggled in school. While I would do well on tests, I found it very difficult to concentrate on my homework—something now defined as Attention Deficit Disorder. Like most people with ADD, there was one subject I could focus on for hours, and for me that was flying. I read about flying; I dreamed about flying; and when I was 16, I got a job at an airport as a “line boy” sweeping the hanger floor, polishing airplanes, and pumping gas.
My parents were thrilled when I got the job until they learned I was going to be paid in flying lessons—a lesson for every 2.5 days I worked. I soloed when I was 16, got my Private Pilot license when I was 17, followed by my Commercial license, Flight Instructor rating, and finally my Airline Transport Pilot rating. Over the years I worked as a flight instructor, charter pilot, corporate pilot, and commuter airline pilot. Eventually I got a job as a simulator instructor training corporate jet pilots, and this led to training all branches of military aviation in Aircrew Coordination Training. That in turn led to providing Error Prevention training to major corporations, and gave me the knowledge and experience I needed for what God has called me to: encouraging Christians, especially Catholics, to give themselves totally to God--seeking only His will for His kingdom and His glory.
Hitchhiking Across Europe
One summer while I was in college, I did a trip across Europe that had its own set of adventures. I started in England, where I stayed for a week with friends of my father in London. My cheap charter flight arrived too late to take a train to where they lived, so I spent the first night sleeping on a sofa in a condemned apartment building. I don’t remember how I ended up there, but I do remember sitting on the sofa thinking that I would go ahead and open the bottle of Parepectolin I had brought in case I got diarrhea from bad water or food, but suddenly I realized I wouldn’t need it, and ended up bringing it home unopened.
Flying the Airliner to Finland
After England, I headed to Finland to stay with another family my father knew through his business dealings. On the flight to Helsinki on a DC-6 four engine propeller airliner, I told the stewardess (that’s what they were called back then) that I was a pilot, and asked if I could visit the cockpit, and the captain said that would be fine. When I entered the cockpit, the copilot and the flight engineer were playing cards in the back. The captain got up, said “You sit here,” and told me to fly the airplane, pointing to the radar and telling me in his heavy Finnish accent, “That is Russia – do not go too close!” Then he went back to play cards with the other two pilots!
I had my first sauna in a traditional wood burning sauna on the shore of a fiord in Finland, complete with birch branches to whip ourselves with. We had been in the sauna only a couple of minutes when I asked my host how long we stayed there. He replied, “Until you start to sweat very much.” I replied, “Like I am?”, as the sweat streamed down my face. After the sauna we jumped in the cold water of the fiord to cool off.
Flying in the Cockpit to Copenhagen
Next I took a ferry to Stockholm, where I was going to catch a flight to Copenhagen. When I went to buy my ticket at the airport, the flight was full. I pulled out my pilot’s license and asked if I could purchase the jump seat in the cockpit. They said that was fine, so I flew from Stockholm to Copenhagen in the cockpit of a Caravelle, which was one of the first jet airliners.
Fun in Munich
From Copenhagen I set off to hitchhike the 1,500 miles across Europe to Greece—in one week! I had an interesting experience at the Hofbräuhaus in Munich. I was looking for someone who spoke English and found a group of Americans on the third floor, complete with a little American flag. I quickly discovered they were not giving people a good impression of Americans, so I took the little flag in hopes people wouldn’t realize where they were from and headed back to the ground floor. I spotted a 90-year-old woman dancing on a table with a rose in her mouth and figured that would be a fun group. I spent the night wandering around Munich with this great bunch of Germans and Canadians, arriving back at my room at dawn.
A Flying Cow in Yugoslavia
The most interesting part of the trip was hitchhiking through communist Yugoslavia. I remember riding in an old pickup truck with an equally old farmer. In our sign language conversation, we shared that we both liked bread, so he opened up a dirty handkerchief and shared his wonderful home baked round bread lunch with me. I had another interesting sign language conversation with a group of teenagers riding in the back of a grain truck, literally sitting on the grain. That night I ended up in an area with no place to stay, so I slept in a corn field.
My second day in Yugoslavia was more exciting than I had bargained for. I was in the cab of an old dump truck riding down the main highway, which was a two lane road paved with cobblestone. I was wondering if the truck had any brakes when the driver pulled into the other lane to pass some cars stopped up ahead. At that moment a German Mercedes, whose driver must have thought he was on the autobahn in Germany, appeared headed directly towards us at an incredibly high speed. The dump truck driver started to pull back into his lane, realized he couldn’t stop in time to avoid the cars now right in front of us, pulled back into the other lane, and collided in a glancing head-on collision with the Mercedes. The Mercedes went off one side of the road, and we went off the other side into the ditch.
Other than a few glass cuts I was not injured, but as they removed the people from the Mercedes, one was dead, another was obviously dying, and two others were seriously injured. All the traffic in both directions was blocked, and as I waited for the police and ambulances to arrive, I planned to tell them I was in the dump truck. However, an hour later nobody had arrived yet, and as people cleared the highway, I realized I had no idea what the authorities would do or how long it would take before I could continue my trip, so I stuck my thumb out and the first person that made it through picked me up. As we continued south on the highway, I was obviously pretty shaken by the whole thing, but glad to be safely on my way again. On either side of the road there were fields with cows in them, and I was enjoying the scenery when suddenly a cow up ahead spun around and raced toward the road. The cow collided with the car ahead of us and literally flew over the car I was in.
We were fine, but I was beginning to wonder if I would make it alive to Greece. My last ride was with a German couple in a Mercedes driving very fast, and I sat in terror in the back seat with my bag jammed into the space between me and the front seat to try to save my life if we crashed. When I finally arrived in Thessaloniki, I had had enough of hitchhiking and decided to take the train to Athens. The other people in my compartment were amazed that I slept almost the entire way! I visited several Greek islands and then made it safely home.
Riding a Motorcycle Around the Country
The next year I saw the movie “Easy Rider” and got the urge to do a motorcycle trip, so I got a Kawasaki 500 (one of the early two cycle "rocket ships") and set off from Boston with a friend on a Kawasaki 350. We headed north to Quebec, then west across Canada to Vancouver, camping out or staying with people we met on the trip. From there we headed south on the Pacific Coast Highway. We were riding across El Gran Desierto (The Great Desert) in northern Mexico at night because it was so hot, when my friend fell asleep and crashed. He was ok, but his bike was not, and that ended the trip for him. I continued up to Wisconsin to visit my parents, and finally back to college in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for a total of 13,000 miles in three months.
Custom Designed Paths
The result of these and other adventures is that I am very happy to focus my time on my calling to encourage Christians, especially Catholics, to fully surrender to God. This is not to say this is the way everyone should do it. This was God’s path for me. Some people are called to totally consecrate their lives to God very early in their lives. Others, like myself, are led to give themselves to God later in their lives, but not as a consecrated religious or priest. We each need to pray that we will be aware of God’s guidance and fully accept whatever path He might have for us. That is what this website is all about!