I have been traveling my whole life from when I was born in Montana, to living as a small child in Colorado Springs, to Lake Charles, LA, then on to Milwaukee, Wi, which was my 9-month childhood home each year to then spending three months per year in the summer and some holidays in Galveston and Huntsville, TX.
After Undergraduate and Graduate school in Texas and Missouri and working six years in Jefferson City near the banks of the Missouri River for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, my family and I moved to the Philadelphia area — the Mainline or border to it — and lived there for 18 years, before moving to Chester Springs, PA and places nearby.
During my professional career I have been able to see all 50 states and 25 countries.
I have been fortunate that my work in the energy, water and transportation field allowed me to see the world. I and my family lived in Denmark for three years and I lived in the United Arab Emirates for almost three years traveling extensively within the “golden triangle” of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Al Ain — my base of operation. During this time I traveled to Sri Lanka, Istanbul, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Seoul, Geneva, Rio de Janeiro, and Riyad, Saudi Arabia.
This is where I picked up my wealth of travel experience, because I have faced almost every conceivable event, dislocation, delay, cancelled flights one can imagine.
As a child traveling every year from the “Yankee” North to the Red South, it showed me things I would never have experienced if I was raised in just one region or location. I picked up the yearn to travel from my grandparents who lived in England and visited the Netherlands, when I was a child and they sent me things from these countries. My grandfather also traveled to Cuba before the Castro regime took over, when it was originally the Las Vegas of the Caribbean. As I was spending each summer with my dad and grand parents in the South it taught me to appreciate different cultures, history and lifestyles which I have continued to appreciate today, and this gave me the intellectual foundation to still appreciate and investigate contrasts, systems and interdependencies. Going to work with my father and grand father took me in the back roads of piney East Texas to saw mills and traveling with my dad to construction projects along the Galveston Seawall, Brazos River, Houston Ship Channel, Pasadena and Dear Park Texas graphically showed the interplay of the forces of nature and the role civil engineering plays to help ameliorate the forces of nature. I liked, appreciated and enjoyed the contrasts of my life of location, culture, contrasts and lifestyle.
Every child should have the gift of Americana and world travel. It makes you appreciate the things you have at home plus also shows a little about where things can be improved in our own culture and lifestyle.
