PART 1. 1952-1960. FRANCE/MILWAUKEE
In 1957, my parents boldly headed to the colonies in the true spirit of the pioneers. I loved the plane ride, all 19 hours of it with a stop in Reykjavik, Iceland for refueling. We flew the majestic 4 engine turbo-prop ‘Constellation’ with the distinctive 3 rudder tail section.
But first, I would head back to France with my Mother and Brother. It is here that I fell in love with the Ocean and Big ships.
Once again though, I was presented with the opportunity to swim nearly everyday in the blue Pacific getting hammered by the huge waves at Zuma beach in Malibu. Needless to say, Ocean swimming was a favorite that summer, and I developed a quite fearless attitude in the raging surf. I was caught many times in rip tides with my Father who repeatedly called on the Life guards for assistance. PART 3. 1966-1976. HOLLYWOOD/SAN FERNANDO VALLEY
I started Jr. HS, and within weeks was speaking English almost without an accent. This of course, because I had already been there before. I now had access to a variety of sports. Baseball, football, basketball; but in PE class, it was in pure and simple running that I had the most success and pleasure in. I just liked to run around that 1/8 mile white painted circle on the blacktop of the school grounds.
Then, for that first Christmas, I got a bicycle. It was just fine with me that it was a hassle for my Mom to drive me to school. Since we lived in an apartment complex with a pool suitable for swimming, I now had the 3 sports that would be so central in molding me.
I biked everyday to school of necessity, I ran continuously in PE class, and I swam regularly in our near-olympic sized swimming pool with the tiles imported from Italy.
Of note, is that the movie star Johnny Weissmuler (the original Tarzan) used to train in that very pool in the heyday of Hollywood! Life went on like this for the 3 years of Jr HS. It was pretty much fun, maybe a bit too much as the grades were not quite there.
Then came Hollywood HS, where dozens upon dozens of TV and Movie stars had graduated from. It no longer was cool to ride your bicycle, so befitting my constantly evolving need for speed, the bicycle was replaced with a Triumph 650 Tiger motorcycle.
Maybe I should have started with cars as I promptly proceeded to lay it down in the hair pin turns of the Hollywood Hills within a week! Little did I know this wipe out would portend the bloody carnage of many more accidents to come!
Fortunately, I survived all my accidents and motorcycle years. Anyway, I could walk to school. To make up for the bicycle, I now found myself on the swim team and track team. This was my first introduction to organized sport, and the training to get faster and stronger. In competition, I found I no longer was at the top of the food chain like in Jr HS. But that was ok, I acquired the discipline to train and improve. Besides, I relished any opportunity to test myself.
After HS, I attended 2 Jr colleges. The 2nd of these was an agricultural/husbandry college located on an extensive property with horses, cows, hogs, orchards, and wheat tracts (how weird I should be attending this college again 45 years in the future). We had moved to the San Fernando Valley, where citrus fruit reigned king. Anyway, it was here on the dirt switchbacks of Los Angeles Pierce College that I discovered Cross county running.
It made running around a track seem like child’s play. It was so difficult and seemed insurmountable. I was still under my High School track mentality that running any more than 1 mile was long distance and should be avoided at all costs.
These trails, switchbacks they called them, went on forever it seemed, and they also went up and down really steep hills. Even though I preferred the beautiful tartan track facility available there, I felt compelled to run the trails every now and then just to remind myself how difficult this was.
In 1972, I attended California State University, Northridge. There, my athletic focus acquired a broader scope. The school offered a sizable variety of elective classes I was itching to try. They offered new experiences as well as an element of danger that appealed to my sense of living on the edge.
Scuba diving taught by an ex-Navy UDT man (the precursors to the Navy Seals), sailing, archery, mountain climbing, and survival training taught by an ex-Green Beret were some of the activities offered.
I was in a mountaineering class taught by Mr. Mountain, I kid you not! At this time, I was also taking flying lessons and in the process of acquiring my private pilot’s license.
The physiology training I was exposed to in scuba diving and flight training led me to seek more classes dealing with the response of the human body to extremes of environment. CSUN also offered classes such as advanced lifesaving and first aid, managing athletic injuries, and courses of that nature which I gobbled up.
I had taken a somewhat easy course of study, majoring in French literature. While the academics made me appreciate my native language more; it was really with sports and athletics that my heart lay. I continually needed more of a rush.
Indeed, when graduation came around in June of 1976, I quickly missed the physical demands and adrenaline rush of the classes offered at CSUN.I realized that at CSUN, my scope of athletic endeavor had been tweaked several notches beyond traditional sports and activities as a means to spend all the energy a 24 year old daredevil had. Life quickly became a bit too boring!
I still had no idea about what I wanted to do, but even more mortifying was the revulsion I had at the thought of working at ‘just another boring JOB’.
In retrospect, I was still more than 35 years away from the entrepreneurial spirit that would slowly materialize in my life.
It must have been fate; but instead of going to a facility in Washington on the West coast, I was offered the same specialty on the East coast at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, home of the 82nd Airborne. One look at paratroopers jumping out of airplanes, and I realized I had found my next adrenaline fix.
It was here that I read an article in the school newspaper about a student who was in training for a competition in Hawaii called the – Ironman Triathlon-. What sort of competition can that be, I asked myself? I never heard of such a thing!
In 1996, I got the urge to try my hand at Adventure racing. The ‘Raid Gauloise’ series of French origin had me fascinated for many years now, and as Mark Burnett’s American counterpart ‘Eco-Challenge’ series took hold, I was ready to jump in.
In the mid 1990’s, I had become a massage therapist. I was always fascinated with the idea of accelerating recovery of the physical body, banishing aches and pains, and promoting quality of life and longevity.
On December 28, 2012, I turned the big 6-0.Yep, that time had come.
I’m so happy to be back in SoCal, the beaches, the sun, the surf. San Francisco was behind me and so was the house. I now had no worries, only time to finally devote to taking my business to the internet and getting back in shape.