The river rat, the country professors, and natural selection

Every word of this is true and if anyone says otherwise they are a liar. Colllege was busy...no doubt about it.  I learned alot...and I can honestly say i am proud of that effort.I hope my kids get some of that for themselves..... mmmmm.  Now I cant take credit here.

Good times

These are the good times

Good times indeed.  From that point on I started listening to National Public Radio every day which is still a great joy.  Liz story ( who I got to meet) , Andreas Vollenweider, Brahms ,Bach, Handel … the list goes on and on.  In the student government and being vice president of Sigma phi epsilon I was lucky enough to meet many famous people. G Gordon Liddy, Ralph Nader and others. My ex-wife of course has….. no clue who any of these people are... At the end of my freshman year Mike Harris and I traveled to Atlanta to meet the US team coach for kayaking. He was impressed with my ability in the kayak having never been in one before and I bought my first boat from him.   We trained hard and took 7th at nationals in 83.  From that point on Wildwater kayaking was a real focus …. So yeah I was a river rat. I was asked to try out for the US bobsled team but declined because kayaking was too fun….sometimes we would come in first …some times in third or so.  I was invited to the pan am games but declined. I was very proud when our homecoming queen at Ferrum asked if i would be her escort.. I accepted of course.    I was very dedicated with school and carried about 3.7 GPA.   I would stay in the library until they locked me in at night every wed so i would study all night until they opened in the morning.  So I had no choice but to study all night.  I am a driven person….true that. You have to work hard to beat me or keep me down or make me give up. I also gave campus tours was an RA and even took classes in the virgin islands.  Weekends were spent studying…… all day Saturday and Saturday night and all day Sunday……….but something was missing.
I would visit my friends at UVA and Tech …sometimes Radford and knew I was missing something from my college experience. I was lucky enough to get into Harvard for the semester before I transferred to wvu. Harvard was....... Fantastic.  Truly.  The caliber of academia and even the food was …off the chart.  By this time i had also completed my EMT.  This is hard to believe too but i would get next years text books and read them a year before the class even started.  So I already knew the subject a year in advance. 

West Virginia was tough on me. I was carrying 19 credit hours and was taking very tough classes.  I got approval to take freshman medical school classes as an undergrad….which I passed with ease.  My grades were still good but I was burning out.  I was studying so hard with no diversion..I literally bought some snuff one day…out of the blue…..just to have something to do.  That…..was a mistake…or should I say stupid…..I would be hooked on it for a long time…thankfully I quit……

I came home to Roanoke for a vacation and fell in love with a Greek girl. I needed a break from school and we decided to move in together.  She was much older than me and it never quite worked out.  I was delivering dominoes pizzas then….. I couldn’t afford a place to stay so I lived in an old house my dad owned.  No heat, no electricity, no water, no lights, no furniture…I slept in a sleeping bag on the wooden floor with a little space heater for the winter..  My high school buddy Leo offered me a sound engineer’s job at impact productions.  I took the job and soon I was directing my own commercials.   We shot 230 commercials my first year. I even worked with coach beamer at Va tech to produce his coaches show every week.

Eventually I knew I had to go back to college to finish. So I returned to Ferrum to finish up …..I got talked into playing bass with my college professors …..we were called the country professors ….god that was rough. Hahaha  I know that's hard to believe too because I hate country music as much as anyone can….but it didn't take any brainpower.  Real fun came when I got the bass gig for a band called without warning (van halens fans will remember).  By then I was playing violin and guitar.  Back at Ferrum I was studying hard again and feeling good …..I dated a girl Connie who eventually became a Surgeon.  During the summer I moved to Myrtle Beach but could only find work at Shoney's……which was just enough money to survive on  …..I met Rich and we had a great time playing volleyball and drinking on the beach. I should have married his sister when I had the chance.  My sister moved in with me down there but we really did not share too much in common which was sad…..and my fault.   I really enjoyed having her there but it was obvious we were on different life courses.  Back at Ferrum I would take the most important course of my life……. natural selection. Until that point in my life I was a convicted Christian. Like most I considered my faith unshakable.  But that would change.  I got accepted to the nuclear medicine program at UVA which was a dream come true. My sister moved in with me……At this point I was 26 years old. I had never found a woman that I wanted to marry and new that I would find one at UVA. Unfortunately…the one I ended up with was never a student there…which turned out to be a mistake.  At this point I was a master in school and knew that I would not even crack a book when it came to studying. I vowed to get through it and was successful even though I did not study hard and I was even class president.  I had spent so much time studying that school became a breeze.  I spent my free time reading physics books about relativity, god particles, evolution, dark matter, quantum theory… so yeah I had a real passion for my discipline…..and still do.  My education was very rewarding.  Not many people can say that.  I remember reading a fat medical dictionary from A to Z when I was in Puerto Rico.  (a great trip…I saw leather back turtles lay their eggs in the middle of the night). 

For my daughter:  College days were fun for me even though I studied way too much……and I am proud of you for taking on such hard subjects.  Don’t burn out if you can….pace yourself….you can do it.

For my son:  Be careful what you get talked into.  Don’t give in to pressure from others too easily.  Don’t be afraid to say no….real friends are hard to find so choose well. 

Good times

Leave your cares behind

Bring it……. Bring that path of personal success.  Times are not easy on people.  you have to feel good when you look in the mirror….even though many things did not turn out for the best.    When I think about being divorced…I mean free… I sleep good at night…..its when I think about my kids that I don’t. For those things that didn’t go my way.  I can honestly say I tried….   Fear of failure is not an option….but it does take two to tango.