• Ride in a Helicopter

• Fly in a Jet Fighter

• Ride in the Goodyear Blimp - almost got a ride in Houston

• Ride in the Cab of Diesel Locomotive (Aint gonna happen unless I buy the railroad - Homeland Security rules)

• Operate a Crane

• Celebrate in St. Paul's Cathedral again - London

• Work on a Tugboat

• Visit the Guggenheim Museum

• Visit the Louvre

• Spend a week Touring Paris

• Spend a week in Bruges, Belgium

• Spend a two weeks touring Ireland

• Spend a two weeks touring Scotland

• Make a Mortise & Tenon and a Dovetail joint

• Walk the Appalachian Trail

• Own a Steam-powered Boat

• Drive a Semi-tractor-trailer Rig

• Write my own Techno/Trance music

• Learn Glass Slumping

• Learn Cabinet Building

• Patent an Invention (Had 2 designed but development was too expensive)

• Restore a Willis Woody Station Wagon

• Own a Rough Diamond

• Own a Computer-controlled Router or Lazar Bench

• Prospect for Meteorites in one of the western deserts

• Tour the Aircraft Bone Yard in Arizona

• Rebuild an Automobile Transmission

• See the Grand Canyon

• Visit Old Faithful

• Meet Don Imus (Ain’t gonna happen - he died at the end of 2019)

• Meet the Woz (Stephen Wozniak)

• See the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in person

• Ride the Badger - the last commercial steam-powered ferry

• Meet up with John - "Lark Man" - Alkire from New Haven High School, Class of ‘66. Had a terrific hour-long conversation with him!

• Tour the CN Tower, Toronto, Canada

• Observe a Surgery Up Close (heart, knee, hip, etc)

• Visit the Large Haldron Collider

• Ride on top of an elevator with an inspector

• Visit Reykjavik, Iceland

• Detonate C-4 and Dynamite Explosives

• Be placed on Melinda Gate’s beneficiary list.

  Three, Two . . . Done . . .

• Got married to a woman I love

• Had COVID-19 and survived to tell about it (It was like the flue with a head cold - much ado about nothing for me.)

• Fathered a great son who is married, blessed with a wonderful wife, a great home, and interesting career opportunities!

• Stood inside a C-135 cargo bay and flight deck

• Flew in the cockpit of 747

• Flew First Class in a 747

• Piloted a small plane

• Operated a bulldozer

• Toured a WWII submarine

• Saw the tulips blooming in Holland

• Visited Big Ben at Noon (and it ain't that big and its real name isn’t Big Ben!)

• Toured the head end of a cable TV company

• Toured a phone company switch room

• Learned to write HTML & DNN Code

• Created several websites

• Served on a non-profit board

• Drove a school bus (to the school maintenance garage where I repaired them)

• Wired a house

• Built a house

• Acted on stage in a play, built scenery, designed lighting, and produced sound effects

• Blew hot glass and created a decorative glass flower

• Made a stained glass lampshade

• Started an Internet business

• Owned several small businesses

• Taught a high school class, several college courses, and multiple public leadership seminars

• Mentored executives

• Trained hundreds of leaders in public seminars at Cornell

• Drove a Corvette

• Own a piece of Corvettite; it is made of hardened layers of Corvette paint from the old Chevy factory paint booth

• Restored & painted a CJ-5 Jeep - tough & lifted

• Sculpted in Hyper-Tufa

• Snorkeled in the Red Sea and observed a Lion Fish and giant (4' wide) Tridacna Squamosina clam

• Developed my own color & B&W film - Made color & B&W prints

• Worked as an electrician and as a carpenter

• Had my own lawn service - when I was 8 -12 years old

• Worked in a stainless steel mill

• Rebuilt an automobile engine twice (my VW)

• Rode in a 300,000-pound diesel-electric coal haul-truck

• Toured a 300' boom drag line, operator cab, and motor room at a phosphate mine

• Re-shingled a house roof

• Felled a large tree

• Hunted for and found Megashark (Carcharodon Megalodon) 10-20 Mil year old teeth. Have one hat is 2” wide and 3” long

• Laid on the Saudi Desert & drank Saudi tea, watching the full moon rise

• Toured the underground of Seattle

• Had lunch with Peter Block, renowned business consultant, author, and organizational development professor

• Met Jonas Salk (When I was a kid)

• Toured the Coca Cola Museum - Tasted Coke from places around the world - some didn’t add a smile!

• Watched Belgian Lace being made

• Met the only living, male, professional lace pattern designer in the world

• Walked through the Atomium in Brussels

• Witnessed money laundering in a San Juan casino

• Toured a petrochemical plant control room

• Toured the Boeing 747, 757, 767, & 787 Manufacturing Plant

• Celebrated Advent in St. Paul's Cathedral - London

• Saw The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie - running continuously in London since 1962

• Drove Across Hoover Dam and London Bridge

• Won and lost money in Las Vegas

• I’ve hunted, fished, hiked, and camped. (They’re not my gig.)

• Rode the two last cable ferries in the US: Coal Center, PA & Harrisburg, PA

• Stood on a lock on the Panama Canal

• Picked coffee in Costa Rica (but didn't meet Juan Valdez)

• Gave up on the United Methodist Church

• Got picked up by hookers in San Juan, PR and Las Vegas, NV - Didn't buy it!

• Dined at the Château de Chantilly and had real Chantilly whipped cream

• Saw the original Michelangelo's Sculpture Madonna of Bruges

• Toured Kodak filmmaking - when they still made film - couldn't see much (it's dark in there)

• Toured Hershey Chocolate Kisses plant - tasted them as they came off the line

• Watched Crayola Crayons & markers being made - know a girl who named a color: asparagus

• Watched M&Ms being made

• Toured a McCormick Spice Manufacturing Plant

• Toured the 24' Dia. water run-off sewers 90' under Rochester, NY

• Walked through the Rochester Subway tunnels - now filled

• Walked the Erie Canal Aqua Duct (under Rochester’s Main street and across the Genesee River)

• Hung out atop the Seattle Space Needle

• Visited Starbucks' first coffee shop at Pike Street Market in Seattle

• Toured behind the scenes of Aquariums in Atlanta & Seattle

• Toured a Navy Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser

• Walked Battery Steele - Peaks Island, ME, and Battery Murphy - Nahant, MA

• Visited LL Bean's Home Store

• Rode the Bobs Roller Coaster and Parachute ride at Riverview Park, Chicago

• Rode the Jack Rabbit Roller Coaster built 1920 at Sea Breeze (Rochester, NY) & the 1921 version at Kennywood (West Mifflin, PA)

• Saw Niagara Falls from Canada & Maid of the Mist

• Toured the giant sequoia trees in California

• Visited Bakersfield, California, and lived to tell about it - it's a dry heat!

• Panned for gold in California River and Dahlonega, GA - and found gold

• Toured the US Steel Sheet Mill in Gary, IN, when it was the largest mill in the world

• Worked on the largest aluminum extrusion press in the world at Alcoa in Lafayette, IN

• Walked through the Atomium in Brussels

• Fed the wild burrows in the Ghost Town of Oatman, Arizona

• Used X-ray crystallography to identify the content of unknown material

• Used an electron microscope

• Own a dime irradiated at the Oak Ridge National Lab when they used to do that

• Made Styrofoam plates and bowls and polyethylene bags

• Toured the Mobil Polyethylene plants in Beaumont, TX, and Yanbu, Saudi Arabia

• Visited the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center

• Rode ferries off the coast of Maine and Washington

• Rode the Cog Railway to the top of Mt. Washington

• Rode the Duquesne Incline cable car in Pittsburgh

• Watched Bennington Pottery being made in Bennington, VT

• Visited the Quilts of Gee's Bend exposition in the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA

• Visited the Bodies exposition

• Visited the Jimmy Carter and Jerald Ford Libraries

• Used a proctoscope on myself

• Survived a colonoscopy (and got a certificate about not finding my head up there)

• Survived a quad by-pass

• Published 10 books

• Have been quoted in the newspapers & magazines

• Worked in coal and nuclear-powered electric generating stations

• Have a gunshot wound (and it isn't anything like what you see on TV)

• Broke a leg bone, and I’m missing one bone in a toe

• Survived gangrene

• Survived a pandemic

• Had a student nurse group give me a barium enema - all 16 of them under age 20 when I was 16 and naked

• Had my gall bladder and tonsils removed (at different times)

• Lost 60-70% of my hearing between ages 8 and 10 - wear hearing aids now. What?

• Measured electrical resistance of 99.99999 % pure metallics at cryogenic temperatures (-320F) for HS Science project

• Caught a grouper while deep sea fishing - spooked a giant sleeping grouper while snorkeling - he bolted, ran into my chest, and scared the crap out of me!

• Piloted a 100-ton ferry

• Sold a piece of my art in a gallery

• Toured gold, coal, and salt mines

• Shopped in Harrods at Christmas time (in London, England)

• Have a great-grandfather who started a town and built a hotel - Hickman, PA

• Toured Windsor Castle - the queen wasn't there

• Walked along the Erie Canal - low bridge - everyone down

• Rode on an Erie Canal Packet Boat

• Have tasted arsenic

• Have a new piece of the original World Trade Center exterior

• Have constructed my own O, HO, and N Gauge railway layouts

• I was paddled by the principal when I was in 5th grade - it wasn't my fault - I was innocent!

• Saw the use of Icons and a Mouse when first developed by Xerox & before Apple capitalized on the technology

• Viewed the rings of Saturn with a telescope

• Watched diesel engines being manufactured

• Saw the first prototype quad-core microprocessor in use at Sun Microsystems before anyone knew what quad-core was

• Visited the 76th floor of the Columbia Tower in downtown Seattle, (It officially only has 75 floors.)

• Was the officiant at a wedding where I married two friends. (The name is Gee. The Right Reverend Rand Gee!)

• Grateful Member of Al-Anon and Overeaters Anonymous

• Toured the head of the Statue of Liberty

• Own a 149g (about 1 inch cube) YAG garnet:  Single crystal yttrium aluminum garnet (Y3Al5O12), one of the most widely used solid-state laser materials

I'm among the luckiest people to have had all these experiences? 

How About You?  Have you inventoried all of your experiences?

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