Snow, Sk8, Wake - I started skateboarding at the ripe old age of eight in Florida. For the past 32 years, I have been skating at some level.  Up till the early 70's my riding was mediocre and mostly on the flats.   I then ended up in Virginia Beach as a young teenager for about four years and learned the fine art of surfing.  After Virginia Beach, my family moved inland to Ohio, meaning no more surf. This caused me to develop my skills in skateboarding in order to help with my "surfin' jones".   Since then I have seen the popularity of skateboarding rise and fall just like those waves I used to ride.  I have competed, traveled and yes, even injured myself for the love of sidewalk surfing, though most was on banks or vert ramps.  I even served as an advisor to an Explorer troop.  I have skated parks open and closed, public and private and even had the privilege of riding at the dream, "Apple".  I say dream, because no place I have been to, has ever been comparable.  I have even tried my hand at making skateboards.  The first I gave to my brother and I kept the second one.  I tried snow skiing in the winter and then I discovered snowboarding.  I used to tell people that I snowboarded in the winter, to stay in shape for skateboarding.   That has since been turned around.  I now skate to keep my edge for winter.   This sport has the elements of both my other loves.  It has the dynamics of skateboarding and the fluidity of surfing.  Something else that makes this sport so appealing, is that it doesn't require too much effort to enjoy it.  Surfing means paddling out through the break, then paddling to catch the wave.  Skateboarding usually requires pushing or pumping to maintain speed.  Snowboarding on the other hand, has a great ally.  Gravity.  As long as you don't run out of hill, you can always go down.  I have been snowboarding since '84 and have watched this sport go through many stages.  From infancy as an outsider sport at the ski areas to the recent acceptance by the world at large in the Olympics.  As my interests continually gravitated to snowboarding, I found that competitions were rare and distant.  This prompted me and my wife Rocki to found the Mid West Snowboard Association(MWSA) which was later to become the Snow Shredders of America(SSA- when being ass backwards was ok.).   This provided an avenue for fat trackers in the Mid West to show what they could do.  We fed seeds to the North American Snowboard Association(NASBA) competitions, the U.S. Open and eventually to the United States Amateur Snowboard Association(USASA) Nationals.  I became a NASBA certified instructor, a United States Snowboard Training Center(USSTC) judge and examiner.  This aided us in supporting and promoting snowboarding and the SSA.  But, as interest in the SSA began to wane, we realized that we couldn't continue and closed the association down.  Since then, I have been freeriding as much as possible and judging USASA regional competitions at Brandywine in Cleveland.  A few years back, I decided to try wakeboarding.   This is a good alternative to any of the aforementioned(if you have access to a boat).  It can be demanding and is kind of hard to get the hang of.  But it is definitely a good and fun workout. 
 

Computers - Back about 1984, I was given the opportunity to rent a room and share a house with a co-worker, Jim Everman.  He and I both worked at Systems Research Labs, a electronics firm that did research and development contracts.   Many of these were for the government, Including Wright Patterson Air Force Base.   At the time, I was an electronics engineering technician working on low light, high resolution video cameras and monitors.  While Jim, was an engineer that was involved in lots of interesting projects.  My first introduction to computers, was at work.   I ended up doing a reverse-engineering job on a computer simulator, that controlled a projection system used in a naval training simulator.  I basically had to carefully tear the thing apart and document the design.  My next computer exposure was provided by my friend Jim.  He had built his own computer inside a secretary.  The writing surface opened like an oven door.  He mounted the monitor back in the recess and the keyboard was mounted to the inside of the door.  The electronics were mounted inside the lower portion of the secretary.  The disk drives, were both 8 inch floppies, that sat on a shelf next to the secretary.  It ran an disk operating system called CPM and with programs like "Basic" and "Word Star".  Jim had an adventure game that was only text based and he even created his own.  Later, he started messing around with controlling the pins on his dot matrix printer, and came up with a program that would allow you to print graphics.  You basically had a grid overlay that you would place over your picture, and you would "read" the 1's and 0's as coordinates.  You then fed the coordinates to the program, and voila!  Graphics.   Being able to use his computer for word processing and this new fun stuff, is what got me hooked.  So, I consider Jim to be my mentor in the computer realm.  As the years have gone by, I have become more involved with computers, both as a hobby and for employment.  I have used them to test electronic equipment.   Create newsletters/mini-magazines, posters and keep track of the competitors and their results for the Snow Shredders of America.  Put together executive summaries and proposal packets for the SRL marketing group.   Create presentations for the business development team.  Conduct training for various things, including computer software.  Administer larger client/server systems and applications.  And create web sites, such as this.  All in all, computers have not only become an important part of my life, but they have enriched it as well.

Photography - Many of the images throughout this site were taken by me.  I got my first camera when I was 11.  Though not real fancy, the black and white Polaroid Land Camera got me started in an interesting and sometimes frustrating hobby.  I learned how to make a pinhole camera in junior high and even got to play around with developing prints.  A friend of mine use to work for as a photographer for a local newspaper, so I learned a little about darkroom technique.   Even though I have never owned an expensive camera, I have been able to come up with some interesting images and effects.  
 

Landscaping and Gardening - My wife and I have a strong interest in landscaping and gardening.  We have a pretty big vegetable garden each year and do our own canning and freezing.  We make all the standards like green beans and tomato sauce, but our specialty is salsa.  We also have a fairly extensive herb garden, which is also part of our landscaping.  These fresh herbs sure make for some great meals.  We have built two water gardens, complete with cascading waterfalls, fountains and fish.  We even end up with frogs that come by for a visit.   Also, after nearly three years in the making, we have put the finishing touches on our a rose garden.  Trees, trees, trees.  Boy do we love trees.  We have 13 acres of woods, from which to pick from and we move as many as about fifty trees up to our house each year.  Another fascination we have, is wildflowers.  We now have two large patches and are planning to line our front yard fence row with the seeds from these patches.   It sure will look pretty.