It has been said that life is a journey. For each of us, that journey takes a different path and leads to a different destination. Fortunately, these paths do not run in parallel, but regularly cross those of others, and for a moment we get to experience their journey, and it becomes a part of our own.

When I reflect on my life’s journey to date, I see it in chapters of adventures and shared experiences that write the book of my life. As a young man, I traveled with my family throughout the United States and Mexico in a 1966 school bus. As a social relief worker, I walked for miles in the hot, dusty colonias of Mexico, providing clothing and food to the needy, and drinking water contaminated with all sorts of floating - and possibly swimming - debris, offered by the hand of the grateful poverty stricken. For days on end I existed solely on grapefruit snatched from heavily laden orchards, and I enjoyed the riches of my own labor. As a flight paramedic, I provided a healing hand to the sick and injured, and a comforting hand to the grieving. I celebrated lives saved, and mourned the death of friends and colleagues killed in helicopter crashes. As a man, I raised five boys into manhood, and I am a loyal husband to my wife. As a student of the world, I overcame adversity to fulfill a lifelong dream of obtaining a formal education. These are just a few of the chapters of my journey’s tale, and each is enriched by the encounters and journeys of my fellow adventurers through this life.