As a Child

I was born in 1961 in Phoenix, Arizona where I lived in a modest home. When I look back, I remember my early years of childhood were filled with great adventures. I loved riding my bicycle in the neighborhood and in the mountains at our cabin, we rode motorcycles. Fishing, camping and building underground forts, goofing around, much of that time was spent alone and I was always imagining things that I could do when I grew up.

In 1976, I was a boy of 15 years old. At that point, I already had dreams of flying a hang glider. Before she passed away, my Grandmother gave me a little cardboard hang glider pilot that I had made years before that time. For me, that was a special moment. Like many things in my life, it was a reflection of things to come, a look into my future from the past...

I think the first time I actually saw hang hang gliding was on a bicycle ride. I had a motocross bicycle and I loved to find dirt mounds in empty fields to jump while riding. I had heard of a good jump near Shaw Butte, a local hill here in Phoenix so I ventured out a little farther to this place. When I got there, I saw the local group of pilots coming in to land. It was un-real to me that you could fly like that.

It was just like my dreams.