356- NEATEST ADVENTURES!!!!!......

a) Flying a small airplane at night...ok, for only a few seconds...friend, with a license, stopped by one evening, asking me if I wanted to try a new adventure! He was adding hours on night flying and landing! There are two sets of controls, by the way!
b) Getting lost, for a short time, in a "wild cave"....check it out in an earlier blog!
c) As a child, seeing a group of "men" going bonkers in the neighborhood when a black bear wandered into the area...bear climbed a tree...saw them shoot the confused bear! Embossed in my memory bank the tragic scene.
d) Catching a ride on a loooong freight train...and then, later, jumping off with two friends!
e) Seeing Michelangelo's "Pieta" (sculpture of Mary holding Jesus) in person in New York!
f) Cruise in Hawai'i...won the trip with an original recipe for a doughnut!...really fell in like with Maui (one of my The Serpentine Bond! coeds comes from Maui!)
g) Trip to a SuperBowl in New Orleans...fell in like with the Big Easy...won the trip!...Joe Montana (no kin to Hanna) was the quarterback!
h) Being interviewed by Katie Couric on the NBC "The Today Show"....
i) Seeing my very first article published in a magazine...was in the Virginia Wildlife Mag ...and about trout fishing in the North River Gorge in Augusta County's Appalachian Mountains! (Still remember an English teacher telling me, as a HS senior, that this guy would never amount to much in creative writing.)
j) Seeing the Beatles sing in person...oh, were off-key.
k) Was invited to spend a week, one summer, on a Mennonite farm in the Valley. Volunteered to do everything the family would do, including getting up at 5 or so...(oh mi ga!)...working in the fields...learning to milk cows...slop the pigs...swing on a rope in a great, huge barn, then drop far below to the hay...feed the chickens (liked that) and help learn to bake bread! Those meals were soooo good! NO TV...no radio/music.... And went to prayer meeting and Sunday country church. By the end of the week, this guy was beginning to buff up a bit and get use to the schedule. I NOW understand much better and appreciate their way of life!!! Yes, that old Native American oriverb of walk a mile in my shoes was a truism. And another by the way...grew up in the Church of the Brethren, originally called the Dunkards. Way back they were kin to the Amish and Mennonites. Helped me, then, to get in touch with my original heritage, roots!
l) Invited to a social, in Senate Office Bldg., for Sen. John Warner's election as one of Virginia's U.S. senators. Wife, Elizabeth Taylor.....
m) Entered a Statewide regional competition for the Virginia Storytelling Festival in NorFOLK. Earned a 1st there and went on to Charlottesville for the State Storytelling competition. Told an Uncle Remus tale, "the Tar Baby", using the dialects and voices of each character...hmmmm, was declared a Virginia Storyteller winner...an honor much appreciated.
n) Volunteered, as a teen, to fight a forest fire. THE most difficult task EVER physically tackled. Was on the side of a mountain and fall warm! Smoke...a line of intense fire moving rapidly forward. When the wind shifted, we had to drop below a shin ribbon of fresh air. BUT, the most difficult and laborious part of fighting a forest fire came afterwards when we walked , slanted, through the forest, with a heavy water tank on my back, and doused EVERY spart, especially digging them out.
o) Visited, quietly, many different kinds of church services over the years, including a Catholic service in New York City's St. Patrick's Cathedral and a tiny church on Maui by the ocean.
p) Being invited onto a British SUBMARINE...and exploring throughout it!
q) Being invited onto an American BATTLESHIP and AIRCRAFT CARRIER in the NorFORK harbor! Huge ships...if tis true that one could stand on the edge of the flight stage and fall off, easily! I didn't....
r) Listening, late one Saturday night in New Orleans, to The New Orleans Preservation Band! All of the musicians were seniors and came in around midnight, after playing at different clubs. They jammed with their instruments, and this guy jammed in my mind for an adventure and experienced worth millions to me! The neat, little older lady pounded away on her upright piano with such passion.... The Cajun emsemble even had a washboard musician. What a thrill for ron rascal!
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