Don M.
Ricks
Can't remember the last time someone asked,
"What do you do?" One glance and people ask, "What did you
do?"
Not a simple question to answer in my 80th
year.
Many stories in
Wyoming History in the First Person
drew on my summer as a 21 year old back country patrol ranger in Grand Teton
National Park.
Many stories in
this sequel, The Big Kid From Wyoming Meets the World, draw
on the years Barbara and I cruised Canadian and Latin American waters on SV Maruba, our 50-foot steel ketch.
Other stories reflect other times in my life, including four years during my 70s when I was a professor of Medical Ethics at a small
medical school in the Caribbean.
I've been licensed to drive on three
continents, lived half my life far outside city limits, and moved off the grid three
decades ago.
I attended four universities and taught
at four (three of them real); wrote many articles and two books (neither significant).
As a consultant I worked in New York,
London, Toronto; Saskatoon (Saskatchewan), Wallace (Idaho), Inuvik (Northwest
Territories), and other places.
The consulting business I started was once within
hours of bankruptcy because IBM and AT&T were slow to pay. Breeding
championship llamas was my most profitable venture.
I transited the Panama Canal at the wheel
of my own sailboat; trekked into Machu Picchu; was interviewed for a business video
on the Great Wall in China; travelled most of the highways between Alberta and
Arizona with Barbara on our motorcycle; and . . . well, there's
a partial answer to "What did you do?
For twenty years now Barbara and I have
lived on a small island in the Caribbean, off the grid and near the water. Bonaire
Marine Park is ten steps out the front door. Behind the house Washington
Slagbaai National Park fills the north end of the island.
Can't remember the last time someone asked,
"What do you do?" One glance and people ask, "What did you
do?"
Not a simple question to answer in my 80th
year.
Many stories in
Wyoming History in the First Person
drew on my summer as a 21 year old back country patrol ranger in Grand Teton
National Park.
Many stories in
this sequel, The Big Kid From Wyoming Meets the World, draw
on the years Barbara and I cruised Canadian and Latin American waters on SV Maruba, our 50-foot steel ketch.
Other stories reflect other times in my life, including four years during my 70s when I was a professor of Medical Ethics at a small
medical school in the Caribbean.
I've been licensed to drive on three
continents, lived half my life far outside city limits, and moved off the grid three
decades ago.
I attended four universities and taught
at four (three of them real); wrote many articles and two books (neither significant).
As a consultant I worked in New York,
London, Toronto; Saskatoon (Saskatchewan), Wallace (Idaho), Inuvik (Northwest
Territories), and other places.
The consulting business I started was once within
hours of bankruptcy because IBM and AT&T were slow to pay. Breeding
championship llamas was my most profitable venture.
I transited the Panama Canal at the wheel
of my own sailboat; trekked into Machu Picchu; was interviewed for a business video
on the Great Wall in China; travelled most of the highways between Alberta and
Arizona with Barbara on our motorcycle; and . . . well, there's
a partial answer to "What did you do?
For twenty years now Barbara and I have
lived on a small island in the Caribbean, off the grid and near the water. Bonaire
Marine Park is ten steps out the front door. Behind the house Washington
Slagbaai National Park fills the north end of the island.
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