My Hobbies
As far as interest and hobbies go, I enjoy:
Aviation - Since I was a child, I have been interested in aviation. I guess that some of that comes from flying in the mid 1960's from South America to Dallas and back at least once a year. I remember that we flew DC-3's and 707's. I'm not sure what else that we flew in. I know that over the years, I have flown in 707's, 727's, 737's, 757's, DC-9's, DC-3's, MD-80's, MD-11's, Fokker 100's and ATR-42's
I have a cousin that has his private pilots rating and I have flown with him quite a few times over the years. Over the years, I have flown with him in Cessna 150's & 152's, Cessna 172's, Piper PA-28 Arrow and most recently a Schweizer 2-22 Sailplane (Glider). The sailplane has to be one of the most fun things that I have even done. It is an awesome feeling at 3,000 feet in the air with no engine for power, just sailing with the birds...
My interest in aviation finally lead me to go back to school and recieve an FAA issued Mechanics certificate with the Airframe and Powerplant ratings (more commonly known as an A&P license). This means that I can make repairs (except for propeller, instruments and avionics) on any US certified aircraft. My plans were to go to work for an airline as an aircraft mechanic, but Osama Bin Laden and 9-11 took care of that idea.
Someday I would like to add the private pilot and the sailplane rating to my certificate.
Auto Racing - When I turned 16 and got my drivers license, I started going to one of the local dirt tracks around my area called Cowtown Speedway. There I met a guy that lived in my area and somehow ended up becoming a member of his pit crew. I worked with him almost 10 years.
During that time, he was consistantly in the top 10 in points, normally in the top 5 and got as high as 2nd place for the year in points.
One year, he decided that he wanted to travel the local circut and race at different tracks. We went to Devils Bowl Speedway, the now defunct Buffalo Park Speedway, Heart of Texas Speedway and Thunderbird Speedway.
One afternoon while going to Devils Bowl Speedway stands out in my mind. Not because of the race, but what happened on the way. I was driving my truck down HWY 183 from Ft. Worth and was on the south end of DFW airport. The weather was fine, sunny, etc. Little did we know that on the north end of the airport, just a couple of miles away, there was a heavy thunderstorm causing a windshear that caused Delta flight 191 to crash killing 134 people. This was August 2, 1985 around 6 p.m.. We were at the other end of the airport when it crashed and didn't know it until a little while later when we heard about it on the radio.
Other than being with the race car, I have watched races at Big H Speedway, Boot Hill Speedway, Lone Star Speedway, Corpus Christi Speedway (where Terry and Bobby Labonte got their start!), Grand Prairie Speedway, North Texas Motor Speedway, Kennedale Motor Speedway, Boyd Speedway and last, but not least, Texas Motor Speedway.
I also enjoy watching NASCAR. My favorite drivers are Dale Earnhardt Jr, Michael Waltrip, Bobby Labonte and Terry Labonte.
PC's - I bought my first PC in about 1989 or so. It was a Compuadd 286/12Mhz, I upgraded to 1 Mb RAM, it also had one of those 40 Mb hard drives that "you will never fill up", a 14" VGA moniter and a Panasonic 9 pin printer. Oh yeah, I installed a 1200 baud modem in it later on. This was a nice PC back then.
Since then, I have owned several other PC's including my current model, a Dell 8300, P4 @ 3.0 Ghz, 1 Gb RAM, 120 Gb serial ATA hard drive and a 60 Gb IDE hard drive, dual DVD drives (one being a DVD burner), high end sound and video cards with subwoofer speakers, 17" moniter, wireless networking (to go with the laptop), DSL, Epson Perfection 640U scanner, HP 940c printer, Logitec Wingman Force Feedback joystick and a Pinnacle Movie Box video caputure device.
As you can tell, I enjoy "dabbling" with webpages. I write everything by hand in Notepad, well, actually Metapad which is an aftermarket version of Notepad. I feel in writing this way, I learn and understand all of the HTML tags that I use. This is not the case when someone uses Microsoft Front Page, Macromedia Dreamweaver and other HTML programs. Also the code is much cleaner when it is written by hand. Although it does take longer to write this way, I like it better.
Other programs that I enjoy working with are Adobe Photoshop (I used Photoshop to make the background and all of the graphics for this page), JASC Paint Shop Pro, I am trying to learn MS Front Page (even though I don't like it and prefer not to use it), I am learning Windows XP and I did some MP3 downloads until the lawsuits started.
Travel - I enjoy traveling, but I don't get the chance to do much of it. But, we plan to take a cruise in Spring 2005.
Most of our long weekend trips consist of going to Galveston Island or Corpus Christi.
What I like about Galveston is that you can park your car at your hotel and either walk or ride the trolley to most places that you need to go. There are also lots of good restaurants, our favorite being Casey's.
Corpus is also nice, but you do have to drive when you are there. It is so spread out. We enjoy driving over to Port Aransas and going deep sea fishing on the Scat Cat or the Warf Cat.
We have been to Austin a few times to visit my sister, but not near as often as we would like to. I just have a screwy work schedule and it's hard to get away.
San Antonio is another long weekend get away. There you have the Alamo, Riverwalk, Hemisphere Tower, Sea World and Fiesta Texas. It's nice getting a hotel on the Riverwalk and being able to sit on your balcony and look down on all of the happenings.
Some of my travels have taken me to Las Vegas (honeymoon) Nashville (job interview) , Atlanta, then drove a rented SUV to a very small town about an hour north of Savanah, Chicago (changed planes), New York City (then drove to CT), and a road trip from Stamford CT back to TX and a road trip to Savanah and back.
When I hit the lotto, I plan to buy a large motorcoach and travel extensively.
Music - I love most types of music. I listen to anything from country to rock and big band to gospel. I prefer older country like Merle Haggard, George Jones, etc. I do like some others like Junior Brown, The Derailers, Larry Joe Taylor (has a Texas style Jimmy Buffett sound) and last, but certianly not least, Jimmy Buffett
I worked at Billy Bob's for awhile as an usher in the concert aditorium. Pay was horrible, but I got to see some really good concerts for free including The Belamy Brothers, Travis Tritt, Gary Stewart and many more...
Ooutdoor Cooking - Lately I have started to enjoy grilling much more than I have in the past. I normally keep it simple by cooking chicken, burgers, porkchops, wings and a steak now and again. I will also grill a few veggies like potatoes and corn on the cob as well as ABT's.
ABT's are one of my favorite things to grill and I bet that they are ever better smoked. They are sooooo good! I will find out soon if they are better smoked!
I am hoping to get my first smoker in another month or so and am going to try smoking briskets, ribs, beer can chicken, ham and the list goes on...
I have found a few websites that are really helpful in learning to grill and smok properly and well as some new ideas. Here are a few of the websites.
