This biography is kept to a minimum because much of the information is elsewhere in this HTML.
I was born in Fairbanks, Alaska. Within a week I had my first airplane ride to Lake Minchumina, where I grew up. See Growing up in the Bush for a little more information about my early years.
When I was 13 my folks built a house in Fairbanks so my sisters and I could go to a regular high school. So starting 9th grade I was attending Lathrop High School. We had little enthusiasm for living in town and at every opportunity we flew home to Minchumina.
I started learning how to fly when I was 13, and took formal lessons and got my student pilot's license when I was 15. (Like my mother I had my pilot's license before I got my driver's license!) I got my Private pilot when I was 17. I could have gotten it earlier, but you can fly by yourself with a student license so I saw little need!
After High School I took a year off and spent the winter trapping. The next fall (1977) I started college (University of Alaska, Fairbanks). During Christmas break I smacked up a plane, and wound up spending most of spring semester recovering from a broken talus bone (ankle) crushed femur (leg), crushed elbow and dislocated shoulder...not to mention chemical burns from the gas the wing tanks dumped all over me when they ruptured. (Note: the plane was in even worse shape than I was.)
I have little enthusiasm for 'book learning' so it took me 6 years to get my degree (BS in Biology). After graduating I took another year off and spent the winter trapping again. Then I formed a construction company (TANSTAAFL Inc) with a friend of mine (Matt Jones); we built a few spec houses, and one under contract. By which time Matt had decided that construction wasn't his forte, so I bought him out and expanded into rental properties.
In 1988 a group of friends and I took decided that progress on developing the space frontier was going a little slow so we formed a non-profit group called ISECCo.
The current copyright laws protect this page, even though not specifically copyrighted.
However if you want to use portions of it feel free to do so, though I would appreciate it if you would acknowledge my authorship.