Allure of the Obscure

Am I an individualist or cut from a similar bolt? The fact that I'm pondering this question may just be the answer to my own question. You tell me. Additionally, I'm only slightly abashed at exploring one of my favorite topics – me. Yes, I'm working on this issue, but I'm also exploring it because, you see, unlike a lot of people, I rather like who I am—despite my considerable short-comings, character defects and idiosyncrasies. They also contribute to my sui generis nature.

To cursorily explore this topic, I've been thinking of a few of my own propensities. For example, when I go to a Western theme costume party, I don my war bonnet and moccasins. When all my buddies were signing up for the Army or Marines during the Viet Nam “conflict”, I enlisted in the US Coast Guard, ostensibly to save lives instead of to put myself in a position where I'd be forced to take another's life. However, I am no bleeding heart liberal either. Actually, I envision myself to be a middle-of-the road Independent. Vviewing myself as middle-of-the-road anything was a major personal hurtle for me (I truly wonder why that is), but that tends to be my leaning, at least politically.

While I enjoy the Internet and harvesting it's fruits, my passion leans toward communicating via Amateur Radio—even hooking my computer up to my radio instead of my Internet service provider. Even among “hams”, I most enjoy sending and copying Morse code and other “digital modes”. And, of course, my neighbors all think I'm crazy as they peer in wonder and horror as this sixty-five year old ham rests at the top of his (my) sixty-five foot tower, casually adjusting the old meteor scatter antenna on its rotor so as to better bounce low power radio signals off meteor trails and space junk (including frozen poop balls from commercial airliners) in order to extend my effective communication range.

I'm a sailor among a multitude of power boaters, and even among sailors, for a couple of decades I owned a motorsailer which isn't really a sailboat OR a power boat. And I'm one of the few sailors who has traveled thousands of miles on the water—all at seven miles per hour or less. While most boaters are quite content to punch into a GPS for their navigation needs, I became an accomplished celestial navigator using a high quality sextant, a chronometer and a Nautical Almanac.

I also traveled countless miles paddling a sea kayak long before kayaking became a popular sport. The common plastic kayak paddle was not good enough for me, of course, so I took a class on how to carve my own custom Western Greenland kayak paddle out of white cedar. I even carved a storm paddle should I ever have to paddle across a raging torrent during a tropical storm. This need never arose, but I had created the paddle, just in case.

On the road, and similarly, in the air, I have never been satisfied being a passenger. So in a car, I drive. I learned how to fly to I could drive up there as well, even though I ultimately chose not to pursue air travel, either as a passenger or a pilot, but I did learn, surviving an FAA incident with a commercial passenger liner (a Boeing 727), but that's fodder for another cannon. From there, air travel was not good enough for your struly, so I learned how to jump out of a plane, including ultimately free-falling. I was not an avid sky diver, but found it necessary to experience all aspects of this sport before retiring from it.

Among my snorkeling peers, it was important for me to become a scuba diver as it wasn't good enough for me to just observe from above, I wanted to get down into the action, including deep dives, wreck diving, night diving and night drift diving.

Among my peers of traditionalist photographer friends, I chose to become a creative photographer, to be criticized for heavy artistic post-processing instead of merely trying to duplicate reality in my images. I also enjoyed much criticism from my traditional artist friends for my skills as a digital artist, a little understood art form.

While I own an American made motorcycle, which is increasingly rare these days, it is in fact a Victory, not a Harley-Davidson. Consequently, many Harley owners and most Japanese or European bike owners just can't decide what pigeon hole to stuff me into, which of course, delights me to no end that it's important to them and not to me.

Even my choice of head gear might be considered slightly off center as I don my pith helmet (from some tourist Safari experience years ago) while riding my recumbent bicycle around the marina, or my skull cap while riding my motorcycle around the state.

And while most folks go to the gym and engage in traditional exercise and weight training, I also enjoy Hatha Yoga, Transcendental Meditation and Mindfulness exercises.

I could go on, but considering my obvious propensity for what most might consider unusual or even weird or eccentric, I must conclude that I do enjoy, and indeed revel in my self-defined individualism. Perhaps more importantly, I feel very comfortable in how I've defined myself over the years, even though others may not.

So as I less-than-humbly conclude this litany of my own quasi-eccentricities, I must ask myself why this topic is even significant to me. Perhaps it's because I fear, most of all, becoming completely and irrevocably predictable to anyone who might care. I've often fancied myself a bit of a Renaissance man, but more realistically, I'm simply a jack of many trades, master of none. I can live with that. Just don't put me into any one neat little category. But quite frankly, even that means less to me over time. I guess I just love the allure of the obscure. And I love to learn about new things – always.

Maybe it's important to me that nobody ever says this about me among my peers: “You rugged individualists are all alike!”

Peace, love and bell bottoms, Brothers 'n Sisters!