I never was normal. At the age of five, I came home with a spear stuck in my neck. A few months later, I came home soaked in blood from a hatchet head wound, but was still most noted for surviving the swallowing of a lethal amount of Pine Sol.

As I matured, my accidents matured, but I served two tours in Vietnam with the highest decorated unit of its size in the war, (MACV SOG's CCC Recon at Kontum) and served under Bob Howard, the highest decorated soldier in the war. I feel very much like I experienced the eye of the Vietnam War. We were, in fact, the eyes and the ears of Military Assistance Command Vietnam belatedly recognized by President Clinton when he awarded us the Presidential Unit Citation right before leaving office.

Wounded four times in two tours is actually very low for that outfit and none were serious or in any way debilitating. Furthermore, though active in parachuting, mounteering, cliff diving, body surfing, judo, and kayaking, I have never broken any bones.

In 1977, at the age of twenty-seven, I began slowing down after a block of TNT exploded in the right hand that a Black Widow spider bit at the age of twenty-two, and at age fifteen I sent through the blade of a table saw. The same hand I boiled in oil at the age of twelve, the very hand that got caught in a car door and dragged me by at the age of eleven, my lucky hand blown OFF, blown to itty bitty bits to damn near the elbow. Lost an eye and a lot of guts, too, but I get upset when people call me accident prone.

When you factor in the risks I take, I'm like that little old lady at the accident scene where a car and a telephone pole had a meeting, telling the officer, "Yes, officer, but look at all the poles I missed."

I needed to slow down, so I moved to Florida and took up storm sailing and hurricane intercepting. One does not chase a hurricane. You try to anticipate the point of landfall, then pick a good spot on the bad side within the eye to hunker down and defend, one-on-one survival on the beach is the whole point of the exercise, to meet a hurricane on the beach and still be there after it leaves. To pull it off perfectly, you must be on the beach in dry clothes cooking coffee on a campfire as the storm dies behind you.

Note: That remained a lofty goal until Katrina, but I wasn't actually ON the beach, the coffee was hot chocolate, and the campfire was actually a propane stove that went under water and had to be made functional again. The clothing was DRY, because the trash bag I sealed it all in floats and remained in the RV that doesn't. No one except me ever cared anyway. I'm saying, I DID IT!

In the wet wake of Hurricane Frederick, at the age of twenty-nine in 1979, with many tropical cyclones to my survival credit, having just spent hours in the storm surge of Frederick, I boastfully declared myself the world's best hurricane survivalist and challenged everyone at the bar (all three in the remnants of a Florida beach bar) to produce someone with more or better credits.

Since then, I have matured only slightly, but I got married, sired offspring, adopted her three, obtained a general engineering contractor's license, studied at the Universtity of North Texas College of Emergency Management (currently 12hrs shy of a degree in EM I will never get), and added many more bad storms to my survival credit to include the monsters Gilbert and Katrina. I have experienced every category of tropical storm, also the typhoon and the tornado.

I know what a thunder storm looks and sounds like under water in daytime and at night. I do because I am a very curious violent weather nut and a thrill seeker, been those things all of my life, and how I got to be as old as I am (55 in '05) with 75% of my limbs and 50% of my eyes amazes the hell out of what's left of me. I have scars on my scars and picked up four more from Katrina, two in a place I can't mention. No, I can mention Waveland.

And no, I am not an ego maniac trying to get the world to recognize my greatness, and I am not trying to get a contest going for time-in-surge. I very much am trying to bring attention to my unique area of expertise, for I am very much aware how little the school-trained experts know about hurricanes, the storm surge in particular. The field of emergency management is so screwed up, I couldn't stay in it ten years ago. All it did since is get even more screwed up by the special interests who make a bloody fucking fortune off of natural emergencies that are disasters that can be made into catastrophies that can be profitably litigated for decades of milking.

I do not look like, act like, or claim to be a storm chaser, but naked in a steam bath, I do look like a storm catcher. I do not survive a storm by hunkering inside a bunker building or cruising around in a nifty storm-mobile. I get out IN the storm where I can see, feel, and know what the hell is going on. Were I a vulcanologist, I'd be that lone idiot that climbs to the rim of an active volcano to peer inside, then won't tell the other vulcanologists what he saw, because he considers them lookie loos who haven't earned the right to know.

Others call me a storm chaser or an asshole. I might be the only storm chaser asshole to chase Katrina to it's point of landfall to see the eye of this epic mega-monster storm. I know most thought Biloxi or Gulfport was close enough, or felt safer on the soft 'n gentle Louisanna side when we knew exactly where this mega monster would hit two and a half days before it hit it, and didn't veer five miles off the track. I intentionally went to the baddest part of the eye, hunkered down, and waited with ten unfortunates and their even more unfortunate pets.

Am I better than them? Hell yes, I'm better then them, but at hurricane survival. At making mega bucks off of hurricane destruction footage, they are way better. I am NOT a storm chaser, nor am I a vulcanologist, not a researcher, and never sold anything to the media. I am certainly not a self-sacrificing humanitarian or hero in search of abandoned down-trodden masses. It was part curiosity, part seeking a thrill, but it was mostly the very strong pull of destiny drawing me toward the eye of the storm. I do believe it was my destiny to be there, and I do believe my entire life was to prepare me to meet my destiny and be prepared.

All of my life I have been driven to take great risks, especially with extreme weather and dynamic water. I remember very well the North Sea storms that sent monsterous waves crashing into the towering sea wall of Sheringham England and how strong that pull was to go down the steps to get to the lower levels where the massive walls of sea water shooting straight up could be touched.

I was eight, nine, and ten over there with my U.S. Air Force daddy gone most of the time. All that goes up will come down, but I had to go down there. I did touch the face of the wave then clung like the paint on the steel railing, or played touch and RUN RUN RUN to get under the shelter in time. Miscalculate or stay and cling, enough water to fill the average swimming pool fell on an area the size of the singles boundry of a tennis half-court, then washed off the deck and back into the sea along with anything not bolted or welded.

How many times I did that I can't even imagine, but I spent many many hours in many storms doing that in my yellow raincoat with hood and golashes. Wave touching was like an addiction, and reckless, foolish, at times insane beyond belief. Had I ever been caught doing it, I would have met a psychiatrist and likely been shipped back to the states as a defective Yank brat. I don't know why I was never stopped or ever washed over, for to be washed into those icy seas just one time is most certainly a last.

I do know this. Without that experience, and that much of it, I could not have been the man I became, nor been of much use in Waveland Mississippi. I have to wonder if my destiny from long before the hour of my conception was to be where I was and be ready to touch the ultimate storm and play RUN RUN RUN once again.

Whatever helped me survive the lower levels of the Sheringham sea wall, helped all through my high-risk life and was with me all through Katrina. There is no luck that can account for my survival. I live with four terminal illnesses and have survived both car and helicopter crashes, also an explosion no other human has lived to tell about. In Nam, I served in a unit that had a higher casualty rate than the famed Light Brigade, higher even than Custer's 7th Cav, emerging so lightly scratched as to be embarrassing at reunions where drunk warriors compare their battle scars. Nine cats don't have my lives, and a thousand Irishmen don't have my luck.

I wish my luck would just one time follow me into a casino, but Lady Luck always leaves me at the door. I am not prepared to say what that thing was or is, but when it eventually leaves me, I will probably fart and keel over dead at a poker table holding a royal flush with a million-dollar pot. I think the Pine Sol killed me. Everything after that was artificial life support, but Waveland was just a learning experience, not the great event my unusual life has been a preparation for. On top of all else I have learned about survival, I needed that final exam to be a teaching test. Ten more challenging humans could not have been found. This test didn't need a swimming life-saver Chihuahua but had six non-swimming mutts, four of which were big, all thinking they are human, helpless infants at that.

The sense I live with post Katrina is I am now ready for the real thing final exam but no one else is. I am powerfully motivated to establish this website and be constantly adding content in the build-it-they-will-come mind-set of the driven beyond reason. This is just something I feel a need to do, and see no harm in doing while there is no apparent need. Like a gun, better to have one and not need one, than need one and not have one. When global catastrophe is upon us, a site like this would be a real bitch to try to create. I might be a bit busy or a lot dead.

My ultimate destiny might be to teach or guide survivor wannabes in the ultimate survival challenge, which will be life in the end times, which may have begun. That is a belief as valid as any religion, but I still don't have enough faith to wear the robe and flip flops. What the Bible calls the "End Times" may be what a scientist calls a cyclical adjustment or an astrologist calls an astral alignment. Who knows, this could all be a virtual reality program in some alien offspring's computer and could all be lost if their version of a new puppy chews through the cord.

I think we all carry a sense of doom and gloom for it is painfully obvious we are in a very over-loaded, leaky lifeboat with leaders who can't or won't make difficult decisions. All of the forces that have kept human population figures in check and in natural balance are now needed on a Biblical scale. Assuming we always get what we need, we are about to "get it."

Call IT what you will, the adjustment period will be a Biblical Bitch and a bit of a Bastard. What emerges will, no doubt, be far fewer in number and will all be much stronger. Nature's way. We only thought we were above and beyond Nature and her cold cruel ways. Suppose we are wrong and the time has come to put things right. Suppose property wealth has no meaning and money has no value. No cop to call nor ambulance to chase, are you and yours prepared?

Whatever floats your spiritual boat, I do believe I experienced a three-day sample of end-time existance. Day one was the day of the storm. Of the three, day one was the least challenging with the fewest dangers. If you believe we are living in the end times, brace yourself for the ultimate survival challenge. One third will be storms on a scale you can't imagine; two-thirds will be surviving in a state of nature that you can't imagine.

The lessons I learned at Waveland and in Vietnam might be the lessons you need. In that spirit, let us begin our lessons. Lesson number one is "Surviving the Storm."

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