Introduction

If you are going to take my advice, you have every right to know what kind of a guy I am, so a little bit of history is appropriate. If my life bores you, you can cut right to the chase and go directly to Chapter 1.

Let's start with some of the fun stuff. My life has been so full and unusual that I cannot resist reprinting here something I wrote for fun a few years ago, right after a neighborhood barbecue when we played a game where we had to recount things we had done that we thought nobody else there had done. That fun trip down Memory Lane started my memory running wild. Enjoy!

  • I traded one spool of 8-pound-test monofilament fishing line to a chief of a village in the Amazon jungle in return for two monkey-skull necklaces, a blow gun and darts, a bow and arrows, and an anaconda snake skin. After consulting with my wife, Kay, I respectfully declined the chief's offer of a night with one of his four wives in return for a second spool.
  • I've walked through the dramatic story of the death of Rasputin, the Mad Monk, right on the actual murder scene in a restored palace in Leningrad.
  • I've interviewed (with Jack Anderson) newly elected President Václav Havel of Czechoslovakia in Prague Palace while he was wearing Nike shoes and a UCLA Bruins sweatshirt. He had been a political prisoner until the Iron Curtain went down.
  • I've visited the Forbidden City and the Great Wall in China, Machu Pichu, the Imperial Palace in Bangkok, and wild game preserves in Kenya and South Africa ...

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