ambitions and dreams: a compendium

In case you're interested, I thought I might expound on the tantalizing hints I dropped in my preamble (see entry the first). I'm going to tell you exactly what I want to do with my life.

...as it stands now, that is.

My dreams have permutated somewhat over the years. I was originally going to be a zoologist. I got a year of undergraduate study under my belt at college before I realized that advanced chemistry and I don't agree with each other. So I switched over to journalism, figuring I could still write about zoology-related subjects and still have a blast without having to actually know, in detail, what I was talking about. This has been my modus operandi for most of my life, actually...

Anyway, eventually I thought Well, heck, I don't just have to write about zoology. I can write about anything I want! Zoology, history, geography, culture, food...HEY! That sounds like travel writing!

There you have my number one, numero uno, Grand High Poobah ambition: to be a writer. Travel writing will be my bread and butter, not just in a financial but in a metaphysical sense. I like to travel and see new things; does my soul a world of good. Venting my creative streak ain't bad either, so I'll write my novel (you've heard about that in my writing updates). I also plan to write the same story as a comic book; I've even got an illustrator interested, and that's the first step. I'm not exactly speaking effusively here, but I'm more excited about this than I've ever been about anything, or, I suspect, ever will be. Who knows, if I work at it I might even wind up in National Geographic someday. Wouldn't that be something! And that novel I'm writing might be a hit, so I could go ahead with the rest of the series, and the comic book could go on and on and on for hundreds of issues (I've got a lot of weighty things to discuss in it)! This is what my writing career shall be! Travel magazines, novels and comic books! Remember this! Dismissed!

No, wait. How am I going to get to all these wonderful places I want to see (some of which are listed on this page)? The second prong of my ambition, that's how: flying.

I think I've wanted to learn to fly ever since I learned what an airplane was. I was always one of those kids who was glued to the windows of the airport concourse and the plane itself. I gazed awestruck at the shiny machines that soared in the skies, or at the rich and diverse tapestry of the ground and the wondrous castles and majestic sailing ships formed by the clouds. Then I got into high school, became a war nut, and fell in love with warbirds (military aircraft), especially those from World War II: the legendary Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver, the Vought F4U Corsair, and even some oddballs like the Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina and the Grumman J2F Duck. I got especially attached to the seaplanes and flying boats. It seems just a bit cooler if you can land on water instead of (or in addition to) land; you can go anywhere. Every river or lake becomes an airport.

It wasn't long before I wanted to take flying lessons. I finally got my chance after graduating college in December '07. I went back to Cheyenne and lived in my parents' basement for six months while I was searching for a media-related job (and before finding this job in Korea). But I wasn't just sitting on my laurels. I was high as the sky, flying a Cessna 172 in the thin air above Cheyenne Regional Airport. I managed to get about twelve lessons in (twelve flight-hours are duly noted in my logbook) before I took off for the Orient.

I still plan on finishing, though, and going beyond your average everyday garden-variety run-of-the-mill private pilot's license. I want to get my commercial license (a stringent requirement necessitating scads of flight-hours and experience), and I want to get ratings for multi-engine, high-performance (horsepower above a certain level), complex (retractable landing gear and/or flaps) aircraft and seaplanes. Then I'll really be all set to go.

It'll be fun, of course; the main thing about flying is that it's truly awesome. Not only is soaring above the earth exhilarating for all the reasons your heart tells you, but you also derive the same enjoyment from it that you do from anything you're skilled at. You know well the joy of a job well done, expertise exerted, knowledge gained, cautions taken, proficiency expected and attained. I could describe it in detail, but that's been done elsewhere by better writers than me.

But the main point is that I'm going to turn flying into a career, and use it to aid the other tenets of my ambition. I think what I'd really like to do, inspired by some TV shows beloved of my youth (TaleSpin and, more latterly, Firefly), is start up an international air service. That's pretty much just how it sounds, if you insert the word "cargo" in between the words "air" and "service." Yes, I'm going to start my own airline. I might base myself out of Alaska, or if that proves too remote for customers to access, the Western U.S. But we'll fly all over the world. That'll be our job: taking in cargo, no matter what kind of cargo, whether it's video game consoles or live elephants, banana bunches or machine guns, chewing gum or booze, we'll run it. (As long as we're running it to good and decent folk, I don't care what side of the law they're on.) We'll go anywhere in the world, day or night, rain or shine, hell or high water. I foresee a ramshackle airfield, a hangar or two and a couple of outbuildings, some junker airplanes parked on the apron (rickety fugitives from better days), a gravel road leading to the rusty gate at the perimeter fence, over which hangs a battered tin sign, which looks something like this:

from Flickr

But who'll help me run an airline? Well, my crew, that's who. I've always loved ensemble films and teams, motley collections of crazy misfit savants who meet under odd circumstances and pull together to save the day every time. That's the kind of business I want to run. I imagine taking in people from checkered and highly diverse backgrounds: reprobates, runaways, mendicants, punks, perfectionists, roughnecks, veterans, experts, oddballs, psychos and general diamonds-in-the-rough.

I can literally see these people in my head. It won't be a large group; I'll need some pilots (certainly a copilot, at least), some reliable mechanics, load masters, meteorologists, office staff, and more than likely some henchmen (uh, security guards). And who knows? I might even hire on a doctor and a cook, and who knows who else: everybody I'll need for my pirate crew (uh, air service).

We'll be going through some tough times, definitely: war zones and revolutions and coups d’état and frontiers and wilderness. I hope (uh, anticipate) that we'll get more than our share of shootouts, fistfights, swordplay, assassination attempts, narrow escapes, hazardous flights, sabotage, black ops, anti-aircraft fire, races against time, dogfights, espionage, intrigue, and miscellaneous derring-do. I am, after all, Indiana Jones (uh, Andrew T. Post). Wish us luck, lads.

This flying will also help me write, for I will be going around the world and encountering new ammunition for my pen (and who knows what other kinds of ammunition, too). Conversely, writing will also help me fly; if my book and comic take off then I just might be able to muster the funds to start up this crazy airline of mine.

Writing and flying make up the first two fundaments of my imagined life; combine them and you get the third. I want to travel the world. I've mentioned this already. I needn't even mention it now. Where am I as I write these words, anyhow? South Korea, that's where. There's a lengthy list of countries I hope to visit (and by "visit" I mean "thoroughly explore"; technically I haven't done that with Canada or Japan even though they're on the countries visited list).

Let me relate a few of the subcategories pursuant to my foremost travel-related desire. I want to see some of the world's little-known mountain ranges. The Taurus Mountains in Turkey, for example. They're not as impressive as the high Himalayas by most people's standards, but therein lies the attraction. I'm not interested in the mountain ranges everybody knows and loves. They don't have to be lofty, they don't have to be snow-capped, they don't have to be on a map or anything: they've just got to be there. (Sound familiar?)

from Wikimedia Commons

I've got a long list going. It includes the Sudirman Range in Indonesia (which has a couple of active volcanoes in it); the Atlas Mountains in North Africa (home of the now-extinct Atlas Bear, Africa's only indigenous bear species); the Hindu Kush, in the Near East (which caused a lot of trouble for Alexander and other conquering hordes back in the day); the Tian Shan Range between China and Kazakhstan (known as the "Heavenly Mountains" according an old Indiana Jones video game I had); the Remarkables in New Zealand (how can you resist a moniker like that?); and the aforementioned Taurus Mountains, which separate the upper Turkish plateau (and such amazing sights as Cappadocia, with its eldritch tufa-based architecture) from the sun-drenched Mediterranean paradise of Anatolia. I only read the name once, in an excellent book called The Great Railway Bazaar by the overtly judgmental Paul Theroux, but I was bewitched in an instant. I'd never heard of these mountains, and I stupidly thought I'd heard the names of most of the world's mountain ranges. That started this whole quest a-movin'. I immediately began to research the Taurus Mountains and search for other ranges I'd never heard of, and I discovered a trove of them. So we'll see if I can climb 'em all in my lifetime. I'm sure there's a wealth of articles and perhaps even a book in it...not to mention the sheer adventure of it, which is, of course, "the main thing."

Also, I'd like to try the weirdest foods in every country I visit and then write a book about them and gross people out. That one's pretty self-explanatory. I've already started this one, fortunately! Did you read that thing I wrote about sannakji? That's the thing about my ideas; they all have little details and sub-details within them. I don't just want to write, period; I want to do novels and comic books. I don't just want to fly; I want to have an international air service. I don't just want to travel; I want to go here and do this, that and the other.

In addition to these main categories and their assorted nitty-gritty, I have a few small pet ambitions that can't be classified.

• learn how to dance (real men know how)
• become proficient on the piano, violin, and concertina (I can play all three; I took piano for seven years but my skills, rudimentary at best, have lapsed in the meantime)
• go fishing while sitting on a camel's back in Idaho (it's against the law)
• stargaze on every continent (two down, five to go)
• master at least five foreign languages (I'm working on two, Korean and Spanish, and I want to eventually take on German, Swahili and Farsi, perhaps even some Norwegian)
• compete in the Air Guitar World Championships in Sweden (even if I only make it one round)
• run with the bulls in Spain (not necessarily in Pamplona; they do it all over the country) while reciting the Gettysburg Address
• train in hand-to-hand combat
• sail around the world on a tall, full-rigged sailing ship
• become skilled at fencing
• read War and Peace
• fly upside-down
• pack two pistols at once (a revolver on my hip and my trusty Beretta semiautomatic in a shoulder rig)
• obtain a decent working knowledge of physics

That's about the lot. These are, of course, subject to change, as I change from day to day. I'll keep you posted.