Traveled to 21 Countries

Back in 1984 I was attending Norther Arizona University in Flagstaff Arizona. I had just finished up a summer of white water rafting as a guide in Canon City Colorado on the Arkansas River. I was wearing a shirt from the company I was working for. It had a distinct logo on it sporting a guy in a bath tub going over a water fall. I had stopped to pull my bike tires up over the curb in front of the NAU Library when a woman with an accent pulled on my shirt and said, "I just went down the river with this company." I said, "who are you?"

She was with an organization called Up With People and she was in a recruiting mindset. After a few minutes of getting to know each other she told me I needed to interview with her company. She told me just enough about the organization to excite my curiosity. I liked her energy, and I had never met anyone from Belgium.

Later that day I did interview for Up With People, and three months later I got a notice that I had been accepted into the program which was a year long commitment. I graduated college and then traveled with UWP for a year ending our tour in Switzerland. I had my back pack shipped over to Europe and I traveled on my own for two months after our tour ended.

I went to Greece until I couldn't take the heat any more, and then went to Austria and all the way up through Scandinavia, Finland, and into Narvick Norway above the arctic circle. 

My wife and I have two sons that went to college in Australia for a semester and when they were done school we joined them for two weeks and they took us all around.  

Traveling exposes us to different cultures, landscapes we only dreamed about and the people make it magical.