Me
Brooke
Mark T.
I was born in England around the time four lads from Liverpool were making sweet noise. My family and I were forced to move to America when I was 8 because we had good hair and straight teeth, and obviously didn't fit in. My father was an avid outdoorsman, so every weekend and family vacation where I wasn't playing hockey or soccer was spent living out of tents and climbing any vertical landscape within driving distance (which was defined as a 1,500-mi. radius). When I was 17, my father, his colleague, and I thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail from GA to ME. At the time, I viewed it as an incredibly wasteful distraction from the bikinis that graced my beachside town on the Cape. Today, I view it as a bucket list item that was well worth the blisters, bugs, tedium, and incessant trailside character lectures from my Dad...
Despite my lifelong dream to become a stuntman, I found myself studying biology at UCONN, courtesy of soccer. I was part of their 1982 Division I national championship team, and had a terrific view from the bench for every minute of every game. Lacking the talent to be a contributor and the drive to study marine wildlife through the PhD level so that I could earn a grade-school teacher's pay, I took a 2-year "break" from college. I spent the first year running a SCUBA shop in Stuart, FL that I owned with my business partner, and spent the 2nd year backpacking through Western Europe and the U.S. Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, and the Grand Tetons left an indelible impression on me.
It was at this time that I made the single biggest mistake of my life: I inexplicably declared finance as a major, completed my bachelor's degree, and chose the abysmally boring and woefully unfulfilling career of banking. Twenty-six years and one master's degree later, and I'm still here. Sigh... Thankfully, a wonderful wife and my two sons (Mitchell and Matthew) make it more than worthwhile. Hiking, traveling, soccer, kayaking, and SCUBA remain my passions.
Despite my lifelong dream to become a stuntman, I found myself studying biology at UCONN, courtesy of soccer. I was part of their 1982 Division I national championship team, and had a terrific view from the bench for every minute of every game. Lacking the talent to be a contributor and the drive to study marine wildlife through the PhD level so that I could earn a grade-school teacher's pay, I took a 2-year "break" from college. I spent the first year running a SCUBA shop in Stuart, FL that I owned with my business partner, and spent the 2nd year backpacking through Western Europe and the U.S. Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, and the Grand Tetons left an indelible impression on me.
It was at this time that I made the single biggest mistake of my life: I inexplicably declared finance as a major, completed my bachelor's degree, and chose the abysmally boring and woefully unfulfilling career of banking. Twenty-six years and one master's degree later, and I'm still here. Sigh... Thankfully, a wonderful wife and my two sons (Mitchell and Matthew) make it more than worthwhile. Hiking, traveling, soccer, kayaking, and SCUBA remain my passions.
Bill
Mark R.
Byronn
