I’m 70 for exactly 12 months, and I’ve planned some adventures during this period. Adventure #1 I’m writing this at Gate 15 at Chicago Midway Airport on a layover to Colorado Springs. I’ll be there a couple of days and then go on to the Wind River Range in Wyoming for a five-day backpacking trip…
Two sobering things happened to me this week. The first was my Garmin watch announcing that my fitness age is 60. It uses my average resting heart rate, which has been 53 BPM, my body fat percentage, and the number of vigorous minutes and vigorous days I spend exercising. Turning 60 on my 70th birthday…
A Blue Dude Living in a Red Neighborhood I live in a Red State. And in a Red County. My neighborhood is mostly Red. It’s a small neighborhood. Not very diverse unless you count the 2 white-passing women with Middle Eastern descent. I’m very fond of one of them. Thus far, I have very little…
You need a map and a compass. And, you need to know where you are right now on the map. Use a compass to orient your map to the north. Line up the edge of the compass along the imaginary line to where you’re going. This gives you a bearing. If you’re in the woods,…
January 16, 1991, 4 PM EST I was sitting in my living room, watching on TV the beginning of the Gulf War. As a young teenager in the late 60s, I remember watching news clips of the Vietnam War, the death count for the day during Walter Cronkite’s Evening newscasts. But the Gulf War was…
I was asked to do several eulogies, as a young Baptist Minister, in the one-church town of Coahoma, Texas. I was asked to say some nice things for the recently deceased that were unchurched. This was during the bust of the 1980s and the joke was, “What do you call a Geologist in Midland?” Answer:…
House of Cards: Season “Hell at SBTS” Starring: Me, The President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary I am by nature, not a protester, but I have protested. And before you get all judgy, how many protests have you participated in? And if you say, yeah, I have, then good on you! My protest was…
My first two years of high school were a complete failure. Zero motivation. I wasn’t a smartass or anything, I just didn’t care. I remember sitting in the back of Miss Miller’s Spanish class and flipping nickels with my friend, Don. I didn’t learn a thing. I did just enough to pass. My grade point…
Camp Bullis, Texas, 1975 It felt like a death march. As part of our Airbase Defense Training, the Air Force required us to march 10 miles, which included other necessary skills like orienteering, weapons fire, and combat tactics. Today, I don’t think twice about a 10-mile hike. There’s a system of trails in the Jefferson…
Many years ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was a young Southern Baptist Minister. I pastored two churches, one in Eastern New Mexico, and one in West Texas. The first was a very small church in the middle of peanut fields and the second was in the heart of west-Texas oil country. It…
