NSUCO - The Visionary Fall 2010

the VISIONARY • Summer/Fall 2010 9 death, we loaded up the car and moved to Miami, where a new life was to begin. This place was more familiar to me―trop- ics and hurricanes. My mother also purchased a place in Key Biscayne because the houses were cheap on that remote island in those days. The place was also so undeveloped that you would be inundated with hundreds and hundreds of hermit crabs crossing the road as you came onto the island. In fact, I can still hear the “crunch...crunch...crunch” sounds. We resided there for a few years and then went back to North Carolina, although that was after learning that hurricanes can create a good wind power source for a makeshift sail- street board, which was constructed from one of my mother’s bed sheets, an old broom, and my handy skateboard. One night, my mother sat me down and said we could try to live on our sav- ings and military benefits or risk it all and buy an oceanfront hotel in Long Beach, North Carolina (now called Oak Is- land). We decided to go for it, and for the next three years I spent every Sunday morning at the Laundromat doing all the laundry for the eight units we owned. I ob- viously did not realize this was in the game plan and surely wasn’t thinking of that when I said yes. Our place was named the Scotch Bonnet Hotel after the state shell. Every week, we held a big fish and clam- bake for everyone right on the beach in front of the hotel, where we had a long gig net anchored right off the beach. Those were simple and fun times, with my bed- room right on the ocean, and my surf- board right by the door. Life was grand―except for the Laundromat days. Dr. Woods Acquires an Interest in Optometry Jumping forward to when I was growing up in Satellite Beach, Florida, my mom and I were managing several rental and hotel properties that we owned. We both trav- eled back and forth from Florida in the winter to North Carolina in the summer. Well, it was not just my mom and I. We also had two dogs and an assortment of cats to accompany us, and on an occasion a squirrel and a pelican (don’t ask). Because of my dad’s military connections, I thought about going to the U.S. Air Force Academy. I earned my wings at the local air force base while I was still in high school and had joined the United States Army Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps to get my foot in the door. The colonel who headed up the program used to entice us to study harder for an air nav- igational exercise/exam by dangling the offer of a banana split to the highest scorer. Being a pilot, I easily won the first two in a row, so he upped the ante to a steak dinner for the final exercise. I had mine medium rare. But alas, my hearing was to fail me, and I would not be able to be an air force pilot. So I fell back on my favorite thing next to surfing and sailing, which was biology. When it was time for me to go to college, we sold the Scotch Bonnet and I bought a VW bus with a surfboard rack ready to go. You could basically live in there, better than any hotel. Then I got a map out and decided on how far I could go with my new vehicle and still be in the United States. My fingers perused to the far end corner where the words Wash- ington State reached my eyes. It had un-crowded waves, except for a few orcas, mountains everywhere, and I’d almost still be in the USA! It looked like a dream from heaven. I started out in a small community college that had a dorm on the Olympic peninsula because its cata- log said, “Ski to sea in 30 minutes!” Well, I got it down to 20. The first drive out from Florida to the college was to be very educational. The col- lege phoned me (yes, we are talking pre-Web here) about another new student from Chicago that was going to attend the college and needed to hitch a ride. So there we were cruising along in my somewhat bald-tired VW bus, with surfboard on top, on the road from Chicago to Washington State when we ran into a snowstorm in Medicine Bow, Wyoming. This was my first time driving in snow, and as I was soon to learn, when a bullet-holed sign stated “Bridges Freeze Before Road,” it wasn’t kidding. As we were coming off of a high- canyon bridge, just a wee bit sideways (okay, maybe a bit more than wee), my new companion yelled, “Next time I’m fly- ing,” My response was, “Dude, we are fly- ing!” Two years later, when I looked at the map again, I realized that if I went to West- ern Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, I could go even further north and be right next to the Canadian border. I graduated with a degree in biology (and a minor in snowshoeing), packed up my VW, and headed back for the East Coast along with my surfboard, a mountain bike, backcountry skis, and a kayak atop the VW. So what do you do with a bright new shiny biology degree? You go to grad school, of course. This time, I just headed across the bridge to the Florida Institute of Technol- ogy in Melbourne, Florida, and started working on a master’s in cellular biology. My thesis research was looking at how synaptic morphology changed in the inner ear with age, but for any classes and lab projects outside of your thesis work, you had to work with another organ. Naturally, “So what do you do with a bright new shiny biology degree? You go to grad school, of course.”