A LITTLE ABOUT ME... probably too much...

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Hi, my name isn't really Flydaddio... it's Steve.  But that Flydaddio nickname was given to me by one of my daughters, I forget which, and it has stuck around for so long now that it is perfect for this website.  Seems like I continually elicit nicknames, with 'Steve' just never being suitable enough?  Anyway, I was born on a hot summer day back in 1955 in Southern California.  Nothing else very exciting happened that day, at least so far as I was concerned.  The birth was difficult for both my mother and me, my misshapen head bearing testament to the ordeal we both endured.  My father was in the waiting room, where all fathers should be.  Whoever first had dads welcomed into the delivery room was a misguided fool.  Dads need to be oblivious to the whole birthing process, just handed a cute little bundle of joy, swaddled in a fluffy blue or pink blanket, when the battle is over.  

I spent the next seventeen years following that eventful day shuttling back and forth between California and Texas, with a short, inconsequential stint in Alabama.  The result was a Californian with a Texas drawl, a confusing combination to all I meet.  Then there was my higher education, which came at a boys’ school on a remote mountainside in Colorado.  If I wasn't screwed up before I got there, I was certainly a mess by the time I left.  Then, to top it all off, I had a year of misery thrust upon me in the form of USAF pilot training.  Did I mention that the first time I ever rode in a military jet that first summer in Colorado, bright-eyed and anxious to start my life's adventure, I hurled my guts out?  Came to the immediate conclusion that flying was NOT for me.  And yet... I couldn't quit.  Quitting wasn't in my blood, except when it came to marriage, but I'll get to that later.  So, I endured a year of barf bags, frustration, and humility, somehow finishing (bottom of my class) and came out with my wings..

The Air Force years were good to me as I learned a trade and met my first wife.  But flying was never a passion, so I left the military and went to work in the new (at the time), exciting world of computers.  Yawn.  Wish the enthusiasm had somehow caught hold.  My wife at the time was working long hours in a restaurant, and I grew bored.  What better way to spice things up than to take on a side job... flying?  The National Guard was even better than the Air Force, but I just couldn't recognize a good thing when I had one.  Then on a fateful business trip, I ran into an old buddy of mine that was working for the airlines.  I had never considered being a bus driver in the sky.  Still, I should have known that the picture he painted was too perfect…

I didn't.  So I took my pregnant wife and joined not just the number one airline company to work for, but also the highest rated employer in these United States of America at the time.   As I suspected, it could only go downhill from there.  Still, my airline career held three bright spots:  the births of my two daughters, Katie and Julia, and my one son, Jack.   But five years into the adventure I divorced my first wife, fifteen years into it I married my second, and after almost twenty years I finally hung up my wings and retired to live the good life.  Then, the former number one company in the US went bankrupt, took away my pension, and I was back on the streets looking for gainful employ.

Or should I say... back in the skies.  After a 3-year hiatus from flying, one totally jobless, another in the operating room (don’t ask), and a third applying to every airline in the world, I finally found a cockpit seat with my name on it... in Incredible.  That’s India for the uninformed.  Flying Boeing 737-800s and 900s in some of the scariest airspace in the world, with nothing but young interpreters in the right seat.   I would like to refer to them as copilots, and though enthusiastic and quite decent company, some had less than 100 hours total time, so that made it a little difficult to call them pilots of any sort.

I only stayed in Incredible for seven months, until I landed a premier job flying Boeing 747-400s round and round the world for one of the jewels of Asia.  I did that for over five years, and just recently returned to the US for good.  Well, I hope it is for good, but my current 'business venture' is not fairing so well...  So I have recently found myself eying the aviation ads for my next adventure.

I really don't know why I bother.  First, I'm way too old now to keep flying.  And second, having flown all over the world for so many years, seen so many nations, met so many peoples, and touched so many cultures, I have found that there is only one constant in this world, and it can easily be explained with one sentence.

There is a reason why everyone wants to come to the United States, and it's called FREEDOM !!!

Don’t let our politicians screw that up!

Captain Steve

(er, I mean, Flydaddio, no, NIck, no, Streak, no, Hags, no...Who am I again?)

When I'm not toiling away at some business venture or another, I am usually at my keyboard banging away at my passion... writing.  Now, I've never broken into the big-time publishing world, having fallen into the Catch -22 of that business... to get published you need an agent, but to get an agent you need to be published.  So, I did the only logical thing and self-published on Amazon Kindle.  But, I never figured out the ins and outs of self promotion, so the books I have written ended up on the back shelves of the Amazon Kindle library collecting electronic dust.  But hey, I still get to indulge in my passion, and lightning might strike... RIGHT???

I love my family, my friends, and the ocean.  So I spend most of my free time on the beach with family or friends... consuming adult beverages.  That  is probably why I don't have twenty novels done instead of the four listed elsewhere on this website...  I will try and do better...  with your help!