I've always been active in the outdoors. I've hiked in China, Japan, Mexico, Italy, and much of the USA. I am an active kayak builder & user, SCUBA diver in the Great Lakes & beyond, rock climbing novice, former Windsurfing instructor, lived out of my tent for 3 months, and have had to chase everything from ground squirrels to bears out of my camp.

I've taken as many SOLAR classes and trips/activities as my schedule allows. I never fail to learn something (or a lot of things!), and have a great time in the process. My favorite class and favorite trip are both the same: The next one.

Thanks to SOLAR, backpacking opportunities and other outdoor adventures are much more frequent now!  I've taken most of the basic classes offered through SOLAR, and helped teach several of them.  I've participated in many SOLAR events, and met a lot of great people.  Though this is only my second year in an elected role, I’ve been a regular at Steering Committee meetings for about four years.  I’ve been involved with the Education committee and the SOLAR Ray, and helped with surveys of SOLAR members. 

 I feel one of my main responsibilities as Secretary is to facilitate communication between the Steering Committee and the general membership, and I welcome suggestions for how to do that.

I decided to attend the monthly SOLAR meeting and to my amazement I was greeted with the friendliest and most excited group of people I have ever met. We all had common interests in outdoor activities. I joined SOLAR as an annual member that night in January 2008, then signed up for classes in Spring Backpacking, Basic Land Navigation, Wilderness First Aid, Winter Backpacking (AKA - enjoying Michigan Winters), and Mountaineering. All of these classes have an accompanying off-site practical experience to utilize newly learned skills. The following year I signed-up as a lifetime member.

Today, I serve as your volunteer club treasurer with a seat on the steering committee. My career as a financial systems analyst and an internal auditor for a local major automobile manufacture for over 30 years provided me with experience for the job.

When I was 15 my mom took my younger sister and me on a trip to California. To save money we camped along the way and visited lots of national parks. I loved (almost) every minute of it. When we were in Colorado I bought a book on backpacking that I have to this day. It was another two years before I actually went on a backpacking trip, when I went with a group from college to Kilarney Provincial Park on Georgian Bay. We did trips throughout college, including hiking Pictured Rocks from end to end. The trail was quite different then than it is now!

I had a long hiatus from backpacking after I graduated from college but I did continue to hike regularly, often in great places around the world: the American southwest, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea, Italy, the Czech Republic, and China. In 2002 I moved to Beijing. My job made me miserable but my salvation was finding a hiking group that went out into the countryside every weekend. We often hiked on mountainous, old, crumbling sections of the Great Wall and often passed by villages that looked almost as old and crumbling. I also had my first mountain biking and zip-line experiences there.

When I left China I decided to fulfill a decade-old dream. In 2003 I spent 9 weeks walking the Camino de Santiago from Vezelay, France to Santiago de Compostella in Galicia, Spain. (I then walked another three days to the Atlantic coast.) I have often said that I’m not much good at anything that takes much skill or coordination but I’m great at things that just require grim determination.

Since I joined SOLAR I have taken Basic Backpacking, Women in the Woods, Intermediate Backpacking, Wilderness First Aid, Search and Rescue, Basic Land Navigation, Introduction to Kayaking, Knots, and Enjoying Michigan Winters (with which I am now privileged to help). I’ve yet to do a long trip out west but I keep pretty busy with shorter hiking, camping, and backpacking trips, cross-country skiing, road biking, or paddling. I especially like to do things where I can bring Marco and Tilly. They’re small but they are terrific trail dogs.

By day I serve as Membership Chairperson, and by night I moonlight as an assistant editor of the SOLAR Ray, assistant instructor in the Enjoying Michigan Winters (winter camping) class, and member of the Education Committee. I have made some good friends through SOLAR, and gained a lot of confidence in myself and my abilities. I enjoy volunteering for the club, and encourage others to find a task to help with, or a niche to fill. There are lots of great ways to get involved and meet more fun people.

Since that time I have had a number of great experiences as a member of SOLAR. I eagerly signed up for every class that was offered and looked forward to the experiences and knowledge that each provided. When I first started in SOLAR I never thought I would end up doing the things that I have done. Whether it’s camping and snorkeling in the Caribbean to climbing Mt Rainier, SOLAR has allowed me to stretch myself personally and to also make a number of great friends. No other organization that I have belonged to has provided so much. As part of my effort to give back to an organization that I have received so much from, I have helped out as an assistant instructor and also as an organizer for the Spring Backpack course. I’ve also been an assistant in the Mountaineering course. I enjoy helping out and meeting new members and doing what I can to help them enjoy the outdoors as much as I do. I decided run for a Steering Committee position as the Bylaws chair so I can be involved in the process of making SOLAR the best that it can be. I will do my best to help ensure that SOLAR remains the great organization that it is so it can continue to provide great opportunities to experience the outdoors.

Sure enough, through SOLAR I’ve been able to try new things such as kayaking, rock climbing, winter camping, mountain biking, adventure racing, and dog sledding. I’ve also developed a real passion for backpacking, enjoying the freedom to go places beyond the range of a day hike and the sense of accomplishment of completing a challenging trip. Using the skills I learned in the classes offered through SOLAR, and accompanied by friends I’ve made in the club, I’ve backpacked in some incredible places such as Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia, Grand Canyon, Glacier, Mt. Rainier, and Isle Royale National Parks, as well as the John Muir Trail and the Maroon Bells-Snowmass and Weminuche Wilderness areas. The classes offered through SOLAR have given me both the skills to do things I enjoy and companions to enjoy them with. My commitment as Education Chair is that our classes continue to open up new opportunities for our members, as well as being both informative and fun.

I have also back packed the Bruce Trail, the Smokey Mountains and in the Pukaskwa Provincial Park. Other smaller trips were in Michigan including the North Manitou Island. Something I never thought I would do was to race in the Port Huron – Mackinaw race. We hit a storm and tore the mainsail and dropped out at Tobermory and then continued in non racing mode to get to Mackinaw. There is nothing like seeing Michigan’s coastline from the lake. Through a Service Trip up in Pictured Rocks, we cleared a new trail to Mosquito Falls and actually built a hiking bridge over the Mosquito Falls River. The Park Ranger/Leader had hauled utility poles and lumber to the site by ski do the previous winter and we floated the utility poles down the river to the spot for the bridge building. Anytime I venture into the outdoors I find something fascinating with the people and the place outdoors. Through SOLAR I took the rock climbing class and went to Rattlesnake Park in Ontario for the rock climbing test. Well I did do the 50-ft climb test and was so scared I tossed my cookies at the top of the climb and I was still happy with the experience.

It only takes a few minutes of my southern accent to know I'm not from around here.  I grew up camping with my family in NC and only came to Michigan in 1998 (wow, I'm practically a native now). We were car campers and I still love a good road trip, but as I grew older I began to enjoy more the solitude afforded by backpacking.  In spite of some previous experience backpacking with friends, I signed up for  Spring Backpacking, and learned a significant amount ...and bought a lot of new gear.  A one day class on geocaching introduced me to my next obsession... and a lot of new gear.  Next up was Basics of Beginning Kayaking, in which I learned to use my new sea kayak, to self-rescue one hundred different ways... and bought a lot of new gear.  Winter came and Enjoying Michigan Winters allowed me to learn to build a ski pulk, to sleep in a quinzhee, and, of course, to buy a lot of new gear.  Soon I will need to buy a new house to hold all this gear.  Good thing I bought the lifetime membership already, because next year I won't be able to afford the annual membership dues.  In all of this I have made a lot of new friends, which is both priceless and free.

Bean and I are regulars out on the trails and rivers and lakes of Michigan; we hike, backpack, kayak, mountain bike, inline skate, geo-cache.  And when I say we, I mean me and the Bean; she likes to sleep in a tent almost more than I do and she's a trooper about carrying her own backpack.  Occasionally, I get to travel a little farther afield; recent trips include Utah (including Zion NP), Yosemite, Joshua Tree, Shenandoah and Abu Dhabi.  As souvenirs of my journeys, I collect maps.

In my spare time, I teach chemistry and maintain a blog about our adventures.

I attended Northern Michigan University where my appreciation for the outdoors was born. Hiking, rappelling, rock climbing, swimming, snowshoeing, winter survival, exploring many of the UP waterfalls, all the things a city kid from Detroit never got to do. My honeymoon was spent camping all over the UP in September (apparently, I had found the right woman).