Safety: Background

Bicycling to Safety? No. Like a lot of other people, I'd like to find a "cure for cancer," or some other meaningful contribution to society. "One all-consuming hobby is better than lots of separate ones." That's my motto,...or could be. In college it was, first, bicycles. I loved bikes, raced bikes (not real successfully), rode every day, everywhere; they were everything.

Photography and Safety? No. Then, it was photography. Although I was studying something else altogether at the University of Missouri, I fell in love with Mizzou's School of Journalism. I sat in every year on the National Press Photographer of the Year judging. My best friends were photojournalists. My own studies went along alright, but my true love was photocommunication; it was everything.

But, like a lot of other people, I wanted was to find a "cure for cancer," some meaningful contribution to society. Bicycle racing certainly wasn't leading in that direction (or much of anywhere-- especially from my positions near the end of the pack). Photodocumentation of the human condition seemed promising, but I was already humbled by the justifiable fame of my two friends, Jim Domke (Philadelphia Inquirer and "Domke Bag" fame) and John Flannigan (Newsday). They were true "J-School" graduates and were fearless journalistic warriers-- they'd find the photographic cure.

When Ann and I lived in Wisconsin, I noticed one of the guys who worked at a gas station across the street had firefighter stuff in his car. across the street from our apartment