OiKnow's VirtualTourist Home Page

When I look back over 2007 it was a very busy year, I was in 16 states, the District of Columbia and 4 foreign countries and spent 54 nights in hotels. There were many wonderful experiences in all of this travel, things that I would love to be fortunate enough to experience again. Out of all of this a couple of experiences stand out.

I have to admit that stopping at the American Military Cemetery at Colleville in France was not on my must see list while touring Normandy. I was driving from Bayeux to St. Mere Iglise when I saw the signs and felt compelled to pull in; telling myself that I would just stop of a moment and move one. I wandered among the markers for well over an hour and was struck by the enormity of the human sacrifice that was expended to free Normandy from the occupying army. The experience touched my inner being in a way that few experiences ever will. There was hardly a dry eye on the grounds. This is an experience all Americans should .

I had a business trip to Anchorage, Alaska in June. This was the kind of trip that can be real grind of nearly 9,000 miles of travel and a long dinner meeting followed by a day of very intense work; out and back without much time to spare. Because my flight would not arrive until late in the evening, I was allowed to fly in a day early and had a day to rest before a dinner meeting the evening before the full day of work. I decided I wanted to see as much of the wilds of Alaska as I could in the few hours I had free on the rest day, so I arranged a tour on a float plane. Anchorage is home to the largest seaplane base in the world. There are several operators available, I choose Rusts because the tour sounded like a good fit for what I wanted, and they offered shuttle service from area hotels. http://www.flyrusts.com/index.html

The scenery was spectacular from the moment we taxied out. Within minutes of leaving the lake in Anchorage we were out over wild countryside without a road or power line in sight. I grew up in and around small planes was thrilled to be able to sit up front in the co-pilot seat (no controls on that side in this plane.) It is about an hours flight out of Anchorage to Denali National Park and Mt McKinley.

We flew a course up the gorge of the Ruth Glacier. The sheer granite cliffs are over a mile high on each side with a couple thousand feel of glacial ice below. The rock faces soared above the wing tips into a nearly perfect blue sky. The pilot flew slow circles so that everyone on board had a spectacular view of the glacier and the mountain. Then we made a left turn and went around to the back side of the glacier. The pilot picked a small lake formed by water from the melting glacier and set the plane down so smoothly that I had to look down to see if we were on the water or not (he caught me looking and joked about the landing.) We tied off at the back of the lake and spent a few minutes taking pictures and collecting memories. The sheer size and wildness surprised me. I was surprised that this much wilderness exists and convinced that we need to preserve it. Everyone who visits Alaska and is healthy and hearty enough to climb in and out of the plane should make this trip. We will protect what we love; we will love what we know.

Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I had not lived. . . I wanted to live deep and suck out all of the marrow of life.” In a nut shell this describes how and why I travel. When I travel I want to learn about living so that I have lived deeply and fully and learned what life and travel have to teach. I hope to die with few regrets about the things that I have not done. We regret most, what we have not done, I hope to have few regrets.

OiKnow is short for “Oh, I know.” When I think about life, travel and the world I usually know what I am looking for. If not I go in search and I know it when I see it.

My name is David and I live and work in Lexington, Kentucky. I was born in rural Michigan and spent most of my childhood living in a farming area of Michigan. I went to most of the first grade in Phoenix, Arizona (that is a long story.) I spent half of high school in Michigan and half of high school in Florida. I spent a great deal of my teenage years in the right front seat of a single engine airplane with my father at the controls. After high school I moved to Florida. I tried to make a living as a photographer for a couple of years and then I tried to sell real estate for a couple of years. From there I went to work for home building and land development companies in central Florida and worked in that field for 15 years. Along the way I earned a bachelors degree from Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, shed an ex and met J, my partner. In 1995 we moved to Lexington, Kentucky where J teaches at a University. Moving here allowed me to take three years off from life and go to law school. I have worked for a small non-profit organization providing programs for seniors since the Monday after my last law school exam. One of the advantages of working for a non-profit is vacation time that I can actually take and I do. I average four weeks vacation each year and travel on business whenever I can. J’s work generates interesting travel and I tag along whenever I can. For about five years now I have spent 30 nights or more per year in hotels; in 1995 I spent 47 nights in hotels.

I love to cook and I am fascinated by markets. I find that food, and how it is raised, cared for, harvested, sold, prepared and sold tells me a tremendous amount about a people and a culture. I love to explore the corner grocery, local supermarket, specialty markets of all kinds, bakeries, and major markets everyplace that I go. Ask me about a place I have been, and I will tell you about the markets that I have seen.

Where have I been?
1) Canada
2) Mexico
3) Grand Bahamas Islands
4) England
5) Wales
6) Netherlands
7) France
8) Germany
9) Italy
10) Greece
11) Vatican City
12) Belgium

1) Michigan
2) Ohio
3) Illinois
4) Indiana
5) Kentucky
6) Tennessee
7) Georgia
8) Alabama
9) Mississippi
10) Missouri
11) Arkansas
12) Iowa
13) Nebraska
14) Kansas
15) Louisiana
16) Florida
17) Texas
18) New Mexico
19) Arizona
20) California
21) North Dakota
22) South Dakota
23) Minnesota
24) South Carolina
25) North Carolina
26) Virginia
27) West Virginia
28) Pennsylvania
29) New York
30) New Jersey
31) Rhode Island
32) Delaware
33) Maryland
34) Oklahoma
35) Utah
36) Montana
37) Alaska
38) Nevada
39) Colorado

Wish List:
1) The other 11 states
2) Japan
3) Hong Kong
4) Scotland
5) Rural France
6) Southern Italy
7) Istanbul
8) Germany (for more then a couple of hours)
9) Switzerland
10) Austria
11) Spain
12) Portugal

What have I seen and done along the way?
Watched the last Apollo launch
Watched the first space-shuttle launch (and long ago lost track of all of the launches that I have seen)
Seen the Magna Carta (twice, once in Florida and once in England)
Both houses of Congress in session
Toured EPCOT before it opened to the public
Had Christmas dinner on the Eiffel Tower
Witnessed one plane crash
Experienced one emergency landing
Watched a bald eagle pluck a sea gull from the flock across the street from my office
Saw the last dusky seaside sparrow
Photographed Ronald Regan
Competed in the National Sprint Triathlon Championship (60 pounds ago)
Finished two half marathons
Visited 39 states and 11 countries
Navigated around a labor protest in Rome and a general strike in Athens
Seen the Grand Canyon (3 times), the Golden Gate, the Gateway Arch, Mt. Rushmore, and the Pope
A moose and a herd of elk in Glacier National Park