5 Moments from My Life

I thought that this might be a good topic for an article, and maybe some of you who read this might like to follow suite and write about some special times in your life too.

As we write our articles, they very often include snippets from our lives, or identify traits in our personalities, our beliefs, likes and dislikes, lifestyle, even our illnesses etc.

Reading articles about life from many of the people that I follow here on Associated Content, I feel that I am getting to know you well, and regard you as friends.

I thought that by writing something like this, we might learn something unique and special about each other.

The Happiest Moment Of My Life

None of these are easy to answer of course, as there have been many happy days in my life. There were the births of my son, then my two daughters, and I was present at all three births.

Then two wedding days, but both marriages failed unfortunately.

But by far the happiest moment of my life was when my girlfriend (now fiancee and two weeks from today my wife) came to Florida to spend two weeks with me.

We met online while researching our family histories, and had spent months getting to know each other through thousands of emails and practically daily phone calls. We basically fell in love with each other, getting to know each other more every day, and everything new that we learned about each other just showed how much in common we had. We share the same sense of humor, we love to act stupid like school kids or teenagers, we enjoy being out in the country, we enjoy walking on the beach, and we have a lot of the same hobbies too.

We both had suffered from neglect in our previous relationships, and had lost a lot of self confidence, but finally she plucked up the courage to come and spend two weeks with me.

She had never been on a plane before, let alone a long haul flight, so the whole experience was a scary one.

What if being together we found that we really didn't like each other? These were real fears for both of us, but I think we both knew that there was little chance of this happening.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting at Miami Airport, I saw her coming out from the Customs area.

She looked a little lost at first, and I could see her looking around for me, but then she looked into my eyes and we both felt a huge rush of emotions. We practically fell into each others arms, and we knew that this was for real.

Walking together hand in hand back to my car, then driving home, it just felt like we were old friends.

This is by far the happiest moment in my life - so far! It's also one that I know we will both treasure in our hearts forever.

　

The Saddest Moment Of My Life

There have been a number of sad moments in my life too, including the loss of my Dad 4 years ago, and the breakup of two marriages, but the saddest moment I think by far is when I learned that my Mom had passed away.

It was 3 years since I left England to go live in Indiana, and although my Mom had been to my wedding in Florida 15 months previously, she had never been to anywhere else in the USA, and I desperately wanted to show her where I lived and what it was like there. I also hadn't seen her since the wedding, and was really looking forward to the visit.

My son, from my first marriage, who was then 16, was due to fly out with her for 3 weeks on the Thursday, and we had booked a hotel in Tennessee for a week so that we could tour the Smoky Mountains.

I had spoken to my Mom on the Sunday morning, as I always did, and she was really chirpy, having got her bag all packed, and she was very excited about the trip.

My wife and I had been out for the day, and when we got back in the evening, there was a phone message from my cousin in England saying to call her about my Mom.

I instantly had that sinking feeling, as you do when you get an unexpected phone call. I knew it was by then the early hours of the morning in England, but I could not wait, and so called my cousin back.

It seems that my Mom felt unwell in the late afternoon, and called her sister, who only lived a couple of miles away. Luckily my cousin and her husband were visiting from the North of England at the time, so they went over to my Mom's. She wasn't well at all, so they called the doctor, who gave her some medication and got her to rest in bed.

Several hours later she called my aunt again as she was in terrible pain. They rushed over, called the doctor, who called for the ambulance, and they rushed her into hospital. She was having an aortic aneurysm, and although they rushed her into surgery, it was too late to do anything, she passed away soon after.

So, I had a horrible shock, but also had to make urgent calls to the airline to cancel the flights for both her and my son, and to arrange flights back to the UK instead. In the morning I had to call my son and give him the news, also to call other family members etc. Fortunately my cousin is very resourceful, and handled many of the funeral arrangements etc, and I will be eternally grateful to her for that. Her sister, who lives in New Zealand, was visiting friends in Paris on her way to England to see the family, and fortunately she called and was able to get the news. She rushed over, so by the time I got to England, most of the arrangements had been made already.

Another sad moment was when my Dad died. I had arranged to fly over to England to see him, as he was terminally ill with cancer and only had days to live. I landed at Heathrow Airport and called to find out that he had passed away several hours before.

　

The Funniest Moment Of My Life

Ok, enough of the sad moments...

It's hard to think of the absolutely funniest moment in my life, but these are a few that I still think about and that make me smile...

When my son was 7 we left London and spent almost a year traveling the world, with 9 months spent in New Zealand.

A few months after being back in London, with my having found a job with one of the oil companies and having done several trips to South America, my son turned to me one day and said "You know Daddy, you are so lucky to do all this traveling".

I smiled and turned to him: "Well you have been around the world, and you are only 8 years old".

He quickly replied and added: "Yes, but only once"...

I couldn't do anything but laugh and think happy thoughts.

As I said previously, my fiancee and I love to laugh over the silliest things, and sometimes we have ourselves in hysterics with tears rolling down our cheeks.

On one occasion, it was the first trip when she came over to me to visit in Florida, we were laying in bed and I forget how it all started, but maybe it was something about short term memory loss. She must have asked me what my name was, so I said "Boris, what's yours?". She said "Doris", and so it went on, with me coming on my Horis (horse), of Coris (course), and the jokes got worse and worse until we were unable to speak.

We still use Boris and Doris as pet names for each other - good memories...

　

The Scariest Moment Of My Life

Two moments come to mind, and I would like to tell you about both of them, since the first was very funny.

Well I changed my mind - the description of the first is rather lengthy, as I can often go into a lot of detail, and find it hard to cut a story short. I promise that I will tell you about the second scary moment another time.

While working for the oil company (remember this?) I had to spend two weeks in Guatemala installing a computer system, and was able to go on a day trip to the Mayan city of Tikal in the north of the country.

Tikal is amazing. A thousand years ago it was a city of 70,000 people, but then with the demise of the Mayan civilization it was abandoned, and is now overgrown with jungle. It wasn't rediscovered until 100 years ago.

You have I am sure seen pictures of some of the temples. One was used in the first Star Wars Movie where you see a lookout on the Rebel planet surveying jungle as far as the eye can see, and it's like this if you go to the top of any of the pyramids, nothing but jungle in all directions as far as the horizon, and maybe a dozen structures rising above the treetops.

I am scared of heights, but decided that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, and so with my 35mm Pentax and my camcorder slung around my neck, I proceeded to climb the stairs to the top of the pyramid.

Now this was actually a lot easier than I expected, especially since the staircase was only maybe 3 feet wide, each step was over a foot high, 9 inches deep, and it was incredibly steep. No safety rail of course - the Maya didn't have those! If you fell - you would most certainly break something - or worse!

Having got to the top of the pyramid, there is only a narrow ledge to move around on, and looking down is enough to make you dizzy. It looks like the climb was almost vertical, and having taken my photographs and video, I sat and dangled my legs over the edge of the platform at the top of the pyramid, trying to pluck up enough courage to go down.

You see, looking down at the steps, it looked like they were vertical, and to go down forward was rather precarious. Going down backward was also hard, as it was not so easy to see where you were going.

I was up there with several Americans, and we were discussing other options as to how to get down including jumping, with that being maybe an easier option than having to try and climb down, albeit with dire consequences.

I decided to take some more video footage at this point, during which more people were completing the climb to the top of the pyramid.

Someone said that maybe it was easier to make a sacrifice than to have to climb down. A pretty blonde was reaching the top of the climb, and someone else said "sacrifice the blonde one, the blonde one goes". She immediately responded "Tell them it won't work - I'm not a virgin!"

Well we almost died of laughter, and I have this caught on video, but left my old camcorder and tapes with my son. I wonder if he still has this, I would love to digitize the moment as well as others.

Anyhow, I think the laughter helped us to pluck up enough courage to make the descent, which was tricky, but turned out easier than I had imagined, and helped give me much needed confidence from that day on when it came to my fear of heights. I am still scared, but nowhere near as bad.

　

The Most Amazing Moment Of My Life

This is also a tricky one to answer. I mean, who has just one truly amazing experience that they can single out from all others?

I could recount scuba diving on the Rainbow Warrior, the Greenpeace ship that the French sunk in New Zealand. I could also tell the story of my visit to the waterfalls at Iguassu on the border of Argentina and Brazil, where the "Garganta Del Diablo" (Devils Throat) which is more impressive than Niagara Falls, plunges into the Parana River, and there are almost 300 waterfalls over a 2 1/2 mile stretch of river.

But I will save these for another time, and pick a more recent episode in my life, when my fiancee and I went to see a shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

She is just so amazing in so many ways, especially when it comes to finding places to stay, and she found us this little Bed And Breakfast place to stay in Titusville, which is the closest town to Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral.

The place that we stayed at was unique - truly unique. Every room, every wall, the garden and beyond, were all covered in items that were for sale, from antique pottery and collectibles, to mirrors and dolls, and in the main hallway there was even a full size knight in armor on a horse. I must post some photos from this amazing place, and I highly recommend it for a stay. Days Inn it's not - it's one of a kind for sure.

Anyhow I digress... We had wanted to get tickets to watch the shuttle launch from the Causeway, which is the closest viewing point, and from where you see the countdown clock if you watch a launch on television. However there are only about 2,000 tickets available, and these sold out online within 2 minutes.

The next best alternative was to watch the launch from Titusville, which was 12 miles away, on the banks of the Indian River.

Fortunately, the Bed And Breakfast was situated only 100 yards from the main road on the edge of the river, and across the road was a large grassy area that looked across the river directly to Kennedy Space Center and the launchpad.

So, an hour before the launch, we made our way across the road, taking our folding chairs from the car with us, and watched birds playing in the water, pelicans fishing etc, and waited for the launch.

It was amazing to suddenly see the smoke and flame shoot out from the launchpad, as it was completely silent.

I had the camera set up ready, zoomed right in, and set for multiple shots, so I just held the button in and kept on shooting as the shuttle began it's upward ascent with a mostly clear blue sky, it being 11am and a perfect day.

The view was incredible, and it seemed like a minute before we felt the wind and heard the tremendous noise of the engines, which was still incredibly loud from that great distance.

The whole experience just sent shivers down our spines, and it has to be one of the most amazing things that I have ever seen. I would really love to see a launch from the causeway, but since I am now back in the UK and there are only a couple of launches left, the chances of this happening are slim to none unfortunately.

Now my fiancee is a woman and has womanly tastes, but she also loves to look as the sky and the stars, so she wanted to do this trip, but amazed herself as to how much she really enjoyed it too. The following day we went to the visitor center at Kennedy Space Center and toured the launchpads, the giant Vehicle Assembly Building, and also the facility where they are assembling components for the International Space Station. She loved it all as much as I did, which truly helped to make this a wonderful and memorable two days.

Well there you go, these are 5 moments from my life.
Anyone else want to have a go and make this a series?