I was born in the late 1950s in Fairbanks Alaska. Within a week I had taken my first ride in a small plane to where my Dad was station manager for the FAA at a very small bush community which was to remain my home for the next 14 years.
Since the village there was too small for a school my Mom home schooled me us (I have Twin sisters). Dad retired when I was 8 and we moved to a homestead that my Mom had bought (sight unseen!) before she moved to Alaska. We moved to the closest town (Fairbanks) when I was 14 so I could go to a regular high school.
After high school I spent a year living by myself in the bush, with a big garden and otherwise living off the land. Then I spent the next 6 years getting a BS in biology. After I got my BS I spent a spring/summer building a nice cabin in the woods, and then I started a small construction company with a friend. I eventually bought him out as I morphed the company into rental apartments, which is what I own now. Though about a decade ago I began to slowly sell my real estate. Now (2018) I own 69 units and anticipate selling another 40 or 50 over the next 10 or 15 years.
Along the way I got another BS (geology), an MBA, a family (2 kids, boy and a girl), sailed a small boat to Hawaii and back, sailed a big boat (cruise ship) around the world and increased the number of countries I have visited to 55.
15 years ago I hired a girl in India to do some work for me. Though the primary goal was to discover if I could utilize foreign employees and take advantage of the disparity between wages in the US and the wages overseas. In 2013 I needed an accountant to handle my real estate business so I returned to India. Unfortunately I couldn’t find anyone I liked so I went to Sri Lanka where I hired my accountant (who is still working for me). At the same time I also hired a biologist to do aging research. She has worked for me off and on ever since. Unfortunately she married in late 2017 and moved to the UK, where I can not compete with the wages she earns there! But she remains a good friend and freely offers advice. This has proven helpful when dealing with the University I have agreements with to operate a research lab.
In early 2017 we visited a number of universities in Sri Lanka looking for one I could form an agreement with to do research on aging. After my biologist and I talked with a number of universities and research groups we finally found one who was setting up an Animal House, but needed more money to get it properly established. So we agreed that I would help with money and then, starting in 2018, we would begin aging experiments in mice. In October 2018 I returned to Sri Lanka and got these experiments initiated.
More on the Sri Lanka lab.
