A little about me. · Creator Boost Tribe

A little about me.

Hi everyone and thanks for letting me hang out where the cool kids are.

I am a 67 year old, 100% disabled Army veteran. I have been married to my wife Tina for 45 years.

I served in the Army as a 31S20 COMSEC repairman. I was trained on 34 different communications scramblers (think Enigma machine). I held a TOP SECRET/CRYPTO/COSMIC clearance. I was offered my choice of White House Communication Staff or Delta Force if I would reup. I decided to get out as so many people who stay in wind up divorced. Since we have made it 45 years so far, I'd say I made a good choice. My YouTube channel is https://www.youtube.com/@rails_and_trails.

I have done many different things in my life. As I said, I started out in the Army and got to the rank of Sgt. E5. When I got out, I went to work for NCR repairing equipment in banks called proof machines that handled checks. I went from there to McDonnall Douglas and worked as a distributed numerical control electrician. I got caught up in a huge layoff and went to Nordyne as a testing engineer. I got my degree in computer science and went to work at Lockheed as a software engineer. Then back to McDonnall Douglas as a software engineer. Mac got bought out by Boeing, so then I was a Boeing software engineer. I left there to work at Paylinx as an ecommerce processing software engineer (I worked on bank payment processing stuff). Paylinx got bought out by Cybersource and I got my teaching certificate and my Master Electrician license and taught Electrical Trades at a technical school. Meanwhile I started an auction company. I ran the auction company with my wife and family for 25 years and retired. I started my YouTube channel 19 years ago to promote my auctions, and to get a link from YouTube to my website. I retired from my auction company after the VA put me at 100% disabled.

I changed my YouTube channel to be about train travel and bike trails back in Dec. 2024. I started making videos about my hobbies and tried to get a little better with each video. Back in 2023 we were biking at Jeckel Island and I tried tying a handheld Sony minicam to my bicycle handlebars, needless to say, that didn't work worth a darn.

We were riding on some trails by Ft. Campbell, KY when my wife and I decided to buy a GoPro Hero 12 camera. We got one in time to take it with us to Florida last December. I videoed our rides there but ran into huge problems editing the videos I took. I wound up trying several free editors, and finally would up using the free version Davinci Resolve (which works great and I love) but (and this is very important) I had to buy a much newer computer with much more power to do what I wanted to do.

We ride eBikes because I have 2 torn meniscuses in my left knee. When the VA took 3 bones out of my left foot and shorted my tibial tendon, they put me in a cast for a month and then a month in a boot. I used a scooter and re-tearing a previous meniscus repair. I also got another age-related meniscus tear. In any case, we ride eBikes so my knee doesn't swell up to twice it's normal size.

Here's the long and short of it. We love to travel by train (got hooked on that during our 3 years in Germany in the Army). We mostly travel for free, using our train points (12,000 + miles in the last 2 years since we retired). We get our travel, food and a room on the train all using points. We teach about that on my channel. When we travel we often stay in Moral, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) lodging. For instance, Coast Guard Lighthouses, Navy, Army bases, etc. and we teach about how to do that. We also go on lots of cool bike rides. We go slow and steady. Here is an example of one of my videos. This was taken on a ride on the Amtrak Coast Starlight between LA and Monterey.

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