Some things still puzzle me.

Late one afternoon I walked near an area that was closed, bummed me out; when I turned around there were a couple black guys were standing there. One of them said "What are you doing here,N&&&r?" I looked behind me and around then looked back and said "You must be talking to someone else". They laughed, walking away saying "I didn't know white guys had a sense of humor". I never did figure out had happened.

I was sitting in the S.U.B. at Eastern Montana College (Billings, MT - now a University, used to a 'Normal' school meaning a teacher's college), when this black guy sat down with us and introduced himself. He chatted for a while; told us that he did tan by showing us the tan-line under his watch; then he went off to another table. This was the first time I had ever seen a black guy, let alone talked with one.

I was snorkeling about 200 yards off of Green Island on the Great Barrier Reef, taking pictures and generally being completely blown away by the colors, the fish, the whole 'abundance of life' thing going on. Something bothered me but I don't know what. I looked around but did not see anyone or anything around but I was really, really uncomfortable so I headed back to the beach - just in time get evacuated from the island due to Cyclone Muni. The boat-ride back to Australia was on a trimaran which made the 14 ft swells FUN! There were a bunch of us standing the front of the trimaran riding it like a roller-coaster - up to the top of a swell, then drop 14 feet to the trough; there was nothing like it (the fact that it was a trimaran kept all the motion up and down with very little side-to-side motion). Green Island was swept pretty clean by the cyclone.

I was playing with the fire in the fireplace at our cabin in the tobacco root mountains; this annoyed grandma (seems like everything annoyed her) and she told me to go outside to play. I grabbed a handful of kitchen matches and went out to play. Bored with the tiny flames from burning pine needles, I opened the valve on the 40 gallon gas tank and trickled some gas and the flames got pretty large. When the flames began to die, I opened the valve a little more so more gas would come out; hah, this produced even more flames in a wider pool. This eventually got boring so I wandered off to do something else. Nothing burned down and I did not start a fire; the only reason I can think of that I survived was the gasoline was too cold - it is the fumes that burn not the liquid.