IPO – Race For the Gold

One of my life’s goals has been to take a company public. This was during the time before the great IPO rush of the Internet bubble. To take a company public was the ultimatebusiness achievement. Opportunity encouraged me to open a software company to service the Rent To Own industry. The name of the company was r:tracs.

John Wells showed up at my door and said he heard I wanted to go public.
Gordon Duval calls and says he knows someone I should talk to.
Ned Patterson called and invited me to New York City.

Lost in Big Bend National Park

After years of encouragement by others, I am ready to put my adventures at Big Bend National Park to print. I acknowledge that memory may change with time. I am relying on others that took part in the adventure to collaborate.

It all began back in 1995. My son Jeff and I had been getting into backpacking into deserted areas and enjoying the challenge. It was a great time for father and son to set aside pressures of the day and enjoy the challenges of hiking in beautiful secluded areas with everything we needed to survive packed on our backs.

For this particular hike, Jeff invited his two friends Mark and Greg. So the four of us loaded up our gear in our Suburban and headed for Big Bend. It was our plan to hike the Chisos Mountain ridge line. We bought the topographical maps for the mountains and looked forward to spending the bulk of our hike on top of the ridge. The uniqueness of hiking the Chisos is the mountain range forms a bowl. One can hike the ridge line in a circular fashion and not have to back track to get back to your starting point.