This wide and diverse collection of one man's life's eclectic short stories, personal anecdotes, harrowing adventures, ill-advised doings, and concise wisdom gained therefrom, will be beneficial, entertaining, exciting, and compelling to those from all walks of life. All these I leave for you, my fellow life travelers. My credibility for you in writing this book for you is simply this; In the progression of my time on earth I have drunk deeply from life's bitterest cup - and tasted of life's sweetest nectar. This I have learned; The brave may not live forever, but the cautious may not live at all. With time out for raising a family and climbing the corporate ladder in heavy engineering and high-rise building construction, I have also successfully started many small businesses, then to sell out from lack of interest when up and going, profitability established and curiosity satisfied. Shipping out on a tramp freighter and a stint in South America in the early 1960's as an undercover government operative and pilot only whetted my appetite and curiosity for more such doings, some as revealed here. Then years later a wonderful fifteen of my years were spent in Southeast Asia carried my adventures forward and through many harrowing happenings. Most rewarding, among others, has been helping Hmong Hilltribe people escape through the Army lines of the Communist regimes in Laos and Cambodia to a redoubt across the Mekong River into the mountains of Northern Thailand, there to live with them and help them build villages safe from their oppressors. All this saved me from utter boredom when I needed it most - and occurred while also delving into and trying to understand what was to me, convoluted cultures centuries older than mine and diametrically opposed to it. Through difficult and dangerous experiences, I found that people are basically the same the world over, and develop similarly, but with different customs, and even a different though process which evolves in different environments and separated by half a world away. Such differences obscures the basic humanity in all of us, and gentle tolerance is of the essence. Stay on that mysterious, Eclectic Road of Life at your leisure by using this book of astounding, beneficial and informative things - then go forward and grasp your own adventures as they come. We are limited only by the smallness of our dreams ...and remember - all who wander, are not lost. ...ETM