Travels
Here’s a tour of the places I’ve been.
I listed states, cities, regions, countries, in no particular order– only the order in which they occurred to me. I included only places that I had left me with a distinct opinion or impression of them. My plan is to share those opinions and impressions of each one, and expand each item on the list with links to other sources of information.
New York City
Due to the amazing generosity of Laura and Allen Weiss, and Alan’s brother Norman Weiss, all four of us (Jim, Kim, Jana, and Sara) were able to spend a wonderful week in the Big Apple. From Christmas Day, December 25, 2006 to January 2, 2007, we were co-habitating with Norman, the Broadway musician (currently playing keyboard and piano for the Phantom of the Opera), in his apartment at Broadway and W 103rd, on Manhattan’s upper west side.
Battle Creek
Battle Creek is my home town. I count it as my home town, even though I was born in Bethesda, Maryland. By the time I was four, my dad had moved my family from Maryland, to upstate New York, to Northern California, to Southern California. Then, when I was four, they divorced, and the five of us kids went with mom. My mom, brother, and three sisters moved here when I was four years old (around 1969). Some of them flew over from California, but Mom, Mike, and I drove in our big blue station wagon, and I’ll always remember entering town through an older street that was still paved with what looked like bricks. I attended Battle Creek public schools (except for 1st grade, in a Catholic elementary school).
Battle Creek Central High School gave me my diploma in 1984, graduation year. We moved around the Battle Creek area a lot, so I tended to change schools every few years. We started out in an community several miles outside the city limits called Urbandale. Everything I need to know I learned at Level Park Kindergarten (now called Urbandale Elementary School), from Miss Burke, on whom I had a huge, puppy love crush. By the time I was in fourth grade, we had moved into Battle Creek, closer to downtown. 
I finished elementary at Fremont Elementary. Elementary school back then ended at sixth grade, and from there we were to enter W. K. Kellogg Junior High, for grades 7-9. High School was grades 10-12. Now they have changed my old junior high to a middle school, for grades 6-8.
A few months into seventh grade in junior high, my mom and I moved back to California to live closer to the ocean. Within three years, we were back; it hadn’t gone so well for me. See below, Hermosa Beach. After graduating from high school, I attended most of a year at Kellogg Community College. I ended up dropping out because I couldn’t motivate myself to do school anymore, and I had joined a rock band,
and moved in with my bandmates,
and decided to see where that might lead.
A year and half later, I had become a member of the Seventh-day Adventist church,
and was on my way to Andrews University (see below). I never lived in Battle Creek again.
Michigan
Green. Trees. Lakes. Hot, humid summers. Leaves scraping across streets close to Halloween in the Fall. Snowy, cold winters. Trees coming back into green every Spring. That’s my memory of Michigan. It’s a beautiful state. My mom’s side of the family has deep, old roots in the state. I’m proud to have been from there.
Andrews University
My first year at a Christian school was at a University, one of the oldest run by Seventh-day Adventists, named after the first foreign missionary the church sent, a man named John Nevins Andrews. Coincidentally, after one amazing, growth-filled year of classes, new-found friends, co-editing a new student paper co-created with friends, dozens of trips home in a dying sickly-yellow color Pinto Wagon that only lasted one year… I also went off as a missionary. See “Truk, Micronesia” below. I recently bumped into my first Bible teacher, Dr. Keith Mattingly, as I began graduate studies at La Sierra University; I have fond memories of his Life and Teachings of Jesus class.
California
My home off and on for much of my life. From age 2-ish to age 4, again from grade 7 through grade 8, and presently, since 1993, Southern and Central California has become a familiar, comfortable place for me. Although I have enjoyed my time here, my wife and I both are itching to move, for a lot of reasons.
Armona
This is where I live now, at the time of the creation of this blog, and the writing of this page. This little community of 5,000 in central California is all business– farming business, or “agri-business,” as they call it. About forty percent Hispanic, and 100% poor, this town is the location of the Seventh-day Adventist school where I teach Religion and History to grades 9-12.
Los Angeles
This area has drawn us back many times over the years, being a former home to me, and relatives who used to or currently live there. The Inland Empire, where I am pursuing graduate studies at La Sierra University and my oldest daughter hopes to do hers, at Loma Linda University, will likely continue to draw us back.
Hermosa Beach
For two years, my mom and I suffered through my seventh and eighth grade years at a much lower standard of living (see Palos Verdes) to which we were accustomed, in order to get back to a California we had both loved so well many years before. That saying “You can’t go home again” became true to me then, as so much was so different for us. After only a couple years, we moved back to Battle Creek, ready to stay there and be content. Mom still lives there.
Palos Verdes
This is where my family lived the last time we all shared a household. From here, my parents divorced, mom taking us five kids (from me at age 4 to our oldest sister in high school) to Battle Creek, Michigan where her sisters could support us until she got her R.N. degree and could support the family; dad moving to the Anaheim area, then Utah, and now Las Vegas. This home is where my earliest memories materialize. Swimming in the pool, playing with toy trucks all over the house, sleeping in the lower bunk with my brother, jealous of all the big kids at a pool party of my sisters’ and spying on them out my bedroom window, my dog Fifi chasing a ball thrown at the pool and almost successfully stopping at the edge– and then dunking in, Christmases, driving around to the swim practices and swim meets of my siblings. Good times.
Truk, Micronesia (now known as Chuuk)
I spent the better part of two years in Truk.
I went there as a single college student missionary to teach third grade for the 1987-88 school year.
I loved the work so much, I went back in 1989-90,
but by then I was married and my new wife was pregnant with our first child. I was going back as a substitute for the regular pastor, who was completing his master’s degree over in the Philippines.
Guam
Philippines
Southern College (now known as Southern Adventist University)
I took a Religion degree from this little Adventist college. At least in the early ’90s it was still called a college, even though they were already offering some advanced degrees. I learned about the school from my father-in-law, who had graduated from the college himself. When Kim and I returned with child (Jana) from the mission field, all I really knew was that I needed to finish college. I wasn’t set on where to do that. The last college I had attended, Andrews University, seemed like a logical choice, but Pastor Floyd insisted on showing me around Southern before I made my final decision, and I thank him for that. I have a high respect for the college because it blends an extremely accepting and friendly atmosphere with high academic standards and a great faculty of kind, spiritual teachers.
I attended three years. I had received 1 year of credit from Andrews U, so I picked up where I left off in my sophomore year in 1990. We lived in the trailer park up on a hill overlooking the campus, part of their married student housing. We made friends with some of our neighbors, spent time with each other when we could, but I was just so focused on schoolwork. Probably too much; it put a real strain on our marriage, and I wish I had it to do over again: I would put the books down every night at 8:00 and forget about them, and do the same all weekend (except maybe for finals week!).
Anyway, we attended a really cool church our last year there called Hamilton Community Church. Very progressive, young-adult oriented, and open-minded. What a culture shock it was to transfer from that young, hip, dynamic church family to Hanford Seventh-day Adventist Church, Hanford, California! See the entry for that place for more details…
Chattanooga
Went to Southern College of Seventh-day Adventists here for three years, 1990-1993; since then, they changed it to Southern Adventist University, where my daughter attends beginning in 2008.
Savannah, TN
My fiancee’s parents lived and pastored the church here, in which we were married, in 1989.
Nicaragua
The poorest country I’ve visited. I went on a mission trip to the eastern side, where a clinic had been set up in a Miskitu Indian village.
Tijuana
A trip here with the school as a teacher and sponsor showed me how poor Mexico is.
Baja California Mexico
A mission trip here with a small group of fellow church members was both gratifying and enlightening. Here, an orphanage needed light construction and repairs, which we provided. During our recreation day, we drove quad cycles around the dunes of San Felipe– best time yet I’ve done that. Have often wished I could repeat that experience, to no avail.
Pittsburgh
Attended a Teacher conference here one wintery weekend. The conference was terribly dull, but the city was fascinating and attractive, having reinvented itself from its storied past as an industrial steel-mill town into a very diverse, pleasant metropolitan area.
Hawaii
Two weeks of pre-Truk mission training here were the usual Hawaii experience, I guess– incredible island beauty, tourist-oriented beach towns, and a strong desire to go back someday. Which my wife and I sadly could not do, as a car accident two weeks before our wedding day thwarted our plan to have a week or so here of honeymoon time. Instead, a cruelly brief lay-over to change planes and an as-yet-not-delivered promise to each other to return. Maybe someday…
Wichita
Flat, windy, chilly for the 15 weeks I spent there– first week of January, 1989 until the middle of April. But I have romantic memories of Wichita, especially the zoo, because that’s where my fiance and I spent our free time, as we dated and made plans for our future together.
Virginia
My fiancee and I strolled on the beach here. Virginia is for lovers, as their bumper stickers said.
Washington, D.C.
Our recent school trip was fairly typical for tours and site-seeing, but much appreciated. Too brief.
San Francisco
Several day trips to the city with family and school groups have been fascinating; the weather here might be my favorite of all places on earth.
San Diego
Many school trips and vacations have seen us back in this favorite town, especially to Balboa Park’s cultural mecca.
Dallas
A teacher’s convention here in 2000 found me checking out Dealy Plaza, and stepping through the museum of JFK’s assassination. Eerie.
Chicago
The windy city really earns its nickname, believe me. A community-college sponsored art trip was great, but freezing while outside. I would go back, though. I liked the vibe there.
Connecticut
My wife’s family brought me here one summer for a week or so. It was the farthest up into New England I had gone for any length of time, and was truly wonderful. Strolling around the Yale campus during their winter break was cool, and learning some of my wife’s family history was fun.
Napa Valley
Las Vegas
Lake Tahoe
Kalamazoo
Salt Lake City
Sacramento
Black Rock Desert
Grand Canyon
Amusement parks, Disney, etc.
San Jose
The Upper Peninsula
Enid, Oklahoma
My dad is from this part of Oklahoma. I think he was born in Norman, OK, nearby. This is a flat, dusty, windy, forbidding section of the state. Dustbowl area. I visited when I was about 10 years old. My grandma was still alive then, and we stayed at her house, which smelled like an old lady’s house, and was homey, and lonely, and quiet.
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