Follow Your Dream

[Julia A Knaake]

You can do it...YES  you can

if you really want to follow whatever

your dream is..you really can.

Landfill Harmonic film teaser from Landfill Harmonic on Vimeo.

[Larry Scott Draper]

Yes, Julia, you can follow your dreams.  At my age, unfortunately, they must be emotional.  It is not logical to do so physically.  I used to go wild about jumping out of perfectly good airplanes and scuba diving and rock climbing and dam sliding.......all of those things that take a young body to accomplish.  I can't do ANY of them now although I still remember and dream about them. 

[Julia A Knaake]

Scott you are right about some things not being done physically either because of age or even by ability. That does not stop the emotional accomplishment of telling a real story that happened at one time in a persons life. I wish you would tell us your stories... like the adrenaline you had jumping from that perfectly good plane. The beautiful sights you saw under the sea when scuba diving and if you captured any photos of the fishes and other sea life we do not see up here on land. I do not know what dam sliding is but I think it might be such a thrill of a lifetime.

Age has nothing to do with a dream. I am seventy and I still dream of living in a barn or an unconventional  building like an old firehouse, a caboose, church or grist mill. The thought of climbing on the roof and repairing it along with painting and repairing inside then going to the outside and working the plants that are there by saving the ones that are healthy perhaps adding  some flowers and also turning the earth into a vegetable and herb garden just gets me going and going until it is done.

 I am a very lucky woman in the fact that I still can do many things my peers can not or do not want to do but that is me. My own daughter that is ridden with RA just can not believe that I work rings around her but I explain she does many things I can not do and we all even it out. Another daughter was born mentally handicapped and none of us in the family accomplish the  easiness it is for her to excel in golf and track and field like she seems to do in her Special Olympics. We all have our place in this world ...we just have to find it ourselves.

Now you know I am part Irish because I have the gift of gab.

Please tell us some of your stories, about you or about someone you know or knew, they will be great to read.

[Suthinsoul]

Not all dreams are achievable.  Seems like all I've been doing my whole life is dream and none of them have come true.  I guess I'm setting my sights too high.  My tombstone will read "Is that all there is?"  Not trying to be negative .....just truthful.

[Julia A Knaake]

Soul don't try so hard..your dream will sneak up on you

you are a beautiful and loving lady and have good friends

you will know someday what it is because you will

trip right over that dream  and it will look at you in your eyes

[Suthinsoul]

That's a good thought...to stump your toe on your dream.  I have the visual (((BIG SMILE)))  You're a sweetheart, Julia.  HUGGS!  Thank you for the encouraging words.  I think I'll just concentrate on breathing and if it's meant to be it will be.  Love you girlfriend.

[Julia A Knaake]

Love you right back girlfriend you are a sweetheart

I do not know your girlfriends but i see you all 

have a great time together all the time so

I know you are loved by many

send sunshine to me please!!!

It is 34 outside and 60 inside

i was out petting 3 cats and the sun came out 

and I just about did a sun dance but I

never got to meet my paternal great grandmother

who might have taught me a sun dance....if there is one

[Larry Scott Draper]

Julia, dam sliding is illegal in Indiana where we were doing it.  The reservoir for Indianapolis is quite large and has a long, steep sloping concrete dam an one end where the water spills over and forms White River.  Some of us, when the deputies weren't lurking around, would swim out to the center of the dam and slide down its steep face to the river below.  That was a huge rush for an adrenaline junky.  I did that many times and got banged up quite a bit.  I had to quit when mother had to come to the slammer to get me out.  Grounded for a couple of hundred years over that.

[Julia A Knaake]

If you have any children and you have to go bail them out

just remember the look on your Mothers face....

she must of been angry and happy

angry for you pulling the stunt

and happy to see you were still alive

[Larry Scott Draper]

Mother didn't ground me......it was dad.  He was always stiffer than a new broom and couldn't stand my habit of breaking the law even if it was for a cool thing.  He was such a Republican and mother and I were such Democrats.  I will go to my grave as a liberal.

[Julia A Knaake]

don't go to your grave yet

I was hoping to get a few stories out of you

I can be a persistent little mosquito can't I?

it is 28 here and I am going to go read

A Sand County Almanac ~ Aldo Leopold

I am starting to run out of books to read

so if I ever get my car out from behind 

that block of ice I will see if I can find

some more reading materials

I can read online but I do not want to

haul the laptop up on my bed

[Larry Scott Draper]

My friends Pepsi and Craig heard that I was going to learn how to skydive and decided to join me.  Oh YEAH, that's what I needed.  The two of them are the staunchest chickens in Indiana and I couldn't talk them out of it.  "Wow" said Pepsi, "We are going to jump out of a big Cessna"! Both of them looked a little unsure of all this.

The primary class consisted in a 4 hour class, mainly jumping off of a table and learning how to roll and how to guide the military T10 parachutes that they used in those days.  Craig was getting greener and greener around the gills and, ultimately, jumped off of the table and sprained his ankle.  I wonder to this day if he faked the sprain.

That left Pepsi and me in the first Cessna.  I was the last one on so I was the first one off.  This was a static line jump from 3500 feet.  When we hit the drop zone, I stuck my feet out on the wing strut and waited for the instructor to whack my leg to jump.

Whack!.....and I pushed off like a scalded ass eagle.  The seconds before the chute opened seemed like a week.  No girlfriend has ever excited me like that fall.  I guided her in a big parabola and landed standing up.  

I knew immediately that I had acquired a permanent new hobby.  Pepsi, however, came back down with the airplane.  They couldn't get him out of the plane with a jackhammer.

I did that off and on for several years.  Even got a girlfriend to do it with me once.....and only once.

[Julia A Knaake]

SCOTT what a story and what a daredevil you are..i'm impressed. That is wonderful on your first jump that you  landed standing up.

Do you have a clue as to how many jumps you did totally?

did your friends ever go up again and jump?