Geologist, Blacksmith, Engineer, Rancher, & Fireman
Contact me by phone: (208)
462-4028
Site Map -
Links to all Blacksmithing, and Other Pages on This
Site
Decorative
Metalwork "Gallery" Page
ABANA has graciously
consented to host my web site. I was concerned
that after having had three flat-line heart
attacks, and three other less serious heart
events, my future could end at any time. I wanted
to insure that the blacksmithing information I
have in my many web pages would be preserved into
the future for the metalworking community, and
ABANA made that possible. A big thank you goes to
ABANA.
Update 6 Jan 2016: Here I am,
about to turn 70, and I am still here and doing
great! I am amazed at that, but in case you think
it is just being lucky, it isn't. For those of you
who are suffering from one or more degenerative
diseases (syndromes), I want to say that you do
not need to suffer from them, as I found I was
doing some years ago. Finally, after four
flat-line heart attacks, and several other
slightly less serious heart events, I took charge
of my own health, spent 18 months of 6 to 8 hours
a day, 7 days a week, doing Internet research, and
collected a huge database of health related
documentary information and reports totaling 150
Gb at this time, and covering almost every type of
degenerative disease, which are not diseases at
all but "syndromes" of the body caused by poor
nutrition and toxins over a long period of time.
Using the information I collected I was eventually
able to flush all my heart meds down the toilet
and take charge of my own health and future. I
have now fully reversed my heart disease and have
my life back, and the best part, I do not take any
medications now at all other than one 81 mg
aspirin a day. With my change in lifestyle came
some very beneficial surprises, including going
from a weight of 220 pounds to 134 pounds in a
little over 3 months, totally unexpected. The
results were amazing, and my doctor, who I had
asked to "ride shotgun" with me while I made this
huge lifestyle change, and who didn't believe in
anything I was doing, after three years of steady
improvement and seeing my resulting excellent
blood work and various scans, finally admitted he
"was now a believer," which was a huge step for
him. Whatever, if you are suffering like I was,
and would love to stop managing your disease, and
instead cure it and get your life back, please
feel free to communicate with me at "ron_reil" at
"frontiernet" dot "net". Heart disease, Cancer,
Diabetes, Crohns, Lupus, and almost all other
"syndromes" of the body, are totally curable, as
many others found out after they took charge of
their own health.
Sincerely,
Ron Reil
I am pleased to welcome
you to my home page. If you would like to know a little about my
background please continue reading below. I have also included
some of my more interesting experiences.
I have a background as a civil engineer,
precious metals exploration geologist, and science teacher,
among others. I am now a gentleman rancher in Garden Valley,
Idaho, and work on decorative metalwork in my shop in the
winter when the snow lies deep on the land. I also drive the
ambulance when needed, and am a fireman in the Crouch
Volunteer Fire Department as well as a fire commissioner.
Retirement doesn't have to
mean inactivity or playing golf. :-)
I have had the benefit
of traveling and living in many different parts of the world.
A large portion of my youth was spent on the island of
Okinawa, where I fell in love with the island and its people.
Some of my travel was associated with my father's career as an
Air Force officer. I was later in the Navy for six years,
spending four of them in the West Indies. During that period
of my life I was heavily involved with SCUBA and free diving.
I was a diving instructor for part of this time on the island
of Grand Turk. I was also deeply involved in speleology,
taking part in a joint Barbadian/Danish caving expedition to
the island of Barbados, as well as doing a lot of other cave
exploration with my buddy Jack.
While I was living in Barbados, a beautiful
hardwood yacht sailed in from England and was put up for sale.
It was the perfect boat to allow me to embark upon a dream I
had been working on for the previous four years. I bought the
stout little craft, Sea Dart, while still having two years
remaining in the Navy. When my tour of duty in the Navy came to
an end I returned to Barbados, and Sea Dart, to prepare for a
world cruise. After three months of preparation I sailed Sea
Dart into the setting sun to spend an extended period of time
exploring some of the world, and learning about myself as well.
After exploring many interesting places, and
meeting lots of wonderful people, I felt it was time to move
on with my life. I sold Sea Dart to the now famous late
writer, Tristan Jones and signed on as skipper and
navigator to the much larger yacht, Banjo, which Tristan had sold to a
couple in New York. They wanted me to sail them to New York
from Bequia, just north of South America, a roughly 3000 mile
voyage. A month later, between Culebra and Great Inagua,
disaster struck twice. When we were near the boundary between
the Dominican Republic and Haiti a long-boat approached us
with six men, seated two by two in the boat. They had an
engine and could easily outrun us. I had been warned that
pirates were to be expected in these waters, so I told Jan and
Jim, Banjo's new owners, to remain below while I met the
long-boat. I placed a 12 gage double-barreled shotgun, loaded
with buck-shot, on the cockpit seat ready for action. I had
been warned that pirates from Haiti had been attacking yachts,
killing all on board by cutting off their heads with cane
knives, stripping the boat of everything of value, and then
sinking the boat along with the bodies, so I was prepared to
kill to defend Banjo.
The long-boat
came slowly along side and a huge black man in the front
grabbed the railing on Banjo's port side while starting to
stand up. As he did so I could see the long cane knives which
he and the others were holding partially concealed by their
left legs. As he started to stand I raised the shotgun, aimed
right between his eyes and waited for what would happen next.
I had only two shots, and there were six pirates, so there was
no doubt that they could take Banjo if they were willing to
pay a price.
The huge man
froze in a semi bent over position, staring into the bores of
the two barrels of my shotgun, broke into a huge smile, then
nodded his head in a knowing maner. He slowly sat back down,
and during a long moment, pregnant with threat, they
contemplated what to do next. I watched them closely, never
taking the gun off of the leader, while moving back to the far
side of the cockpit to give me more room to fire upon any one
of the pirates that might decide to leap over the side, and
also to prevent the leader from attempting to grab my weapon.
The stand-off continued for what seemed an hour, but was
perhaps only 30 seconds or so, when the pirate leader pushed
off and nodded to me, still grinning a huge white toothed ear
to ear grin. He allowed me to live, and I granted him the same
in return.
Within a
matter of hours of surviving the aborted attack by the
pirates, we entered into the next cataclysmic phase of the
voyage. The weather had been very unstable for several days,
and finally broke to the full fury of hurricane Alice, the
first of the season. Banjo weathered the storm well until the
third night. At 2:30 AM a huge rogue sea lifted the 36 foot
Banjo and smashed her down upside down into the trough far
below. The impact ripped out our steel fresh water tanks, and
caused a lot of other lesser damage, including springing the
shaft log causing an inflow that was not to be stopped.
Fortunately the mast remained intact, however the boat would
have to be periodically bailed until the end of the voyage due
to the shaft log inflow.
After the yacht slowly
righted herself we had more than 8 feet of water on board when
measured from the bottom of the bilge! Our engine was
underwater, and the water was up to our waists in the main
cabin. The three of us started into a marathon bailing session
with anything that came to hand. Since the engine and batteries
were underwater, the pumps were useless. By mid-morning the boat
was riding high on the waves once again, and it looked as though
we might live to tell the tale. Four days later we limped into
Great Inagua where I finally went to bed and slept for more than
24 hours! I should add that even arriving at Gt. Inagua was not
without its problems. We raised land shortly after midnight and
were almost caught in the huge suction caused by the immense
hurricane swell breaking across the outer reefs. There is much
more to the story, but I will leave it for a narrative at some
later date.
Several weeks later we sailed into Fort Lauderdale,
Florida. The owners of the yacht had experienced enough sailing
and decided to sell her right there and not continue on to New
York. I returned home to Oregon where I entered Oregon State
University's School of Engineering. I graduated as a
civil/construction engineer in 1977.
Life was not to be dull
after finishing school. I went to work for Morrison Knudsen
Corporation in Boise, Idaho, where I advanced to the position
of senior engineer. My work was mainly in tunnel construction.
I spent two years as a shift engineer, building the under sea
cooling water tunnels at the Seabrook Nuclear Power plant in
Seabrook, New Hampshire. The three mile long, 22' diameter,
undersea tunnels were the first of their type, going out
over three miles offshore to intersect with 11 offshore shafts
in the sea floor. I was eventually transferred back to the
home office in Boise to do estimating work while awaiting
transfer to another field job.
In 1982 the
construction industry fell apart, and two
weeks before Christmas I was laid off,
along with 3,500 other engineers. I continued to work as a
consulting engineer, doing various jobs along the way. Two of my
favorite construction projects in Idaho were the Fish
Trap Facility, just below Hell's Canyon
Dam, and the Sawtooth National Fish Hatchery near
Stanley,
Idaho. Because of their locations I enjoyed both projects
immensely. Changes in my life, a new daughter among others, led
to my return to school. I enrolled in Boise State University to
study geology, and obtain my secondary teaching credentials.
Geology soon took me to
new adventures in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska and elsewhere,
which I have included narratives about, linked below. Also, I
later connected with a full time science teaching position. I
taught science for 16 years, and geology at Boise State
University for about 10 years. I now have a 26 year old
daughter, Kimberly, and an 17 year old daughter, Natalie.
In August 2000, I
guided my brother Walt, and my daughter Kimberly, and her friend Neil, on a backpacking trip into the
"Big Boulder Lakes Basin" in Idaho's high Whitecloud
Peaks, where our base camp was at an elevation of 9,200 feet.
This image of Kimberly and me
was taken on the summit of
the second highest peak, at an elevation of 11,200 feet, as
are the other images. 2000 was a horrible year for forest
fires, and one of them can plainly be seen topping a high
ridge in the distance. This back pack trip was a very special
one to me for several reasons. We had superb weather, and
the smoke from the many forest fires never darkened our skies.
We saw a great many mountain goats, one only 30 feet away, and
on the night of August 14th we watched a spectacular meteor
shower through the ever changing colors of the aurora,
in one of its most beautiful displays in the last 50 years.
There
is more to the story however. There are two other reasons that
make this trip stand out from the rest for me. Twenty plus
years ago one of Idaho's most amazing, but unknown, epics of
survival had played itself out in the valleys below the peak
we are sitting on in the above images. Because of my past
experience in mountain rescue I had knowledge of the amazing
events that had taken place far below us, and I wanted to
relate the story to my daughter of the survival of the two
young children, sole survivors of a plane crash, through one
of Idaho's most severe winters. I also wanted to walk with my
daughter Kimberly through one of the most beautiful places on
the face of the Earth, a high basin that has no trails or
mapped routes into it, and a place that I call "God's Cathedral." I will not name it here in order to help to preserve
it from those who do not respect such places, and who, like
dogs, leave their mark wherever they go. The entire trip was
one of the best I have ever had the good fortune to be a part
of. We accomplished far more than I could ever have hoped
for.
If you have read this far you probably wonder why I
taught junior high for 16 years. Certainly the money was not
one of them. I did so for various reasons, but the enjoyment
I derived from teaching and working with kids was at the top
of the list. I always said that when it was no longer fun it
woud be time to quit, and when the Federal "No Child Left
Behind" program came along, it was time. I am now involved
in decorative metal work, and with my move to the mountains
of central Idaho, and setting up my big new shop, the future looks bright. Also, I have now posted
my Golden Age Forge Gallery
page where I have a little of my metalwork on display,
including commentary about how some of the pieces were made.The 2003-2004 school year ended my teaching
career. I retired at the end of the year for a variety of
reasons, but the most compelling by far was the terrible
state of education in our country, and in my school
district. When test score numbers became more important than
the children, it was time to leave. It was a good decision.
Four days before my retirement I suffered a major heart
attack, which would have forced my retirement had it not
already been in progress. We purchased a heavenly beautiful ranch on which we are raising horses,
two of which are shown here
in our front pasture being
ridden by my two daughters when the snow was only a week or
two away. We have other critters
too, including Daffodil, our miniature donkey. It is not an easy life we have
chosen, as this image, and also this one, demonstrate, but I am fortunate in having the kind of
equipment that is needed to live in a location that can receive over 200" of snow in a season. BTW,
the images you have just looked at are of a normal winter,
not a heavy one. I produced some
360° QuickTime VR panorama images of our place, taken in mid
Summer, Fall, and early winter, that may be of interest to
you. After it loads, click and hold the mouse button, then move your
cursor left or right to make the image scroll in a full 360° in either direction. If you zoom in you can also move
it up and down. The "Early Fall Panorama" pans across our home
and my shop.
Early Fall Panorama, (shot in our lower pasture)
When I am not plowing or blowing
snow, or working with the horses, I may be helping to fight
fires as a
volunteer firefighter, as shown in this image of a fire we had recently. I can now pursue
my work in decorative metalworking, enjoy the spectacular
fishing close by in the many mountain streams, or explore
the wild country around our place by Jeep or horseback. We have a great many elk here.
This image, taken across our lower pasture, shows the
Spring elk calving in progress. There were a number of
wolves attending the birth of the calves too. The elk were a
problem because they liked to eat the hay I had stored under
my shop's eves, but that problem has been solved by the
construction of our new barn. The future looks bright, and
I think it will still be full of adventure and new
horizons. :-)
Narrative Links
If you would like to read more of my adventures you
may do so by clicking on one of the "Narrative" links below.
You may find it more convenient to save these files to disk
and read them off line with your browser because some are
fairly long. I will continue to add to this list as time
allows.
Narrative #9 - Tristan Jones - "The Good and The Bad"
Narrative #10 - "Week of the Buzz-Tails"
Conclusion
Thank you for visiting my home page. Please feel
free to contact me if you have any questions or
comments. You may phone me at the number listed below.
Contact me by phone: (208) 462-4028
Email: ron (dot) s (dot) r (at) pm (dot) me
30 Jun 2022
©Golden Age Forge
