|
D ear Friends,
 Martin is a person who has always followed the beat of his own bongo. As a kid he was constantly digging through the mud, looking under boards and buckets searching for critters to hold and observe. In grade school he would get in trouble for having lizards in his pockets or at home accidentally letting loose pack rats and rattle snakes. As he grew up he always had the same interests and went through the stages of pet ownership from feral cats to sable ferrets to water dragons to Burmese pythons to discus cichlids to Senegal parrots to ridgeback dogs. Nature was fascinating with each genus or species and and he built massive terrariums recreating where they came from, figuring out how they evolved and observing what they did.
He was also interested in mechanics, engineering and construction and spent much of his youth in the shop developing inventions and building prototypes. He experimented with airplanes, cars, boats, hot air balloons, water balloon launchers and hovercraft, smack testing them into all kinds of accidental obstacles. Risking life and limb he would jump off the roof trying out a hang glider design or testing his latest stunt man air bag only to sprain his ankle or land face first. After he heard about the boy in a bubble he even made his own in the front yard out of a giant tarpaulin and his mothers vacuum and tried to live a week in isolation. All the while neighbors would drive by shaking their heads at the latest attempt of the crazy kid next door
Due to public shyness he joined the swim team his freshman year in high school to make friends. In just weeks he became the pool clown, swimming in his underwear, trying to listen to his walkman in a condom and holding his breath under the bulkhead watching the girls in bikinis swim by. His coaches were never impressed with the way he could get everyone's attention with his humor, charisma and experimental antics but his friends were always amused.
In college swimming he was partly responsible for a half dozen others getting kicked off the team, as they would laugh along and try to follow his ways. If he wasn't as fast as he was, he would have long been booted himself for such acts as diverting his swimming travels through Europe to go kayaking in Finland. If that wasn't bad enough the worst was probably when he convinced a neighboring United Airlines passenger to lay on him and perform cranial sacral with his attractive Romanian gymnastic assistant underneath while on a flight to swim competitions in California. Towards the end of Martin's swimming career he could hear the coaches pull the others aside and say, "do not follow what Marty does, he knows how to swim fast but it is not a normal route or technique." So he was ordered to swim in his own lane away from the lure of others.
At the end of his undergrad years studying psychology, still under athletic scholarship, he took classes of interest that weren't major related. His weeks were spent in photography, guitar lessons, dance class, genetics and oceanography. The dance instructor asked if he could play his didgeridoo and demonstrate aboriginal ritual performances while other students danced. The genetics professor was blown away that someone would take such an intense class as an elective out of curiosity. The oceanography professor saw that he was absorbed in marine biology and asked if he might be interested in co lecturing just after graduation. This team teaching is where he learned his love of teaching and turned around his power of persuasion with positive humor and applied it with the latest research and latest findings in the earth's sciences to draw students into the beauty.
After attempting to make the Olympics in '96 and 2000 he worked in the trades for a few years before returning to graduate school. He always preferred to learn and grow intellectually rather than the financial rewards of a typical long-term employment. After another undergraduate degree in ecology and evolutionary biology and a graduate degree in natural resource management he decided to amalgamate all his interests and travel the world taking odd jobs from plumbing to teaching in order to enable him to see new environments, meet new people and become more learned. The more he traveled the more he realized how fascinating reality is through culture, exploration and research. He started to bring a camera with him to capture images to share with friends and write articles for magazines. In time he developed a travel blog that kept people up to date with international affairs that were off the beaten track and exposing them to all kinds of human differences, likenesses and nature's secrets, only know by the locals.
In the past few years he has traveled around the globe. Lately, it has been Australia working in the trades, washing dishes, teaching, assisting in research and volunteering all of his abilities. This has allowed him to be a part of each community and step away from the tourist track towards common day life and lore.
Before going down unda' he worked for a dive resort in Papua New Guinea as the construction manager in order to get near unexplored reefs and rainforests. Before PNG he was a site manager in the Turks and Caicos Islands before he swam, hiked and hitched his way across the entire archipelago. As of late he plans on returning to the states and continuing his education in order to do research and lecture. Through it all, deep down, he is still the little kid that's enamored with everything around him from wildlife to machines.
.
 
Contact me at: MartyMoosePepper@aol.com
|
