Dale Roberts:  

Well, finally got around to joining this site. Life has been good to me. Right out of high school I learned how to snow ski, moved to Lake Tahoe to become a ski bum and never looked back. I never really made any money, but I definitely made a life for myself. For years I worked enough doing carpentry during the summer to take the winter off and ski opening to closing day at Squaw Valley, usually averaging 120 days a season. That eventually lead to a ski patrol job at Alpine Meadows and finally retiring from professional skiing at Homewood. Intermittently I would make money shooting freelance photography for Powder, Skiing and Sunset Magazine. Along the way, I discovered cross country skiing and finally something that I could excel in. Started to cross country ski race and did quite well at it. At one point ranked in the top 10 for my age group nationally. That led to being invited to ski for the United States Disabled Ski Team as a competitive blind skier guide. As you can imagine, eventually skiing became a job and I decided to do something different and pursue my life's dream. I have always traveled. During the spring while waiting for the snow to melt and for construction to begin I would get out the National Geographic World Atlas, find the most favorable climate and economy for the airline ticket I could afford. As you can imagine, I visited quite a few developing nations. So my dream was to go around the world in one trip seeing as much as possible along the way. I have always been an avid cyclist so I decided why not just ride my bicycle around the world. So the plan unfolded with the woman who is now my wife and in 1990 we took off on the grand adventure. 48 countries, 19,000 miles and 2 years later we returned. (the scariest part of it was, we had no insurance of any typ...Expand for more