Earl Hansen:  

Life My life's adventures began at DeVry Institute of Technology in Chicago, Ill. There, I experience the many sights, sounds, smells and frights of South Chicago, The Loop and Rush Street at the height of the hippie, flower power and Viet Nam era. Returning to the Tri-Cities, I regrouped and once again went on the road as an agent for a Grand Ole Opera tour promoting a musical road show across mid America. The show closed in Jefferson City, MO. I found myself in Chicago once again, where I stayed for yet another year, working as an accountant for the Thomas P. Halpin Printing Company, during which time I opened my own retail business in the Chicago O'Hare Hilton. Unforturnately, a victim of unethical K-Mart business practices, for which I won a lawsuit, I returned to the west coast to work at various odd jobs from ranch line rider on a 54,000 acre cattle ranch, to operating a D8 bulldozer, to welding on the Transi-lift crane . I joined the millwright union in 1973 and fell in love with the life of a construction man assembling and installing large turbines and generators in power plants & dams. Between dams, I had opportunity to install monorails in reactor vessels and helped build the Beloit white paper machine at Boise Cascade, in Wallula, WA.. In 1979 I joined Vinnell Corporation as a Mechanical Superintendent, traveling to a Hydro Electric Project in Kaptia, Bangladesh. Kaptia was a small village and military outpost located 32 miles up river from Chittagong and 210 miles away from the capital of Dacca, Bangladesh. It is located on the Karnafuli River, which winds it's way through the Burmese Mountains and Lower Hill Tracts of Burma. There, I witnessed the power of artillery & typhoons, shared the taste of hunger, dined in the smell of death and experienced man's inhumanity to man. During my life I have traveled to Tokyo; Hong-Kong; Bangkok, Thailand; Bangladesh; Burma; Nepal; Tibbet; Jamaica; Mexico; Canada and Brazil. My adventures have been numerous and my experiences far ranging. I've distributed my belongings to leprs in a Leprosy Colony & circled Mt. Everest in a DC3 at 22,000 feet. I've played hide-an-seek with jungle elephants and swam in the Bay of Bengal among Portugese Man-of-War jelly fish. I have been bestowed as an honorary Buddist by tribal priests and danced the night away with a thousand Warriors of the Marma & Chaukma tribes, taking delight to dine on the fat of wild boar. Likewise, I've felt the hatred and starvation of jungle imprisonment. I have lived a life of adventure and wonde...Expand for more