Have you ever sat at your desk and thought… wow, life is so short, what am I doing here? I’m sure we all have but you never do anything about it…

Try to take a slightly different view. In changing your perspective, you can begin to see adventure, even the ability to create adventure, in that very daily routine of life. While there is nothing wrong with harboring the dream of the grand adventure, in the meantime, life still remains to be lived. How do you make an adventure out of it? How do you go about creating adventure from your everyday life? When we figure out that our life becomes one big adventure.

Trips do not end when you return home–usually this is the time when in a sense they really begin.  –Agnes E. Benedict

We, the people of the State of Florida, in convention assembled, do solemnly ordain, publish, and declare, That the State of Florida hereby withdraws herself from the confederacy of States existing under the name of the United States of America and from the existing Government of the said States; and that all political connection between her and the Government of said States ought to be, and the same is hereby, totally annulled, and said Union of States dissolved; and the State of Florida is hereby declared a sovereign and independent nation; and that all ordinances heretofore adopted, in so far as they create or recognize said Union, are rescinded; and all laws or parts of laws in force in this State, in so far as they recognize or assent to said Union, be, and they are hereby, repealed.

Source: Official Records, Ser. IV, vol. 1, p. 54.

[Passed Jan. 10, 1861]

—Francis Scott Key, 1814

 O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming?

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro’ the perilous fight,

O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there.

O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

The Star-Spangled Banner (pdf format)

Courage is being scared to death – but saddling up anyway.

• The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” uses every letter in the alphabet. (Developed by Western Union to Test telex/twx communications)
• In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
• Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
• A duck’s quack doesn’t echo, and no one knows why.
• In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television’s Channel 1 to mobile Services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not re-number the other channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1.
• The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
• Hang On Sloopy is the official rock song of Ohio.
• Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ?
• The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
• When opossums are playing ‘possum, they are not “playing.” They actually pass out from sheer terror.
• Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades – King David; Clubs – Alexander the Great; Hearts – Charlemagne; and Diamonds – Julius Caesar.
• 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
• If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
• Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down – hence the expression “to get fired.”
• Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn’t added until 5 years later.
• The term “the whole 9 yards” came from WWII fighter pilots in the Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got “the whole 9 yards.”
• Hershey’s Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it’s kissing the conveyor belt.
• The phrase “rule of thumb” is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
• An ostrich’s eye is bigger that it’s brain.
• The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
• The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.
• The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the “General Purpose” vehicle, G.P.
• The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.
• Cat’s urine glows under a blacklight.
• The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
• Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
• If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.
• No NFL team which plays its home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl.
• The first toilet ever seen on television was on “Leave It To Beaver”.
• The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League All-Star Game.
• Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
• The name Wendy was made up for the book “Peter Pan.”
• In Cleveland, Ohio, it’s illegal to catch mice without a hunting license.
• It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year’s supply of footballs.
• Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
• There are an average of 178 sesame seeds on a McDonald’s Big Mac bun.
• The world’s termites outweigh the world’s humans 10 to 1.
• Pound for pound, hamburgers cost more than new cars.
• The 3 most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.
• When Heinz ketchup leaves the bottle, it travels at a rate of 25 miles per year.
• It’s possible to lead a cow upstairs…but not downstairs.
• The Bible has been translated into Klingon.
• Humans are the only primates that don’t have pigment in the palms of their hands.
• Ten percent of the Russian government’s income comes from the sale of vodka.
• On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year.
• In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world’s nuclear weapons combined.
• Reno, Nevada is west of Los Angeles, California.
• Elephants can’t jump. Every other mammal can.
• The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
• Five Jell-O flavors that flopped: celery, coffee, cola, apple, and chocolate.

My Bike