A few years ago my daughter challenged me to take part in the November Writers Challenge, an event where you attempt to write a 50,000 word book during the month of November. I took the challenge and actually made it on my first attempt.

The easiest thing for me was to write about my life traveling as a seminar speaker, or how I became theTravelsketcher since they are directly connected. Tricia suggested that some of those stories would make good posts here, she often makes good suggestions so I am taking her up on the idea. So maybe one Tuesday a month I will post a bit about my story.

I am going to dig out some of the old sketchbooks and see what I can find to add to the story.

Here is the first installment about how I started the life of travel, speaking and sketching. I wrote this after fifteen years on the road, there would be ten more before I retired.

How it all began

Fifteen years of roaming and I wake up in a Ramada Hotel in Portland, Oregon. Karen used to say, “How do you spell dump? R-A-M-A-D-A!” Fifteen years of roaming and I end up twelve miles from the hospital I was born in, in a Ramada. Crissy, at the front desk, upgraded me to a mini-suite for $65.92 so I have graduated from a standard room to a room with a chair and a wet-bar kind of sink, that is progress for sure. The frightening thing is that it really does not seem all that bad, kind of comfortable really, looks like most every other hotel in the world when the lights are out. But then again I have stayed in a lot of dumps, so the bar is pretty low. (I drove by this hotel this week, it is closed and derelict.)

My journey began on a cold January day in Racine, Wisconsin, 16 years ago in a conference room at a Holiday Inn. I was living a dream, now Racine in the winter is not what most people dream of but for me it was a day filled with anticipation and anxiety. A dream that began 30 years earlier.

When I was 15, Jim, Tim, and I, prodded by our youth pastor, agreed to preach 10 minute sermons at the evening service. The anxiety is still fresh in my mind to this day, but something happened that night. As I finished my piece and walked down the steps from the platform a rush of satisfaction came over me like nothing I had ever experienced, “This was fun!”

Speaking was something I could do, and do pretty well. Anything involving a ball or a bat evaded me, singing was not a gift I was blessed with. But public speaking I could do. I wanted to find a way to do it all the time and for real. So for the next thirty years I looked for places to speak or teach, sales paid the bills but the platform in the front of the room was where I wanted to be.

One day in Idaho Falls I got on a shuttle for the Shilo Hotel with a glamorous dark haired lady who was wearing a long, ostentatious, golden colored fur coat. We got to talking about what brought us to Idaho Falls, for me it was selling canned tuna and mushrooms imported from Asia, she was there to do a management seminar. She was a real life seminar speaker, a professional, doing the very thing that I longed to do.

Forget that the Shilo in Idaho Falls is not the French Riviera, I was so jealous. She was living my dream. On dark days I would think of that lady and long to be in a van on my way to lead a seminar. The out-of-town expert with a briefcase arriving to enlighten the lives of all who would listen.

A few years later, at a low point in my life, while perusing the Seattle Times Classifieds for something better than what I was currently doing, selling real estate, I spotted an ad from Fred Pryor Seminars looking for speakers. Pryor! That was the company the fur coat lady worked for, and they needed me. This was too good to be true. The audition was the next day.

The audition went well, I was accepted on the spot and invited to training in November. For two days we learned about paper work with some feigned attempts to teach us sales skills. Twelve people started the process, but only four of us made it all the way, and I was one of the four. I made the cut, I was a professional speaker!