In high school I was an athlete. I did track and gymnastics. I was also in the orchestra. I was always more interested in biology and chemistry than English and history.

In college I worked as a bookkeeper for a furniture store. Throughout college I was attracted to more and more of the sciences.

There were good hockey teams at the University of North Dakota. I grew up with hockey. Girls didn’t play but I followed the hockey team in high school and in college. I still love it. It’s a great sport what I don’t like is slop hockey, and people who are out to check for no apparent reason. Checking exists to remove a scoring threat.

I don’t follow any teams because I don’t watch TV. Where I live I would have to have cable or satellite, and I’m just not home enough. Now the city of Missoula has a minor-league hockey team. I’ve gone to one of their games and it was just slop. I love defense because I like to skate backwards.

I almost took a job in Lake Placid New York because I like skating and all the speed-skaters were practicing there. They offered me a job at the very same day. I don’t know what might have happened there, but it’s a beautiful spot.

My mother really wanted me to be a nurse and I was trained to be a nurse from a very young age. My father was very ill. He had a variety of problems one of which was a neck problem. So as a toddler I would walk up and down his back.

As an adolescent I fought being a nurse; I thought it was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to go into physical therapy and psychology. But I realized with a psychology that I would have to go to school for so very, very long. I didn’t have the financial means to do that so I decided to go into nursing and become a psych nurse. I was offered a job but never took it. I went other routes instead.

I was offered a job as a psych nurse but I never went there. I moved back to Bismarck and was going to save the money to go to graduate school and do some teaching. I had saved this money when I was offered a job in South Dakota. I came home and spend some time doing some soul searching and I decided that what I really wanted to do was go traveling around the United States.