As far as public conventions and standards go, you could say that I am sort of unusual- eccentric is probably the best word here. When I'm at large, I tend to mostly wear either a black suit, or more often, clothing that can be classified as either Steampunk or Neo-Victorian depending on how fancy I'm feeling that day- I treat steampunk not as a costume for this convention or that club, but as a genuine lifestyle, and so it's vests and spats on the daily for me. I’ve almost always got a derby or top hat on- I have a terrible fondness for hats, and I always feel a little naked when I'm out of the house (or in it, for that matter) without one. Of course, I might also walk out of the woods in the dead of night clad in a cloak and chain mail on the odd occasion- it's more likely than you might think.

The suits get closeted when I'm outdoors, though, because suits+cave crawling= bad times ahoy. One of the very few perks of where I live are the opportunities for outdoor fun it provides - on a pretty regular basis you can find me camping, hiking, cave crawling, rock climbing, rafting, and pretty much anything along those lines. I love my bike and am blindly determined to ride it through every sort of weather imaginable- sleet is not my friend. I am also fascinated by the idea of deep wilderness survivalism, and it's not all that weird for me to list off which plants in the park you can and can't eat. In fact, one of my dreams is to scale a full blown mountain with minimal supplies. Not the sort with hiking trails, I mean the sort that will kill you if you don't watch yourself.

I tend to love all things macabre and bizarre, and it is not all that strange to find me hauling home yet another musty box of old penny dreadfuls, books on the occult, Vincent Price movies, Mesozoic fossils, and an assortment of steampunkish and sideshow items to fill my home. Plague doctors and strait jackets give me the best kind of willies. People have told me that my home looks as though it was decorated by a Victorian explorer with a book fetish, which I take as the absolute highest compliment. After all, when I was a little boy my dreams of growing up and centered around either becoming a khaki clad, whip snapping adventurer or running an old time sidehow full of Fiji mermaids and bearded ladies- or maybe even both. I can't honestly say that those dreams have ever died, either.

I adore reading and studying the works of the world’s religions and mythologies, and am always open to a good debate or discussion over these topics (or anything for that matter, I adore a good debate)- though if it becomes plain proselytizing I will end our discussion and move on to another topic. I enjoy debate, not being preached at. To be blunt, if I wanted that I'd go to a church.

I've come a long way so far in the little time I've had- I've done everything from working on a ranch doing "cowboy" work to walking long and empty roads with nothing but a backpack and fistful of dollars for weeks at a time. I've seen things of beauty, things I didn't understand, and some things that I wish I hadn't. I've been shot, stabbed, thrown from a horse, and bitten by snakes, spiders, and even an alligator (he was admittedly on the smallish side, but an alligator all the same). I've gathered more scars than I care to share with most. I've risked it all and sometimes a little bit more in games of chance, sat and dined with total strangers by the light of a campfire, and played cards with the Devil in the belly of a cave (or at least a guy dressed like the devil...it was an odd weekend). I've gone to great lengths to learn, and even if I'll never use half of it, I'm glad I've got it. I've felt like a child and talked like an old man too often for my own good.

But I've still got a long ways yet to go, so long as my luck holds out, and a good deal more to see and do before the curtains come down. Life is about the stories you can tell and the places you've seen, about the highs and the lows and who you proved yourself to be during them, about learning just what it means to be a real person. As for me, I don't think I'll ever be finished learning who I am, not if I have my way about it. And if you'd like, and you can keep up, you're more than welcome to come along for the ride.