Who is Cosmo?

My presence on Earth began in May of 1980 at 7:43AM in Prescott, Arizona. Prior to Abraham Lincoln’s final act of life, he named it the territorial capital of Arizona. Prescott is conveniently nicknamed “Everybody’s Hometown”, leaving a nasty aftertaste to my pride. Located North of the Sonoran Desert and East of the Mohave Desert, Prescott is on the northern edge of the granite-gneiss-schist laced Bradshaw Mountains in a crevice of a ponderosa pine lined forest. High altitude ambiance offers good clean living. The hospital where I began breathing is 180 feet below a mile high. Temperate as all heaven. Hell, it’s where Doc Holliday found his common-law wife in Hungarian-born prostitute Big Nose Kate. After Kate perished, she was buried here under the very prostitute sounding last name of Cummings. Rumors link a similar fate to Billy the Kid, much to the misery of the Fort Sumner tourism scheme. Fort Misery stands 3,000 feet from where I first stood as a toddler, something it’s done since 1865. It is considered the 123rd oldest structure in our country. Not too shabby for a heap of wood taking up space in a place that reached statehood a month before the Titanic sank. One year prior to the fort’s construction, a collection of our first white settlers were massacred by Apaches. Classic. Prescott now features the World’s Largest Gingerbread Village, housed in a casino run by a rival tribe.

     I learned to walk on Leroux Street, which is French for “red-skinned”. It’s a couple dozen feet off historic Whiskey Row. The Courthouse Square, where Barry Goldwater launched his presidential campaign, is a brisk walk from that initial home. Across the street is where Doc Holliday permanently vacationed. He had his healthiest run at gambling in an adjoining building to where my first dentist practiced. I learned to operate my first vehicle on Quartz Drive, a short one-hour diversion from historic Route 66—the Mother Road, Kerouac’s playground. This may have nurtured my lifelong lust for the open road, this crazed trek wasn’t my first rodeo. My first actual rodeo was Prescott’s Frontier Days, the World’s Oldest Rodeo. I learned a touch of astronomy 97 miles from where Pluto was discovered at Lowell Observatory while middle named Cosmo.  

    I learned to fly aircraft at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. The Harvard of the Sky has two campuses, Daytona Beach and Prescott. Logged my first two years in Daytona Beach and returned home for my final five years. I’m not a doctor. A commercial airline pilot once informed me that pilots get paid far too much, travel constantly, and rarely work—which sounded kosher and sexy. It was the dream job of nearly every Baby Boomer for a reason. Shortly after getting my instrument rating, four planes purposely crashed on a September Tuesday and the industry still hasn’t fully recovered. Pay cuts, furloughs, and uncertainty plague a very respectable career path—even Frank Abagnale wouldn’t fake his way into Pan American these days. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger heroically landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River after ingesting a flock of Canadian geese shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport. Sully then testified before a house subcommittee that salary cuts and terminated pensions will kill the job. He warned future accidents if the talent pool is permitted to swim elsewhere. Fun fact, LaGuardia Airport was named in honor of former New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia—he attended Prescott High School 100 years prior to my stint. Go Badgers. A male badger is a boar, a female badger is a sow, a baby badger is a cub, and the last aircraft I logged flight time in was a Piper Cub—that was 9 years ago. After obtaining the vital licenses one pilot needs to be legally compensated for work, an alternative path landed softly at my feet. 

I worked at Lockheed Martin for the following six years making nearly six figures and eventually earning a half million in income before I turned 32.

But this wasn't the life I'd wanted to carve out for myself. 

I purchased the Prius, tore out the backseats, and put the bed in it. And drove it across America for a 365-day nonstop voyage of a lifetime--and followed that up with a second 365 days of traveling while writing my novel about it all. I've now slept in a Prius for over 500 evenings and she has north of 133,000 miles logged. This website is a silly collection of the portions I wish to share with others for some strange reason. Enjoy

 My Venmo is [cosmodionysus] for donation purposes.

Affectionate Greetings, 
Cosmo