From childhood, Bill Whittle learned the secret to a high-flying, deep-diving life of adventure. He shares it now with you. Have you been living three and a half feet from your dreams?
Moving Back to America is a production of our Members.
Video below hosted at Rumble.
14 replies on “Three and a Half Feet: The Secret to a High-Flying, Deep-Diving Life of Adventure”
Damb! Yesss!
But you also wouldn’t have gotten eaten by a shark on July 4th weekend on Amity Island
Bill, you’re an inspiration.
Sailed my boat around the world for 10 years, just finished building my own plane and have been flying a great deal ever since. Just got back from Oshkosh and about to finish the practical on my instrument rating.
PS: I was a very young child in Miami Beach, Florida and won a high diving contest because I was the only kid who would jump off the high diving board. I didn’t dive, I jumped.
I’m not really sure where my “bravery” came from… though when I grew up in Toronto I walked everywhere I wanted or needed… from my friends around the block to my aunt’s a street away or the corner drug store and the shoemaker… and my mom took us all ( 4 kids ) to a strange hotel’s olympic size swimming pool in the basement … (an odour I will never forget) to learn at an early age… and then camp taught us to jump into a lake and not drown… and yet I almost did drown around age 12 on a trip to Israel with my family… a month after the 67 war…
I chose to move there to join the army… straight out of grade 12… life hit a few snags and I didn’t end up inducted till my 21st birthday (celebrated with my 49 bunkmates on our 1st shabbat on base during basic training… with 2 cakes my parents had brought from Jerusalem… just like visitors day at camp…)
But before I became a soldier and while my folks were out of the country… I went to learn skydiving from my boyfriend’s friend and managed 3 tied jumps (with old french army parachutes… only the trainer had one of the first stratoclouds in the country…) and then my parents returned and put an end to it…
When I first married in 81, we were in Atlanta and were so tempted to buy an ultralight or at least do the course… I was pregnant at the time and it didn’t happen… but my now ex-husband has done a fair bit of paragliding since…
Now I have a tendency to say yes to a proposed adventure (like climbing Kilimanjaro at age 56…) and then freak out and have anxiety attacks till I am actually there… or on the plane enroute…
I chose to bring my children up in Israel because it felt safer to me than Atlanta at the time and certainly freer for children… That resilience and situational awareness is still bred into our Israeli sabras… and even in the transplanted kind… but then we are still in an existential battle daily and that unifies many if not most… my youngest child has just completed her army service on the Lebanese border this year and my grandson is due in in 4 years…though I wish it weren’t so…
Amazing episode Bill… Nazdrovye!
Excellent work, Bill. It reminds me of two things. 1) I grew up with “No Lifeguard on Duty.” That teaches you to assess risk and take care of yourself.
2) I think people have had it so good that they no longer value freedom. Progressives come along offering safety in exchange for liberty, and they’ll take your liberty (take your gun rights, limit your speech, mandate masks), but they cannot provide safety (masked people still get sick, cities with gun restrictions are the most dangerous). Despite progressives’ track record, since freedom is no longer valued, people are still willing to give it away.
Growing up, I climbed trees I’m my back yard three times my height with no supervision. Never fell.( but for some reason have a fear of heights i can conquer if I wish) I would often go way back behind our back yard into woods, going under a barbed wire fence over a creek. My father made me show where it was in case I lost track of time (had a watch, but no alarm on it) and he had to get me. Never did. But one time coming home in a hot summer after I went under the fence I wondered why the back of my head was sweating so much. My mom saw me first, and freaked. Red sweat. Scratched my scalp with the barb wire and didn’t know it. My dad calmly.washed my head under a outdoor faucet to see it was a shallow, long scratch. Scalp wounds bleed a lot. My mother grew up in the city/ suburbs. My dad grew up on a farm. Every year for years into hign school before school started I to my grandparents farm and they put me to work for a week.My wife grew up on a farm, and was surprised to hear what I did there. Especially going into the cow pasture (with an onery bull) with two 5 gallon buckets and a stick, picking up cow patties to use on the garden back home.
On the other hand, Vegas is in the middle of a desert. The reason for shallow pools in Vegas may have something to do with availability of water. Just like on cruise ships, the pools are shallow because water is heavy.
But your point is well taken. People are trying yo live in protective bubble wrap. And that is not living.
Dear Bill,
The US Navy stationed me at the Oceanographic research base they had in Bermuda in Jan, 1967 and the road we traveled went right by your Fathers hotel. It was such a beautiful place I’ve never forgotten it and since I started listening to you I’ve wondered many times If that was the hotel you spent your early life in. You had the right parents and the right environment to learn what you needed to learn to be the man you wanted to be. For me it was the same.
You and your gang do great work showing those who want good things out of a real, well lived life, and these days that’s hard to find. I’m proud to give you my little bits of support and wish you well.
Best;
Hey Bill? Go check out an elementary school near you, specifically the playground. In the Soviet Socialist Republik of Kalifornia, Los Angeles Prefecture, Los Angeles Unified School District — they’re paved with rubber padding. The only place the kids are allowed to run is on those rubber padded surfaces. I kid you not.
I grew up on a farm and a farm kid is an unpaid employee on a family farm. It’s up to the parents to decide what chores to assign to a kid as he/she grows up and can handle more responsibility safely. This begins at about 7 years old with feeding animals sized many multiples of the kid. From buckets and bales a kid can barely lift. That progresses to operating dangerous machinery that will maim or kill an unskilled operator. This equipment is so dangerous that my family sent me to a tractor safety course offered by the local ag extension when I was 10.
Between those two ages at about 8 I was taught to use and trusted with firearms without adult supervision. There was playing in the creek, building tree forts and all the other great stuff that goes with growing up in that situation. I have all the scars and memories that go with that kind of life but it didn’t kill me. Obviously.
The idea that a kid needs a padded rubber surface to play on so as not to sustain an injury completely befuddles me.
I think you hit on where we are in a nutshell with this (sorry for the long distance edit).
This is the movement of the goal posts. It’s not, don’t overwhelm the hospitals, don’t let millions die. It has become, don’t let people get sick. What a ludicrous point in history. Yes, this virus in current form is pretty easy to get. It is also very UN-likely to kill you unless you are already in poor overall health. When did the potential for getting sick or hurt become so devastating to some people. Even when I talk to people about why not to wear a mask, they say, well we don’t want people to get sick, do we?
I was heartened a little last week while on vacation at the beach. One day in particular was pretty rough breakers. And there were a lot of shells right at the bottom of the break. Two little guys, 8-10 ish, were on their boogie boards and got smoked in the crest. One got torn up pretty good by the shells. His brother tossed some water on it and said you’re bleeding. They laughed, and swam back out to do it again.
On the converse, at low tide later that week, the swells were well off shore, but if you stood it was about waist deep. The life guards were waving people in.
Bill – this ranks right up there with 3 1/2 days as one of your best. We are truly becoming a country of people unwilling to take any risks at all, and thereby never really getting better at anything. Maybe it is a result of living in a time of plenty and people not wanting to lose – well anything.
While I didn’t grow up at the beach, I do remember at a young age getting on my bike in the morning a disappearing for the day and getting home for dinner. My mom loved to tell the story of how 2nd grade Ron decided to walk home from school rather than take the bus. It was 3 miles. The neighbor who met the bus every afternoon looked at her kid, no Ron. Where’s Ron? He walked. Get in the car.
I had made it over half way. Neither mom or dad freaked too badly that I recall. They knew I knew the way.
Now, kids who live in my neighborhood and live less than 0.5 miles from the elementary school are not allowed to walk. It is against school policy because it is deemed not safe. If they were to cut through the cemetery, it’s barely a par 5 in a straight line. But they either take the bus (1st stop, on the bus for 30 minutes) or their parents have to drop them off.
And we wonder why kids are overweight when they don’t walk or bike anywhere.
I honeymooned at the Sonesta in 1972, I think Bill was in Florida by then that was the first time in my life staying at a nice hotel.
Wish I had a better photo, but I did not have very good equipment back then. This is from the top of the hill above the Sonesta in July 94 (our honeymoon).
As a fellow man who could swim before he could walk it is a shame how much we coddle people in pools these days. Like Bill I have had many great adventures because of my swimming ability. I have swam several miles into the pacific ocean just to checkout a sandbar I saw off on the beach. I have been allowed to swim/body surf on the North Shore of Kiawah (one of the Hawaiian Islands) the same week a once in a decade extreme surfing competition was held on that same beach, along with many other adventures. I am so sad thinking about the adventures that will be missed out on because people have never experienced water deeper than 3 1/2 feet.