I'm the CO, I run this website, so I get to write my own
bio.
I was trying to think of some way of defining myself in a
few clever lines. Try it yourself on yourself - it's not that easy to do. I'm a securities
lawyer and member of a large law firm in Colorado. A middle-aged guy with a wife and two
grown kids and a dog and two cats and a mortgage, and I wouldn't trade any of it for
anything. But that's not really much of a description.
I'm a guy who is happily stuck in the 60's. Like most American males coming of age in the
time of jet aircraft, the X-15, and the space race, I had an early interest in flight,
especially military flight. I'm not particularly brave, nor do I have a great respect for
authority; nonetheless, I originally planned on a career in the Air Force because hey,
they had jets and I had to have one. For better or worse, my imperfect eyesight kept me
out of that line of work, and I gave up on the idea of being Chuck Yeager. I pursued other
interests, got an education, a wife, and a job. I still watched the contrails in the sky,
but from the ground.
And then, personal computers became popular. I started hearing about flight simulations,
and how through some miracle involving a device called a modem, you could actually fly
against other people, not just little computer dudes. Soon thereafter, I bought my first
computer. Not so I could work more efficiently, but so I could fly flight simulations
against other people. The first program I installed was not a word processor or other tool
of my trade, it was Falcon 3.0, the then-reigning king of flight simulations. I found I
had a modicum of talent in this new sport, I became "Vertigo", and I joined a
head-to-head flight competition ladder on CompuServe. I spent untold amounts of time and
money flying against people from all over the world. Falcon, MiG, Hornet, Pacific Air War,
all of the modem-capable flight simulations. I took the job of running a Pacific Air War
flight competition ladder. I bought a copy of Shaw's Fighter Combat, and actually
read it. As a dedicated wanna-be, I've flown a T-34A Mentor a few times in one of the
"pretend fighter pilot" operations so I can experience an ersatz version of what
it felt like to actually fly in combat. In short, I am hooked.
Given all that, WarBirds was inevitable. Once I'd discovered it, I told my old flying
buddies about it, and soon some of them were hooked too - soon after that, we decided to
form the Squad.
So, for now at least, I'm Vertigo, CO of The Haze. The
Squad has grown from that base of former H2H'ers to its present size, and has now made the
leap into World War II Online. I never figured it would go this far, or last this long,
but it's been a great ride so far. It has also kept happy that kid who looked up at the
contrails in the sky and wished he could be among them.
