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Shaun was born November 25th in the year of our Lord Nineteen Hundred Eighty, at 8:58 am…. It was Tuesday…and it was raining……

Hello and welcome to the autobiography of Shaun .Today we will feature the two main parts of Shaun’s life as they are now, fishing and motorcycling. These currently make up the body of not only how Shaun spends his time but who he is as a person. These defining characteristics will soon be shown to be so interrelated as to become as important as air and water.

Fishing: “It’s not a matter of life or death. It’s more important than that”.
That catch phrase has become the defining motto for Shaun’s attitude toward fishing. Learning the joy and tranquility of fishing, Shaun became an avid fisherman by his early teens. Often blowing off work or school to spend eight to ten plus hours at the river, he could go all day without food and last far into the night without sleep, not willing leave the fish he had not yet caught . It wasn’t until much later, closer to his twenties, did Shaun learn about saltwater fishing. It was love at first cast. The sheer variety of species was astonishing, and the technical and environmental changes brought a new series of challenges. Shaun’s path into saltwater fishing was helped greatly by a friend that had recently moved into New Smyrna Beach and through trial and error educated Shaun on the fundamentals of saltwater fishing. Being an apt pupil and learning all he could, Shaun began to redevelop his skills and soon become as proficient at fishing the saltwater as the fresh. It is after someone masters these skills, then that person can began to understand the Zen-like state one can reach while fishing: the solitude, sounds, and feelings of contentment that can be achieved by a good day on the water.

Motorcycling: “I love the smell of high–octane in the morning.”
“I love the smell of high-octane in the morning.” Shaun says as we warm up the bikes on a clear. Saturday morning. Its early Fall and this is our first ride of the new season.
We’ve been riding all summer, through the heat and humidity and afternoon thunderstorms and this is what we’ve been waiting for. Shaun double checks the straps on the tank bag and sprays on some more chain grease. “Seventy-five degrees, not too humid and not a cloud in the sky, it’s gonna be a good day.”

Shaun began riding motorcycles at thirteen. The first one was a 900cc Honda that his Uncle lent him. He would ride around the three acre lot behind his house for hours. Now ten years and six bikes later, the place he feels most at home is five hours on the road with no end in sight. The road calls to him and he answers.

The wind in the face and the sound of the engine as you blow through a pile of leaves on your way down a bumpy two-lane country road, Returning a wave to the kid on the front porch as you slip though his town. The best parts of riding are not even expressible except in intangible ideas. Once the breeze takes effect, all of life’s impossibilities begin to melt and life it self begins to flow, slowly, like a mountain stream during spring thaw, allowing you to drink it in. It is though this stream that life speaks to us, in the trickling and bubbling, whispering its endless answers. In this way we are able to communicate with the Universe directly and let it teach us who we are.

It is easy to see that Shaun’s passions are diversionary, but not that they are an escape from reality, more that they are a quest into the depths of reality, a window for viewing the Universe and seeking its truth. Like all good windows in our lives, these are as simple as a turn of a key or a flick of the wrist. The Universe is still out there, as it always will be, whispering, though the roads and rivers of our lives.