I love the sunsets. I’ll play at any time of day, but my favorite time to play is late in the day and at dusk followed by taking in the sunset. I remember when I was in Alaska for a US Open Qualifier one May, dusk lasted what seemed like forever and you can play until after midnight if you want.

But briefly, Mike Austin, is the guy who at 64 years old in 1974 hit a Guinness World Record 515-yard drive during the US National Senior Open in Las Vegas.

To give you some perspective, the average amateur golfer hits drives in the 214 yards/drive range.

It was difficult for me to fathom how anyone could hit a ball like that at any age, particularly with 1970's golf equipment technology - an old steel shafted persimmon wood driver and balata ball.

The Bucket List and the 2001 PGA Championship

After college, I started working as a computer engineer in 1998. By that time, I had become a 14-handicap golfer (basically, an average amateur golfer) and had broken 80 once on the Walker Golf Course at Clemson University.

But I knew the corporate world wasn’t going to be for me for the long term, so, in my spare time I started checking off things on my bucket list.

One of those things was to go to every major sports event at least once – for example, one Super Bowl, one NBA Finals, the tennis Grand Slams (which I’ve now been lucky enough to do), etc. One week when I was 25, I happened to be working in Atlanta training technicians on our proprietary software and the last day of training for the week on Friday got cancelled. With the extra time I then had, I bought myself a ticket to the 2001 PGA Championship at Atlanta Athletic Club, the one David Toms won with the hole-in-one on the Par 3 15th hole.

If you’ve ever been to a major tour event, you know that the holes are roped off. Once the players pass, the marshals open the ropes and let the crowds pass across the hole. As it worked out, I was the only person at one of these crossings. As I got to the middle of the fairway, I had the view of a player being inside the ropes looking out at the galleries. At that moment, I felt like the sky got brighter, a veil was lifted, I felt warmer, and I first got the inspiration to pursue a career as a professional golfer.

Meeting Dan Shauger and Mike Austin

It took me about a year after that to muster up the strength and courage to quit the stability of my computer engineering job, but I finally did.

Unfortunately, the culture at my computer engineering got pretty bad due to the company getting sold and restructured multiple times. That ended up being a positive, though, because it helped give me the courage to make the leap.

I also had gotten to a place mentally where I didn't want to turn 40 and wonder if I could've made it had I only tried. Plus, unlike many other sports where players start retiring around 30, I figured with golf I would have time to get good. In fact, if one is healthy and motivated, one can be a competitive tournament golfer almost to "normal" retirement age.

At 27, I sold everything I owned, packed up what remained into my car, drove out west from Kansas City to California feeling an aliveness like never before, lived in a sleeping bag in a dirty garage for a year, and got up about every day and, literally through a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, got myself good enough to turn pro and cash my first check 6 months later when I won the Pinnacle Distance Challenge with a televised 381-yard drive.

This progress was in part due to a serendipitous meeting I had when I first moved to California. About a month after I had moved out to Los Angeles, I was on the driving range on a really windy day. There was one other guy behind me practicing as well. All of a sudden, a huge gust of Santa Ana wind came up and I stumbled back into the space where he was hitting. I would have crashed into him if it not for the wind blowing him backwards as well. It got us chatting and we remarked on our dedication to practicing in such adverse weather.

That guy, the late Dan Shauger, had just retired from building movie and TV sets in Hollywood, was teaching golf in his retirement and was there that day at the course contemplating getting a membership so he could take a crack at the Senior Tour. He ended up being inspired by what I was doing, bought himself a membership so we could practice together, and he also offered to start teaching me pro bono. As it turns out, he was also great friends with an old pro named…you guessed it, Mike Austin.

Here I was, just starting my golf career, and I was getting to meet the very same Mike Austin that stood out to me all those years ago as I kid when I would read the Guinness Book of World Records.

Sometimes I wonder if those moments I remember vividly as a kid were a foreshadowing of destiny to come. Maybe it was just chance. I’m not sure. But it still amazes me how those dots somehow connected in such a surreal way.

• Golf - The vision here is to play tournaments full time on the PGA TOUR. I think a load of 16 tournaments will suite me well. Want to to along for the ride with me? Learn about becoming a financial partner here.
• Long Drive - I think I might give long drive a go again…but even if I decide not to compete, the extra speed, power, and distance will only help my golf game.
• Track - 100m - I'm curious to know how well I could do at the USATF Championships in my age group. I've already joined a track club here in DC to start sprinting once a week when the tracks are open again.
• Powerlifting - Powerlifting training doesn't take much time, I like lifting weighs, and it's only 3 lifts. The squat and deadlift will help with my golf and long drive…and also with coming out of the blocks in track. I'm built great for it, strength is a gift, and participating is a way for me to use and share that gift. So, why not train for a couple years and see where it takes me?
• Tennis - Tennis is a lot of fun for me. I think playing/practicing once a week would be cool and I bet I could get pretty good. Regardless, simply the fun is enough reason to do it.

• It's nice to have greater variety and headlines that have less click bait.
• What we read is what everyone is reading and what we see isn't curated based on what we've clicked online.
• The stories have had more time for fact-checking.
• I've taken up doing the sudoku puzzles and it's been fun to check out the Comics section, something I haven't done since high school.
• We feel less drained and overall it's been great.

• Aside from being a peace advocate, I think we spend WAY too much on military and endless wars. In fact, it might be our downfall. There's been studies in to the rise and fall of previous empires that show that overextending on military spending is one cause for such downfalls.
• Elections need to be publicly financed.
• Gerrymandering needs to be eliminated.
• Lobbying needs to be classified as bribery and made illegal.
• We've gotten so far away from the days of the 1960s in which one income could provide for a family of four. Establishing a living wage based on your region (Example: your county) and tying that annually to inflation seems to make sense.
• The middle class has dwindled in recent decades and a disproportionate amount of wealth has flowed from the lower and middle class to the extremely wealthy. An extreme wealth tax seems like a great idea…as does going back more in the direction of higher taxes on the mega wealthy.
• Similarly, there is no reason anyone in the US should be bankrupted for medical reasons, something that almost happened to me when I was 29. Last I looked, the US ranked 37th in health care systems in the world. We need to adopt health care systems similar to that of other first world nations.
• Our infrastructure (roads, bridges, airports, etc) needs to be repaired, updated, and modernized.
• For-profit prisons have got to go.
• Marijuana needs to be legalized.
• And much more…