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About me

Hey there!  This website is brought to you, for better or worse, by moi, Tom Mahood.

Who am I?  No one special, just a guy that seems to have a knack for adventures of all sorts.  Wherever the crowd is headed, I’m usually off in a different direction.

My career has been one of engineering and science.  I spent most of working life with the County of Orange in California where I was both a Civil Engineer and Traffic Engineer.  Civil Engineers get to design and build fun crap like roads, bridges and flood control facilities, while Traffic Engineers do traffic signals, set speed limits and put up with the public wanting to know how many children need to die before you do something (the answer is three).  If you’ve driven on Irvine Boulevard through the former El Toro Marine Base or up Newport Boulevard into Orange, you can thank me at your convenience.

I also did a short stint doing serious science work for Caltech after getting a Masters degree in Physics.  That was at their LIGO facility (Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory) in southeast Washington State.  Somewhat ironically, considering my background, my Masters degree focused on experimental investigations involving the possibilities  of an exotic form of gravitational propulsion. I ended up my career as the City Traffic Engineer for the City of Orange, which was a hell of a lot of fun and very satisfying.  Now retired (this is Retirement 2.0 for me), I’m managing to get into a variety of mischief, the more minor of which I hope to post to this site.

Over the years I’ve had a wide array of interests.  An abbreviated list (in friggin’ alphabetic order!!) would include, Astronomy, backpacking, bike building, caving, cross country skiing, desert exploring, electronics, ethnobotany, exotic aircraft, fringe and mainstream science, hiking, metal working, meteorite hunting, mountain biking, mountaineering, paranormal phenomena, photography, rock climbing, sailing, search and rescue,UFOs, woodworking.  I’ve been a pilot, both powered aircraft and gliders, and owned a high performance sailplane.  Did a bit of paragliding until I decided better of it after a serious crash in which I broke my heel (but did cheat death).  I don’t care much for Pina Coladas nor walking on the beach.

Throughout this my partner in crime has been the long suffering Jeri, who has, for inexplicable reasons, decided to hang around with me from the mid 1970s.  The woman’s a saint.

OK, you now know way more than you need to.  Beat it.