Image via Wikipedia
I have been blog-tagged by Jonathan Trenn, Adam Viener, and Alice Marshall. I am to reveal five things you didn’t know about Chris Abraham. Well, here we go…
1) Six years in a Hawaiian all-boys Catholic school – I was voted as “Most Likely to be Famous” by my high school class, an all-boy’s Marianist school in Honolulu, Hawaii, called Saint Louis School. Famous man include infamous. I was also elected student body president and was captain of the speech and debate team. I was also in the “Ranger Club” of my JROTC unit and wrestled at 180lbs. Incidentally, I moved to Hawaii when I was 6 and lived there in Salt Late, Downtown, and Kaimuki, until moving to DC for college at 18.
2) A total computer geek for a solid 23-years – My handwriting has always been appalling. So bad, in fact, that I did homework in elementary school on an Olivetti typewriter. When I was 13, I used my savings to buy one of the first PCs in my neighborhood in 1983, an IBM AT. That bugger had a monochrome monitor, no hard drive, dual 5 1/4″ floppies, and a 1,200 baud modem. I got onto some Hawaiian BBS’s. I had to fake being an adult to get onto the good boards. I envied the amber monitors, although I eventually picked up a color card and a color monitor. I never did buy a hard drive, though, until college. How the hell did I do without a HD? The A: drive always had to have a bootable floppy in there. What I really liked the most about the computer was that the keyboard clicked. It was rock solid and had the most amazing feedback. I had a dot matrix printer. I have been a computer geek for a solid twenty-three years.
3) I owned a motorcycle — After my dad passed away, I invited my buddy to visit me in Hawaii. At that point I had a 1980 Mercedes 300D and a 1974 Triumph TR-6. The 300D died on me. Since Mark was a guest, I needed two rides, so I gave him the triumph to use and I picked up a used a 1982 Yamaha XS 1100 for a couple-hundred bucks. The brakes didn’t really work, but who needs brakes. The bike was fast! A 1.1 liter engine on a standard bike. That was one hell of an awesome deathtrap.
4) An artistic side — My dad was a fine artist and a photographer. While you were learning sports scores and how to hit a ball, I was learning perspective, proportions, foreshortening, physiology, musculature, gravity, the human body, drawing, sketching, shading, highlighting; and, of course, I had been shooting professionally since 1986 and got my first stock photography contract when I was 21, with Pacific Stock, and then later with Corbis (nee The Stock Market). I posses well over 100,000 slides, both mine and my late father, Bob Abraham, and amazing shooter.
5) PADI Divemaster — I have been SCUBA diving since I was 15. It was something that my dad and I loved to do. I progressed through Open Water, Advanced Open Water, Rescue Diver, and then to Divemaster. I started taking the road to PADI Dive Instructor. I haven’t been diving or shooting for years. In fact, I used to shoot with a Nikonos V and have some very amazing underwater photos, including what I call the Jesus Turtle. Since SCUBA takes so much gear, I spent a lot of my days freediving. According to Wikipedia, “Free-diving is an aquatic sport, considered an extreme sport, in which divers attempt to reach great depths unassisted by breathing apparatus.” I was pretty good at it. In Hawaii, you have to carry a dive float. I would kick out to my diving site off of Waikiki and, for shits and giggles, dive down 100 feet with a breath of air (and massive freediving fins) to freak out the divers and piss off the Divemaster and Dive Instructors I worked with.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
but i knew all of that….share some new information. something to make me see the “real” chris.
(hello from chilly northern europe)
Well, you know me better than just about any more. You’re not a good cross-section. But thanks for pushing me. You know that I don’t like to be too too revealing on my blog. :)
I’ll just have to dig up or make up some dirt and sell the “Chris Abraham Tell-All” biography. ;)