Personal Tidbits

Taking up Chas Clifton's challenge, with inspiration from Deborah Lipp, here are eight things about me, six true and two false, that most people probably don't know:

1. I first learned to drive when I was about 10 by driving a tractor and a flatbed truck helping my dad farm. He was a seedsman, specializing in tomatoes, peppers and eggplants (nightshade family).
2. The earliest ancestor we can trace who came to North America was a man (I don't know his name; will try to find out) who arrived in New Amsterdam around 1658 on a ship called De Vergulde Bever, the "Gilded Beaver." My maternal grandfather's name was Van Tine. I have lots of Van Tine relatives, the Protestant, anglophilic side. I see no Van Tines on the Gilded Beaver's passenger list, but I see "Gerrit Gerritsen van Gilthuys," which could be the name Gilruth, which is a maternal family name.
   
3. My orphaned grandmother, née Kate Reilly, from Ballinasloe, Co. Galway, Ireland, on the River Suck, came to Moorestown, NJ (founded by Friends in 1682) via Philadelphia point of entry as in indentured servant to a caring Quaker family. Her siblings dispersed around Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, PA and Australia.
4. I eat only organic food, very little in the way of carbs or dairy. I am a slender, fit gym rat.
5. I have a giant crush on Anderson Cooper (yes, I know). Also on multi-talented Heathen Viggo Mortensen (not because of his role in LOTL either), Irish charmer George Clooney, younger Irish charmer Matthew McConnaughey, Irish Irish charmer Pierce Brosnan, and hunky Henry Simmons, "Baldwin James" on NYPD Blue. Oh, yes, almost forgot Chow Yun Fat. I guess that shows my tastes are conventional. I like them for their politics as much as for their looks and talent. I should note that all of them are younger than I, some considerably. I'm just an old feminist with a lusty appreciation for men.
   
6. I'm a big fan of figure skating. My own ice skating experiences are limited to cranberry bogs in the Winter in New Jersey and a couple of ice rinks in California, such as Blyth Arena, built for 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley, and demolished in 1983.
   
7. I love camping.
8. I worked atop KT-22 (elevation 8,000 feet) during the Summer of 1961, after my freshman year at San Jose State College (now University). I rode the ski jump up the mountain every morning, where I stood on the landing platform and snapped photos of tourists as they sat in the chairs suspended over the valley floor 3,000 feet below.
   

Why eight, Chas? Why not five or nine or ten?