I attended the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra a couple weeks ago. It was incredible.

Admittedly, I am not a big classical music fanatic. But I’d rather listen to classical than some of the screechy and screamy things some consider to be music today. I admire the talent it takes to create any music, and the lyrical work necessary to tell a story. But you like what you like, I guess.

As I write this I am traveling in the southeastern part of the U.S. with some personal activities and some business related things as well. First, I was able to spend time with my second son who lives in Tampa Bay, Florida. We explored some of the local cuisine and we had a chance to watch the Super Bowl together. (Nice work Chiefs!)

Like many of you reading this, I’m just back from Shot Show.

It was a great week and great catching up with so many friends and colleagues. It was especially gratifying to see the show floor filled up once again with exhibitors and visitors. From what I’m told by the show managers at NSSF, it was a dramatic increase in attendance over last year, approximately 20% higher. That’s good news for the event and for our industry.

I started and stopped this column approximately 10 times before settling on what you see here now. I was going to write about the market, predictions, forecasts, sales figures, NASGW new projects, thoughts on the New Year, and even some thoughts on the year we just had.

I got in trouble the other day. Sort of anyway.

Air traffic controllers apparently don’t take kindly to random airplanes going to random areas of the airport without instructions to do so. In my defense, I believed I had been instructed to do so. The controller made it very clear I was in no way, shape, or form, instructed to do anything of the sort.

Because of high fuel prices lately, I haven’t been flying much this summer. So to get some time in my plane, I made a quick trip last week over to Kansas City to meet with our Expo planning team. As I was landing at the downtown Kansas City airport, I shared with the tower where I was headed, so when he “cleared” me to parking, I got off the runway and headed to the parking area.

I am, admittedly, a bit of a dreamer. Sometimes I come up with some pretty big ideas. In fact, it’s how I won my wife over when we were dating. I told her I had good ideas and that someday, one of my good ideas was going to pay off. Truth be told, probably 999 times out of 1,000, the ideas vanish into the ether. But on occasion, I strike gold and turn an idea into something meaningful.

It all started as a young kid on a farm in the middle-of-nowhere North Dakota. One of the most amazing benefits about growing up there (and remains so today) is the lack of light pollution. The night sky was big, bold and gorgeous. It had a way of making you feel small and insignificant with its vastness. Undeterred, I would lie down in the yard and dream about taking trips to the outer reaches of the universe. Little did I know just how big the universe was at the time.

One of the greatest things about going home is all the things you remember about your past. It’s like the fog clearing on a bright and sunny morning.

As I write this column, I’m “home” spending time at the farm I grew up on in North Dakota. In the middle of our time here, we got a soaker of a rainstorm. Over three inches of rain came in just a few hours. Pretty much anywhere in the country, when you get that much water, that fast, it usually leads to some pretty good flooding. When you consider the fact that the waters were just receding from the last heavy downpour, it made the flooding seem even more dramatic.