Tell Me About Your Unusual Hobbies

This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge, hosted by Long and Short Reviews. Check out other bloggers at this week’s post.

This week’s prompt: “My Unusual Hobbies/Interests.”

I don’t know if it’s all that unusual, but one of my primary hobbies is genealogy research.

I think it mostly stems from my interest in stories and my drive to learn lots of things about lots of people.

I’ve got just under 2,000 people listed in my database, though there are almost certainly a few duplicates there. My records go back to about 1870 on Diana’s side and about 1720, on my mom’s side.

That’s just names and dates. I’ve got stories about far fewer people, sadly. I mean, I like to know the names and dates. Through a variety of possible cousins, RootsTech has supposedly connected me to dozens of famous people, like XXX, NNN, and YYY. But I don’t know much about those cousins.

I know three relatives died in the Fort Seybert Massacre in 1758. I’m learning more about other cousins from that line. I know a cousin died in World War One, just 70 days after he got married and less than a week after he arrived in France. At least three other cousins died in World War Two—fighting for the Germans. I don’t really know anything about them.

I want more stories.

None of this is really news to anyone who reads my blog even occasionally. I wrote a WWBC post last year about my hobbies.

What Else Is There?

Aside from building models, riding motorcycles, and researching family history, what else have I dabbled in over the years?

I went through a phase involving radio-controlled planes. I was fascinated from my late teens into my twenties with the concept of making this little model fly around anywhere I wanted. I really wanted to fly the real thing, and took flying lessons for a while, but I ran out of money, Mom and Dad didn’t think it was a reasonable career choice, and I didn’t manage what little money I was making well enough to keep paying for lessons.

That same financial burden kept me from pursuing RC flying beyond reading about it. I bought issue after issue of Model Airplane News and RC Modeler for years. Those magazines (and Flying and Private Pilot) were the equivalent of the internet for me back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

Maybe buying all those magazines kept me from having the money to buy planes and radios.

I was something of a photographer for a while, too, until Oldest Daughter “borrowed” my camera for her photography business. I mostly just took pictures for my own enjoyment, though I set up an account on Flickr back when there was the possibility of places buying your photos there. I keep telling myself that I want to get a new camera, but it’s a lot of money to get back into the hobby these days.

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