Rob:  Name and location?

Jason:  Daniel J Miller (Jason) I live on Eagle mountain lake (north Fort Worth, Texas)

Rob:  Why do you love Ferrari so much?

Jason:  hmmmm,,, I love ferraris racing heritiage, its timeless beautly, unique sound, I dreamed of these cars as a kid.

Rob:  Talk about working towards your first Ferrari and your short experience since?

Jason:  I allways wanted a ferrari and figured some day I would get one. My priorities have changed throughout the years. I worked as a software engineer for a company called Tensor and my whole life was focused on travel, I didn't even own a television. Every weekend and vacation day was spent traveling and reading about travel. I lived for adventure. When my wife and I got married in 96 We sold everything we had and moved to South Africa to build one of the first ISP's. upon my return I got the idea of becoming a bush pilot and moving back to Africa, I trained and became a pilot and also obtained my sea plane rating (airplane on floats). I lost my job in 2001 and started a construction company. This career change gave me more money to travel but no time to do it so I thought airplanes and cars would fill my little spare time. I found an older esprit and a piper colt which my wife encouraged me to sell when our son was born. Now I have two children and a busy work schedule, I loved driving the lotus and also purchased an older Europa but still wanted that Ferrari. I stumbled on a good deal for a Maserati Merak and love the car but still it was not a Ferrari. After meeting Tillman at the Italian car show and coming to one of your events I decided it was time to make a move. An older 308 was my desire and I searched the net for one. I stumbled across a good deal on this testarossa and couldn't refuse it and I am very pleased. I have owned it only two days and am so very impressed with this car. It is so much more than I expected and will cherish it for ever.

Rob:  Your adventures around the world?

Jason:  As stated above adventure travel was a passion of mine. My uncle gave me a book back in 1992 called Death in the Dark continent and after reading it I began to lust after visiting out of the was places. I began buying more books and reading of early explorations in Africa, South America and elsewhere. (I currently have over 800 books on Africa) I was especially interested in native cultures and wildlife. I was constantly collecting books from the 1800's and longing to live the lives of these explorers. I worked at a great job that gave me plenty of time off and I wasn't married at the time so I would travel and plan to travel all the time. My first big expedition was in 94 to the Amazon. I read everything about the Amazon I could find and spent a wonderful 3 months in Ecuador. I visited head hunter tribes and spent many days canoeing the rivers of the upper Amazon. While in Ecuador I climbed my first peak (Cotopoxi) which I believe is around 19000 feet.

After returning from Ecuador I was hooked. I became a minimalist driving an old wrecked range rover and not even having a television. All my money went to getting me back in the wilds.

In 1996 I went to East Africa and lived with the Masai tribes and traveled through war torn Ruanda and Burundi via Tanzania and Kenya. I lived from a backpack and climbed Kilimanjaro (19000 feet)

Also the same year I traveled throughout Egypt staying with the locals and studying their culture.

In 1997 I met a former English ambassador in South Africa and mentioned to him my dream of moving to Africa. I proposed he fund me in building one of the first Internet service providers in Southern Africa and we own it as partners. He agreed and we began our business plan. I designed the system and shipped the equipment over. I quit my job at tandy and moved my self and new wife to Johanessburg. We bought an old Land rover series 2 and I began building the ISP. Unfortunately the money or my partner never showed up, I sold the ISP and worked as a LAN tech for the South African government (with a false working visa) I was able to enter every government building and prison in the country to work on the computer system. I couldn't stand working in computers and living in the big city of jo-burg so I quit and joined a professional hunter and worked at his camping store. I was able to travel again and Angie and I drove that old land rover thousands of miles across southern Africa. we crossed the continent from east to west and visited many countries. We decided to come back to the states and make a new start so we traveled from cape town all the way to Cairo. I spent the last few days showing Angie around Egypt before flying home. While in Africa I had collected 3000 pounds of African tribal artifacts which I shipped home and sold on (then fairly new)ebay.

I have never took Angie back to Africa however I have since traveled western Africa and lived with the Mamprule tribe in northern Ghana by Burkina faso. I contracted Malaria and had to come home.

BTW some stories are on my website from various trips.

My old website is

www.geocities.com/africanexplorer

Rob:  Your business?

Jason:  I am a software engineer by trade however I lost my job in 2001, My father and grandfather were home builders in California (where I grew up) and they convinced me to start building homes. I built my first home in 2001 in hurst and have been booked solid since. I am currently building nine. My plans are still to return to South Africa some day and the only way to live well there is to have US dollars as income so I have been collecting income producing properties with my profits. I currently own three commercial office and retail buildings and a few rent houses. I also am building storage units on some commercial land on hwy 121 and 118 down in west texas. My plan is to have most of the properties paid off within 10 years and begin traveling full time again (yippee)

Rob:  I know you talk about having surgery for cancer back in 1999, I don't know where that stands now or if you even want to talk about it.

Jason:  We retuned from South Africa in early 1999. We bought a house and I was back working in computers. While on vacation in Gulf shores Alabama for our anniversary I noticed a large lump on my testicle. Upon returning home I visited my DR who told me I must of bruised it and to be patient and come see him in 4 weeks. 6 weeks later (Aug 1999) I went back to see him and he explained that bruising in that part of the anatomy takes a while to go down so give it another month and come see him. 4 more weeks go by and he gave me the same story. I decided a second opinion was in order and my life changed for ever. When visiting the second Dr he hurried me to a Baylor grapevine for a sonogram and 24 hours later I was in surgery removing the testical. Unfortunately the tumor was malignant and unfortunately it was a very bad cancer and unfortunately it had time to spread. I was told I wouldn't of lived until Christmas of that year if It went on un noticed. I was very depressed and my wife very supportive. We decided to have a lympthnode surgery to see where it had spread and I spent much time reflecting on life, praying and planning for surgery. I had began a hobby building wood kayaks and canoes so I went and cut a bunch of lumber and built a frame for a cedar canoe so I wouldn't go stir crazy during recovery. In fall of 1999 I had the surgery and the great news was that it hadn't spread up my spine and at that time all we had to do was keep a close eye on me. I built a cedar canoe while I recovered at home before starting back to work. I am now 5 years cancer free and every six months go for testing. Testicular cancer didn't take me, in fact I have two little miracles to prove everything works.