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Who is Ricky?
I’m a life long member of District 19—having been bred in Key West, born at Health Park, and raised on Sanibel Island. I moved off island for school, transferring from Sanibel to Canterbury School and have been a Fort Myers resident ever since. The longest I’ve been out of state was for Duke TIP and engineering summer camps during middle and high school (University of Kansas, Austin College, Emory University, MS&T).
Like any good bred, born, and raised Floridan who spent his formative years on an island, you’ll be hard pressed to find me not wearing a swim suit at all times of year, rain or shine, day or night, bomb cyclone or cat 5. The only person who’s been successful in getting me to wear pants is my boss, and that’s only because the radiochemistry research lab I work in as my day job has rules for some odd reason against chemical and radiological contamination… The government just doesn’t want us to have fun anymore!
Growing up, as soon as school let out—or often times even before the bell rang—I’d be at the beach or on the water boating, fishing, and enjoying this paradise on earth we’ve all been blessed with and is the life blood of our local economy. Like the fish I’ve come to enjoy catching and swimming with, I dry out if I’m away from sea for more than a day. The North Florida springs are like a band aid against my mumification but nothing beats the sights and sounds of SWFL and its world famous beaches and backwaters.
I spend my summers in the Florida Key’s, fishing and freediving while dodging South Florida's infamous afternoon thunderstorms. One of life’s greatest gifts is going out on a boat with your friends at night, straight off from the Sanibel Light House, and heading offshore until the distant glow of light pollution along the horizon has disappeared and been replaced with the stunning elegance of our nights sky and the rarely observed in Florida, Milky Way Galaxy. Staring at the stars as heat lighting flashes all around you from isolated rain cells that disappear as quickly as they arrived and the rarely seen gulf bioluminescent algae are stirred up by the waves.
While in North Florida, whether busy with school or work, I’m enjoying the fresh water springs and back country trails. A short list of recommendations for those who find themselves in need: Poe Springs, has a rope swing into the Santa Fe River that I’ve yet to break any bones on; Royal Springs, my personal favorite where you can cliff dive into the spring or watch as the spring cascades into the Suwannee River via a series of Florida ‘waterfalls’; the Rainbow River via KP Hole, while not one spring in particular but instead a river fed by dozens of springs, launching your kayak from the boat ramp and going a short 1/4 mile up river takes you to a local favorite creek on the right—east—bank where you can relax and wade through the crystal clear, rejuvenating water while enjoying your hard earned sandwich; Big Shoals State Park, a large park with many different trails shared by bicycles, horses, and ATVs, Big Shoals hosts Florida’s only Class 3 ‘rapids’; O’Leno State Park, an oddity in the US, one of the few places you can watch an entire river drain into a sink hole and then reappear above the surface a short distance away—a feat the river repeats multiple times. Throughout the fall, like a pilgrim to the holy land, I head off the coast of Big Bend, scalloping and kayaking—If you’re reading this and the person who siphoned most of the gas out of my vehicle a couple years back, just know that I will seek my revenge… some day.
While in high school, I earned my private pilot certificate and have been hooked on flying ever since. I’ve currently amassed over 1,100 hours in my log book with many thousands more to come.
For undergrad, I attended the University of Florida—Go Gators!—and earned my bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering. I’m currently working on my graduate degree, again at UF and again in nuclear engineering—my boss won’t let me leave, and intend on earning my PhD—after serving my term as our congressional delegate to DC. During my time at UF, I’ve worked at our on campus 100kW nuclear reactor (UFTR) and still conduct research in the same radiochemistry research lab I started in during undergrad. I’ve been a apart of several great organizations, including the American Nuclear Society (ANS), Civil Air Patrol (CAP), Design. Build. Fly (DBF), several environmental clean up groups, et c.
A short summary of the research projects I’ve worked on: my first project was working on a NOAA and industry funded assignment attempting to radiometrically date Alaskan crabs—famously, you can’t ask for their ID when trying to figure out how old they are. Something to do with a lack of thumbs or something like that. Following that, I worked on a project helping with the environmental remediation efforts at the Hanford Site in Washington State—where our nation historically produced plutonium for our weapons program. I’ve just finished working on a safeguards / non-proliferation project characterizing the mechanisms by and degree to which thorium and other radioactive elements of interest sneak past intergovernmental monitoring during spent fuel reprocessing—as an aside, for any media reading this, if you’ve been spoon fed the lie and are now of the false belief that there’s no solution to nuclear waste, I will make my calendar available to you at any time for an interview. Finally, the project I’m currently working on is characterizing / quantifying the ‘usefulness’ of TK102 resin under various conditions during liquid-liquid extractions of mixed systems. Which is a lot of blabbering to say, “how much metal does this expensive white powder suck out of a solution”.
