My full name is George Georgalis, I use "galis" on the computer because it's less confusing. I love to build with wood and hand tools. San Diego, California is my home and I love the ocean. My favorite sports are swimming, cycling, and soccer.
| and when it finds them in its nest dead from a serpent's bite, it pierces itself to the heart, and with its blood it bathes them till they return to life. -- Leonardo Da Vinci |
| This is my favorite animal, a pelican. I like the way they fly. I like their social nature. I like their sense of humor: once I saw a lone pelican standing on a wide beach at low tide -- it was so unusual, it was funny. Pelicans have been my friend when I needed one. | |
| I like to make things with my hands. I don't make things all the time because I don't know what I would do with it all. Already I have more artwork than I know what to do with. Nevertheless I would like to do more metal work like the Cross below because it's very spiritually rewarding. | 
You could expect to find me inside this van from April
17, 1993 to February 13, 1996. I lived in there. I drove
through 35 states. I got stuck 3 times in four hours in
Southern Mississippi and once in New York.
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This cross (front and back shown) is about 1 1/2 inches wide. Normally the loop on the bottom is bent over to form a stand. |
| In 1980 I took a black and white photography class at La Jolla Country Day School. I gave my camera to a friend and asked him to take my picture after I climbed this 6 1/2 foot monolith. |  |
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I was 12 and my "bike" was the door to the world. This one was built around a PeddelPower frame. |
 | My instructor said this was the best picture taken in that class. It's the top of a collage of automobile parts welded together. |
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From the time I was 13 through my high school years I was
a competitive swimmer. I swam a LOT. First with a USS
(United States Swimming) team from 6pm to 8pm five days a
week. Then in high school: I got four varsity letters for
swimming and two varsity letters for water polo. I swam
on the school team 6am to 7:30am five days a week in
addition to the USS team workouts in the evening.
Of course the first year and a half I was conditioning; after that every USS workout would start with a 500 or 1000 yard warm up; then sets (e.g. 10 100s on 1:30), until the 250 or 500 yard warm down. We would be swimming from 6pm till 8pm, not 115 minutes, 120 minutes. The high school team was less intense. Still there were times of the year my combined yardage was over 7000 yards a day. That translates to over 5000 calories consumed while in the H2O. I ate an awful lot of pasta. Incidentally, in school I achieved very well those years. When your head is underwater that long it gives you a new frame of mind: it's like meditating. There are not a lot of distractions. Counting sets, laps, counting tiles, mostly it's a process of letting go of the pain (fatigue) and moving on. You reach a point where you just go and confide in the achievement when you get there. It makes your mind strong along with your body. I remember sitting in first period biology after the AM workout, I couldn't move a muscle but my mind was totally clear. My best times were 00:58.?? 100yd free, and 1:08.94 100yd breast, unfortunatly the Junor Olympic cutoff was 1:08.54 It was my last race (1986) and I missed the cutoff by 5 hundredths of a second! On another occasion, I can say that I got an "A" time for the 200m breast in Coronado. |
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Not long after I wrote this about by first years in the sport, I
realized how much I missed competitive swimming. In late May
('97) I joined a team and began swimming one to two miles, two
to four days a week. In September ('97) I
discontinued swimming with the group because of time and
financial constraints. As of lately, I do all my swimming in the ocean. Unlike most people I like the cold water (I use ear plugs to keep from getting dizzy) as long as it's not below 57 and it's not cold outside too. But I still miss the group. |
| geo@galis.org http://galis.org/ Revised April 1999 Home |
| geo@galis.org http://galis.org/ Revised April 1999 Home |