The 21-day (with two extensions) trip was absolutely wonderful! The group of about 25 people on tour all meshed nicely and food, sights, art, were fantastic. I shot hours of video, some of it while actually walking down streets of Rome, Florence, Venice, and Naples. The Steadicam Jr produced smooth shots that seemed to “float.” And in Venice, I proposed to Kathi at sunset in a gondola on Grand Canal. We purhased our wedding rings in gold market of Florence.

Returning to US, I viewed video I had shot with Steadicam and quickly realized that it would be perfect for watching while walking on our treadmill. A few tests confirmed my idea - “virtual walks” could give you impression that you were actually “walking” streets of these beautiful European cities and could make time spent on treadmill pass quickly.

Having recently retired from a career in teaching Television Production, and having just celebrated our marriage, I proposed another idea to my new wife: We would form a tv production company which would purchase professional equipment and film "Treadmill Virtual Walks" of European cities. We would then sell these virtual walks on Internet.

Kathi immediately agreed and we got busy with details. We formed a corporation, researched equipment, purchased it, along with rights to music suitable for accompanying these walks.

In addition to “virtual walks” which we would shoot with Steadicam equipment, we also decided to take a tripod and shoot more traditional travel video footage. We planned on editing this footage into our “Armchair Travel Videos” which, accompanied by classical music, we would also sell on Internet. Our objective was to come back from a 2 week shoot in a European city with two totally different types of footage, which could then be edited into two totally different types of travel videos.

To download music or play games, if that is what you want, but never, could a person rapidly gain access to information! Never could a person disperse information to such a degree, either.

With it comes a freedom to express ideas, creations, or business concepts, which held previous generations captive to their true abilities and potential. You can be certain that many had intelligence, imagination and foresight, but lacked resources and framework to do what is now, commonplace. The thing is though, that while many ideas are indeed commonplace, simple variations can become some workable, feasible and rewarding.

If you have a spark of imagination, you should be able to find an angle. Bizarre or conventional, outrageous or ordinary, something searchable should lend itself to inspiration.

While some get comfortable with modern cultures, labour costs will increase and fewer things are cheaper. To download a webpage or send 500,000 e-mails, value is exceptional and unlikely to spiral. In this alone, there has to be potential.

General research, which took time and discipline, can be done in a short time. Search engines, which find search engines and almost anything else, will speedily return many results. Indeed, lots of specific information can be “mined” as well.