| Birthday | August 1st, 1975 |
| Birthplace | Lincoln, NE |
| Current Location | Omaha, NE |
| Height | 5'11" |
| Hobbies | guitar, tennis, biking, photography, watching movies that don't star Jean Claude Van Damme |
| Favorite Color | Red |
| Top 6 Movies | The Empire Strikes Back, The Graduate, Magnolia, Rushmore, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, & Raising Arizona |
| Favorite Music | The Beatles, Radiohead, Guster, Paul Simon, Ben Harper, Daft Punk |
| Favorite Books or Short Stories | The Brothers Karamazov:Dostoyevsky, 1984:Orwell, Lonesome Shorty:Keillor |
| Unusual Talents | Indian leg wrestling, skipping rocks, and accurately guessing the total price of a cart of groceries |
I was born in Lincoln, NE on August 1st, 1975 to Doug and Shirley Trampe. Two years later my brother, Scott, was born. My family lived in Lincoln until I was six and then moved to Norfolk. A year after that, I began pronouncing it "Norfork," 'cause that's the way people in the know say it.
My experience as a child was probably similar to most peoples'. I played with Transformers and GI Joe figurines and usually blew up about 25% of them every 4th of July. The elementary school was right across the street. I was the head spy in our neighborhood militia. A cornfield was only about three blocks away. My family had one dog, a station wagon, and a huge Oldsmobile. Here's a picture of me and my grandpa when I was just a little whippersnapper.
Norfolk Senior High was a class A school, so it was large enough for lots of independent social circles. My group of friends was pretty tight and watched Monty Python a lot. It's surprising that none of us were ever incarcerated. I was on the tennis team, was involved in plays, and had fun with buddies. I worked at a car garage two summers and a tractor dealership the other.
Moved to Lincoln in 1994 and attended the University of Nebraska. Got degrees in Advertising and German. Took five years. Not sure where the diplomas are now.
During college, I became involved in Young Life, a non-profit Christian organization focused on middle and high school students. Go to www.younglife.org for the full scoop. The time spent with Young Life proved to be pivotal for me. Growing up, I had always gone to church and thought that God was an impersonal superpower that created everything, had a son, and would judge me when I died. I never knew that He wanted to have a personal relationship with each individual, myself included. The whole love thing never dawned on me.
After graduation I had an internship as a writer with the Young Life headquarters in Colorado. During my time there, I was recruited to work overseas. I left the US in January of 2000.
I spent the following three years with Young Life in Ansbach and Heidelberg Germany. Strangely enough, I was actually working with Americans, since I was working on a US Army installation in the middle of Europe. When Young Life works with any branch of the US military, it's known as MCYM (the service loves acronyms).
If you have ANY desire to do ministry overseas, you should give this a try. This sounds like a cliche, but it will change your life and, upon completion, you'll shudder at what your life would've been like had you NOT done this. Contact me or visit www.mcym.org for all the info.
Upon re-entry to the US, I got a job as a sales consultant for a local car dealership. Selling cars is really something else. Great experience if you don't take yourself too seriously. The next time you are looking for a car, do some research on Subaru. You'll pat yourself on the back for being so smart.
In November of 2004 I accepted a marketing position with iSECUREtrac in Omaha, Nebraska. It's a virtually unknown company with one of the coolest products on the market today - GPS offender tracking. Basically, our electronic monitoring systems enable corrections and law enforcement departments to track sex offenders, parolees, pre-trial defendants, and the like 24/7/365, anywhere on the face of the earth. Our system also can notify the appropriate authorities in near real-time when a participant goes somewhere they shouldn't (a sex offender driving by a school, for example). It's been a very meaningful job for various reasons; it's exciting to be part of something that's high tech and can have so many positive benefits for society.
