The book is my legacy. If I didn’t write it I would forever be known or referred to as... “oh that’s Rick Bibbero, he’s the guy who got in trouble and went to prison... for marijuana.” And that would be it! Put it on my tombstone and forget me...
Well... if I have anything to say about that... “OK... I AM that guy and yes it’s true. I’ll take that badge proudly, I might add, however there’s a bit more to it than just that one liner... 542 pages to be exact.
I didn’t exactly have dreams and aspirations growing up to become a drug smuggler... specifically a marijuana smuggler. Good and loving but strict family (at least not from a broken home), good education and upbringing; but at a certain time and due to certain unforeseen circumstances... maybe even due some cosmic planetary astrological alignment, I opted for adventure and one thing led to another... like from a snowball to an avalanche... and then maybe back to a snowball. And after it was all said and done and enough time had elapsed from the end of the story to a point that I was no longer paranoid of some repercussions and that both my parents had passed away as they didn’t need any more embarrassment from me... it was time to write it from the notes and outlines I’d made from the previous ten years.
I didn’t exactly have dreams and aspirations growing up to become a drug smuggler... specifically a marijuana smuggler.
The book defines who I was and how I got there and what it took to make a 20 year marijuana smuggling adventure. The book is also a catharsis... a great story that needed to be told... I just happened to have the time and the where-with-all and support to do it.
I read numerous contemporary books on the subject of smuggling to see how others addressed the subject. What I discovered was there were some books/stories were written from a personal perspective; i.e., the story is told by the smuggler himself or told to a writer who then wrote it and others were written from an investigative perspective just telling the story from research and interviews.
I see myself as a storyteller... maybe rather than a writer. If I was going to write it myself, my story had to be different. It not only had to be true... at least as I remembered it, but it had to be told like a storyteller or novelist would tell it. I decided to make it and call it a memoir and as such make it very personal, in the first person and as seen through my eyes. I envisioned writing the story in real-time so that the reader was actually living the story along with me... all of the conversations and emotions included and written in adventure novel style so it would be readable. I also wanted to be a reporter of actually what happened as well and try not to be too subjective... which of course is impossible if it is seen through my eyes and processed by my mind. In making the story personal I also wanted to bring into it the relationships of the people around me and my group... including the other players who along with me actually participated and made it happen as well as wives, girlfriends, parents and others.
I envisioned writing the story in real-time so that the reader was actually living the story along with me... all of the conversations and emotions included and written in adventure novel style so it would be readable.
Of most any of the other ‘players’ I know and who I participated with, I feel that I have earned the credibility to talk about the story. I actually lived all of the adventures myself and got to experience personally basically every aspect of the whole business and thus... this true story