Neuschwanstein Castle in southwestern Germany
Germany
Now for something completely different!
I initially lived in a small flat in Ehningen, a town just south of BΓΆblingen, which was, in turn, just south of the major city of Stuttgart. I later moved to BΓΆblingen itself. BΓΆblingen was next to Sindelfingen, home to a huge Mercedes-Benz factory. I lived at the bottom of the stairs from the church and Marktplatz – the center of town where the local farmers’ markets would sell their wares.
For the first year and a half, I worked in the Engineering Systems Group’s European Marketing Center, supporting our sales teams in Scandinavia and southern Europe. I would try to arrange any travel to include a weekend so I could stay and visit wherever I was. I made it to every country in Western Europe except Portugal and Ireland during my time there.
I had a company car β a BMW 324d (diesel) β that I spent other weekends traveling in southern Germany. I spent a lot of time in England β the second summer I was there, I took a two-week car trip around England, Scotland, and Wales. A short drive south, Switzerland was a favorite spot to take visitors.
I worked with Rik, who supported Germany, France, and England, and spent a lot of time with him and his wife, Debbie. I did the same with Barry, his wife Diane, Bob, and his wife Linda, who were also from Lake Stevens. Another family, Jan & Jerry Watkins, and their two boys, Joel and Jon, were from Fort Collins. We all went out, made trips, and celebrated American, British, and German holidays together.
I took every chance I could to return to the US and spend time with my family. Rick and I made two dive trips to Belize and Bonaire (we also went to Honduras before I moved to Germany). My parents visited twice, and Rick and Dave, with Daveβs wife Lisa and my two-year-old nephew Adam, visited the second Summer I was there. After a year and a half, I moved to the division that made the CAD software and extended my stay another year.
Spending time with my family, I started to regret moving away from the environment I had grown up in. This is despite my earlier desire to get as far away from it as possible when I moved out west. My brother Rick had bought a house a couple of years earlier and was now looking for something on the water. I ended up buying his house in 1989 with the idea I would rent it out until I found a way to get back to Florida.
While living in Germany, my home division in Lake Stevens relocated to Fort Collins, Colorado, to be closer to the groups that designed the computers the software ran on. I sold my home in Mukilteo as soon as the relocation was announced. Instead of returning to Washington, I would move to Colorado. I had been there on several business trips and was looking forward to moving there. Anything to get out of Seattle or northern Europe’s cold, dreary weather!
Colorado
Before moving at the end of 1989, I ordered and picked up a brand new BMW 325iS from the factory in Munich. I drove it some before putting it on a boat and sipping it to Colorado.
I also went to Fort Collins and bought a new house on the south end of the city near the HP plants. Initially, our group worked in a temporary office building several blocks from my new house. That was pretty sweet, and I would walk home to eat lunch!
When I moved back, my business focus switched from CAD to Engineering Data Management products. We had a product called WorkManager that required significant customization to work. I led a team to help establish a consulting business around this work. My heart was never as much in this technology, although it became an essential part of my work in the 2000s.
After living on what was essentially a three-year business trip, I was ready to have a home again. My new house had a huge basement where I built my first proper woodworking shop. I bought some larger tools, including a planer and bandsaw. I made my first furniture pieces there.
I did a dream vacation in 1991 to Australia and New Zealand. I spent a month there and did my first live-aboard dive boat on the Great Barrier Reef. After I returned, I met up with a guy I knew from Germany who had moved to Colorado and just learned to dive. Dan and his German wife Maggie had relocated back to Dan’s hometown, Fort Collins. We became good friends, and Dan and I did four dive trips to the Caribbean and South Pacific. They had a cabin in the mountains near Breckenridge that I would visit after I left Colorado.
While living in Germany, I skied every chance I could get. I bought my first pair of skis there. When I moved to Colorado, it became my passion, and I did it as often as possible. I would do weened trips to Steamboat Springs, about 3 hours away. Over time, my favorite area became Winter Park, outside Denver. Later, when I moved to Atlanta, I owned some property outside of Winter Park. I intended to retire there someday.
In 1992, I moved back to Germany for a six-month business trip. I would lead the team in launching our new CAD modeler, SolidDesigner. It was a whirlwind adventure, and we made three major stops in Chicago, Amsterdam, and Tokyo. We worked hard, and I was physically exhausted at the end of it.
I came back and did some different stuff, but it was clear moving forward would not be easy. The answer? Build a house! π΅βπ«
I knew some friends from Germany who had built a home in the mountains near Estes Park. I used to go up and visit them and started warming up to the idea of doing something similar – but close to town where I could live full time. I eventually realized this when I bought 40 acres of land outside Fort Collins. It was situated in a canyon and was part of the Swanson Cattle Ranch. It was a little over 30 minutes from Fort Collins and a very scenic drive on the southern end of Horsetooth Reservoir. The land was undeveloped except for a gravel road back to the lot. For reasons I can not entirely remember, I named it Valhalla after Nordic mythology.
I hired an architect to draw up some plans and get power to the lot. I eventually started construction towards the end of 1994. I spent all my spare time there while it was being built and finally moved in (after some weather delays) in the early summer of 1995. I loved exploring my land. It was very rocky in spots and featured a small canyon carved by the water runoff that was a running stream for a while after I moved in. It indeed was Valhalla!
In the meantime, the situation at Hewlett-Packard had gotten pretty bad. I had bounced around between different assignments that never lasted long. I did R&D project management for a while and considered becoming a traveling consultant. My heart was not in it like in the early days.
We were under a lot of internal political pressure because of our relationship with the hardware group. They saw us as a threat to other software companies to run on the HP platform. Some nasty battles had been waged, and morale was pretty much in the shitter. I had started working with a new group of people because I had nowhere else to go.
In the meantime, back in CAD-land, things were changing. The PC was now a decent substitute for expensive workstations, and companies like AutoCad (who I would later work for) were booming. Their products ran on PCs and cost much less than the old dinosaur mini-computer applications.
Over the years, I have worked with a group of developers in Ithica, New York. They went by the funny name of 3D/Eye. It was started by a professor at Cornell University and a couple of his graduate students. Several of my colleagues had left over the past couple of years to join them. They had ambitions to become more than guns-for-hire and 3D molding products to exploit this trend. I had already been recruited, but seeing as I was building my dream home, it was a no-go. Besides, I had no desire to move to New York. I had heard the winters there were terrible, and I loved living in Colorado.
I got a peak at what they were up to late in 1995. At the last minute, I made a business trip to Chicago to look at some of our competitors’ products at a significant annual tradeshow. 3DEye was also there, introducing their new Microsoft Windows 95-based solid modeler. Windows 95 was a really big fucking deal, and everyone was looking for the next killer app to become rich and famous. I nearly left the show without seeing them, but I went to check them out at the last minute.
I was dumb-struck at what I saw. When most booths were vacant at the end of the show, their booth was packed. I watched a demo of what they were doing. It was a drag-and-drop-like interaction like I had never seen in a modeler, all running on a PC. I had the most intense ride home that evening as I digested what I had seen. By the time I got home late that night, I had decided to quit my 11-year career at HP, leave the dream home I had just built, and move to a place I never intended to live. It was the most significant change I have ever made other than moving back to Florida.
The month of December 1995 was one for the record books π. I worked for a week in Atlanta, hosted my whole family at my new, beautiful house in the mountains for Christmas, then packed up everything and took a trailer packed with some of my stuff to Atlanta. I arrived on January 1, 1996, to begin the next (and most tumultuous) part of my journey!
