What happens when you get close to turning 40?  That's supposed to be when you loose your mind, get a sports car, new dew and a teenage girlfriend.  All I did was decide to move west and take another job! 

From 1998 until now (July 2005) I have been working for a little consulting firm out of Austin, Texas called Collective Technologies.  CT hired me to be a road warrior and work and live away from home over 95% of the time.    At the time, I thought I could maybe do this for 5 years before something would have to be done.  Little did I know what that was going to be like.

Some of the memories I have of these times include:

• Trying to find a hotel in Cambridge by following directions that lead me all the way around the outer belt line using 93 and 95 to get to 2 and back into town when it would have taken me like 1/3 the time if I went through town using Starrow Dr.
• Meeting Eric Parucki for the first time
• Meeting Josh Canary for the first time at his GTEI going away party and asking to slap Jason Deck in the head when he met him at Gilbarco (Josh's next client)  The expression on Josh's face was worth the trip!
• Living in an apartment with Eric Parucki while he was in his mostly vegan phase
• Flying on USAir for enough miles / trip segments to make Chairman's preferred several years running and then having people say how much fun that must be to see all those places!
• Flying around the world in 7 days the week before Christmas to help a client realize revenue
• Flying home at Christmas time and having the airline loose your luggage containing the Christmas gifts
• Getting stuck for various reasons at various airports (weather, the windshield falling out of the commuter plane, someone with a service truck driving into the plane)
• Having to return to LAX after taking off very late for maintenance problem which turns out not to be fixed.  Problem was simple, when you engage the auto pilot the plane trys to fly into the ground.  Very, very not good!
• Getting a call at 4pm asking to go from Atlanta to Minneapolis in early November.  Being dumb enough to say ok and landing there in a blowing snow storm wearing only a dress shirt and dress pants because Atlanta was in the 80's and your jacket was about 1000 miles behind you.
• Going across the country for a two day thing just because you could.
• Working in Bangalore India, I don't recommend it!
• Being in a discussion of what is the best airport in the USA and being able to talk about some really miserable ones that no one ever had to fly through. 
• Staring down through the glass floor on top of the CN tower in Toronto Canada.  People really do look like ants through that floor.
• Staying in the presidential suite in a hotel in Philadelphia because they had no rooms left and had to honor my reservation.  Schweeet room!
• Flying from Washington, D.C. to Pittsburgh, PA to get to Miami, FL.  Not the shortest route I could come up with.

How did I do it this long became one of the questions I kept asking myself.  Probably second to that was why do I stay by myself and drive things so that it is all work related.  Two things both of which needed a cure. 

The first cure came by way of my darling wife Mivon.  She found me somehow and made me into a better person in a couple of ways.  I thought more about her and us than about work.  This combined with an urge to not be a road warrior finally drove a stake into my willingness to be on the road every day of my life. 

I looked at Collective Technologies and figured there was no specific path there for me at all to be what I wanted.  I am a technician much more so than a builder / manager.  I wanted to be able to work on technical things, travel much less to none at all and be happy in a home.  

EMC (the storage company) came along and a offered me a position that looked like a good idea.  Stay technical, do design and build work, travel only when I really needed too rather than every week.  The only part that I was not sure about was moving to California. 

So we try to do it. 

Late January in Elliston, VA Mivon and I working with several helpers (parents, friends, etc) packed up the Tahoe and our (gotta remember to say our) bike trailer full of stuff to take to California and set up an apartment for the next 6 months while I worked out my "right-to-hire" contract between CT and EMC.

The "Redneck Express" had been created!

That's Rascal on the loading deck of the trailer and yes we were loading up in a snow / ice storm.  ICK! But it had to be done to make the timeline.  A night flight to Roanoke, VA followed by a day with no sleep and a lot of packing.  We actually didn't go to sleep when we quit. We had to watch "The Incredibles" on the DVD player and television that were still operational in the master bedroom.  We have been known to be silly :-) 

This was Saturday packing things into the trailer to get ready to go westward.  We stuffed more into that Tahoe and trailer than anyone thought we would be able to get in there. 

The whole idea was that we would move part of our furniture and stuff across the country and then a moving company would be responsible for getting the rest of it out there on EMC's dime. 

So we traveled south and west trying to stay away from the weather and find the Dallas Texas area so that I could do a couple of days work there.  Other than having to wash a bunch of road salt off the Tahoe and trailer there was not much to this.  Pretty weather with nothing white or ugly trying to get us along the way.

Continued on the next page :-)  Follow the links!