Where to Begin

Beginning is always the hardest part. This story begins simply enough, but soon, things just got way out of hand. It's really amazing just how out of hand things really can get.

When I graduated from University, many of my friends were moving to Ottawa, Ontario to work for rapidly growing companies such as Nortel and JDS Uniphase. I had just completed a concurrent education program, and thought that I would like to teach high school. Unfortunately, the province of Ontario was laying off teachers left, right and centre. I decided that I would enter graduate school, and hopefully by the time I graduated, the province would be replacing all of those positions that they had just slashed, and I would have more to offer my future students.

Two years later I had a shiny new Masters degree in physical chemistry. You still couldn't buy a teaching job, and worst of all, the dot com bust had just started. All of my former class mates that had those great paying jobs working for telecom companies... they were hitting the unemployment lines. Too much competition for too few jobs ... so I did the only sensible thing: I got a full time job working for my graduate supervisor. The money was crap, but the work was enjoyable, and there was only as much of it as I wanted to do. I used to joke that I pretended to work, and my boss pretended to pay me. It was a good arrangement for a newly wed.

My easy life ended a little over a year later, however. I got a job in the town of St. Catharines, Ontario, which is not far from Niagara Falls, and is largely an automotive town. The major employers are the likes of General Motors and TRW. Needless to say, even in 2002 it was not the most prosperous town. A friend of mine who hales from St. Catharines nearly choked when I told him that I was moving there. He would only reply, "Dude, people LEAVE St. Catharines for work."

The work was good while it lasted, but alas, our company was bought by the behemoth known as the General Electric company, and I was offered a one way ticket to New Jersey. The Garden State. I have not mentioned previously, but St. Catharines is known as the Garden City. Mental note: Avoid places that claim to be gardens. I can sum up that experience with one statement. All of the bridges that I have ever seen connecting the state of New Jersey with New York or Pennsylvania require that you pay to LEAVE New Jersey. Apparently, the sign on I80 as you enter Pennsylvania used to read "Pennsylvania - America starts here." The folks in New Jersey purported took offense to the point that the sign had to be removed. But I digress.

Moving forward to the Spring of 2006. I am happily living in St. Catharines (once again or still depending on which tax agency you work for), but driving to the far north end of Toronto. It's a 160 mile (that's right... miles not kilometers) round trip through some of the most congested and suicidal highways in North America. By that point I had been pounding the pavement for a little over 18 months and I was reaching the end of my rope. I was using business trips as a way to recuperate from commuting. At about the time my manager said that he was going to start cutting back on travel, I got a frantic email from my first boss (the guy who hired me back in St. Catharines.) He had just offered a job by a biotech start-up in California, and wanted me to come out and work for him. What could I say? It sounded like a great idea. So did below grade land in Florida or Louisiana.

The first frantic call came in February 2007. That was about the time that I had ripped the bathroom apart and then headed off for a week long business trip, leaving my wife and four year old son with only a working toilet. (I worked very hard to make sure that they had at least that amenity.) I enjoyed my week at the Crowne Plaza so much, that packing up and moving across the continent seemed like a good idea. I had until the following September before everything came to pass.

In retrospect six months should have been lots of time to come to my senses, but alas, some men are born fools. I believe that among them, I must be king. At the time however, it seemed like a good idea.

So... we sold our house (at about the top of the housing market), had the movers come and get the majority of our stuff, and loaded the rest into a Uhaul trailer.

We left St. Catharines at about 10:00 pm on September 26, 2007. I remember it well. The trailer was packed full, the car topper was loaded, and we had crap tied on top of it. It looked like the truck from the Beverly Hillbillies. Unfortunately, our poor 2001 Nissan Sentra was not designed to handle such burdens, and the rear bumper nearly dragged the ground. In fact, I think that we bottomed out leaving the driveway.

We crossed Southwestern Ontario without incident. When we hit the border at Port Huron Michigan, things started going to hell. The crossing went easily enough. Unfortunately it started a paperwork nightmare that would not be cleared up for another nine months. When I told the border officer that we were moving to California, I would have thought that it would have been a clue to check for I94s in all of our passports, and perhaps ask us if we wished to import our car. Neither of those things were done. It was 2:00am by that point, however and we were too focused on making it to our hotel room in Lansing to care.

We spent the next four days dragging an overloaded trailer across the continent, facing road construction and 60mph head winds all the way through Nebraska and Wyoming. My wife almost sent us off the side of a cliff coming into Salt Lake City when the constant barrage of traffic cones in the dark finally did its job and disoriented her to the point of not knowing where the road was. Of course our severely autistic son had never been on a road trip like this and spent many hours screaming at the top of his lungs.

I can sum the trip up like this. One of our son's therapists got him this lady bug toy that sings "Sort, sort, sort your shapes. Circles hearts and squares." I still have nightmares about that song.

We did make it to California without major incident, and got set up in our hotel. All we had to do was find a place to live before the truck came with our stuff. Oh yeah... and import the car, and get drivers licenses. Remember the lack of paperwork on the part of my wife? It's really hard to get a license when you can't prove that you are not an illegal alien. (Hey Mr. Spaceman, won't you please take me along? I won't do anything wrong.)

After one day of rest, I started work. There are four people on the engineering team for the new product. The team consisted of myself, my boss, a sarcastic British guy (like I have ever met any other type of British guy), and "a Silicon Valley Veteran" who would later come to be known as Captain Fantastic.

Let the games begin.