We took a trip with my sisters family to New Mexico for a little
science and scenery. Also, had a nice visit with our son's
familys at Sunriver, Oregon in August. Really enjoyed the
sunshine and dry climate of Bend.
Carter and Emilie had their 4th birthday in early 2011.
Marsha gets down to see them several times a year and Ryan and Jenn came up in 2010. Its hard to travel with two small ones plus a dog. We're hoping to get them up this way again this coming year.
Our oldest granddaughter is growing like a weed. She and Tyler
were able to come up to see us this past year and always enjoy
going to the beach. This has been a trying year for Tyler
with the banking industry the way its been, but he's doing
well. He recently purchased his first home.
Early in 2009 we found a sea going
relocation voyage that ran half the price of what I normally
target so we couldn't resist. It started in Rome, Italy and
ended in Ft. Lauderdale. We jumped on board in Civitavecchia
after spending several days in Rome. We ended up a total of
30 days and it was very nice to get away from the cold PNW during
early December which had temperatures down to 17° during our
absence. We spent time in the Mediterranean, then the
Atlantic south across the equator to Brazil and back up through
the Carribean. You can read more about it here.
In October 2010 we took a trip with my sisters family to New Mexico. The intent was to visit some scenic locations that we had visited when young plus I had a number of customers in the nuclear field during my career at Tektronix. We timed the trip to visit the "Trinity Site" which was where the first atomic bomb was detonated. You can read about it here.
Also, late 2010, Neil went back to the South Pacific on a
cruise. He'd been working on it for about 2 years which
covered lesser known islands. Aitutaki, at right, is one of
them. This was the answer to a trip he always dreamed about
and got a chance to visit the isolated Marquesas Islands.
The trip report can be found here.
Near term future plans are going to keep us closer to home.
Early in 2013 we're going to spend time in New York City letting
Marsha go to a show or two in the theater district then do the
usual tourist things. At the end of that visit we'll
hop on a ship that will take us to the Caribbean, Panama Canal,
several Central American stops, Mexico and finally end up in Los
Angeles.
In 1992, Neil left TEKTRONIX after 22 years for a more progressive company. He developed telecommunications products and high speed signal digitizers and was once known as "Mr. Digitizer". They were used to record high energy events in nuclear research, including weapons testing. When the cold war came to an end, no one wanted to set off anymore nukes! In any case, he wanted to do something different with a better future. Telecom and wireless communications were showing signs of life and caught his attention. TEKTRONIX never had much vision in that area at the time so my future belonged elsewhere. It turned out to be a wise move.
During this period, Marsha was helping raise our two sons and working in the Special Education department at Newberg H.S., Newberg, Oregon.
Neil joined ATLAS TELECOM as an Engineering Manager & Project Manager to support the development of enhanced services for the Japanese PHS Handyphone. This got him back into wireless communications.
In 1995, I got a chance to do some serious original work with radio product and system design. After 26 years in the Portland area and living in the same house for 22, Marsha and I were ready for a change. We moved to Seattle as I accepted a position with McCaw Cellular to form a new product engineering group. McCaw had recently been purchased by AT&T and saw an opportunity in Wireless Local Loop (WLL) technology. AT&T wanted to develop WLL which would compete with the local telephone company. The design was to be within AT&T rather than farming it out. The decision was to set up shop in Seattle. I was employee number 14 and offered the position of Subscriber System Development Manager. I was promoted to Director of Subscriber Systems Development in 1996. We finished our frist trials in Chicago, on time, and had the product deployed in six selected cities in the U.S. when I retired in Feb. 2001. I originally wanted to retire in the year 2000 (turn of the century) but decided to extend it one more year to optimize financial considerations.
AT&T Wireless was later sold to Cingular and then AT&T
itself being purchased by SBC which included Cingular. In
short, AT&T was pulled back together again after being rescued
by one of the "baby bells".
By retiring early and using cashed out stock options to build our
new home, we avoided all the turmoil the company went
through. Hindsight has shown that our timing couldn't have
been better. The ownership of all these companies is complex but
over several years, they've stabilized.
Marsha went back to work at a RITZ camera store in Redmond, Washington in the mid 1990's and realized she had talent in sales. Something many of us told her for years. (Yes, she probably could sell an ice box to an Eskimo). She was promoted to open and manage the new Woodinville store in 1998. She took Neil to the Bahamas free of charge in October 1999 as part of her sales awards.
We started to look for a place to build our retirement home in 1998. All options were open but we knew we wanted to be around a marine environment. After narrowing it to the PNW, we found 2 1/2 acres of waterfront West of Port Angeles (PA) and knew the moment we saw it that it was what we were looking for. We built our new home in 2000. Marsha left her management position in January 2001 to promote our PA move and prepare our Woodinville house for sale. I left AT&T in February 2001, taught wireless communications for TRA clients for about a year and then decided to just bum around doing things I've always wanted to do but never had the time. I still consult on a limited basis. We've now lived in PA for 11 years. Its turned out the way we had planned.
Updated: April 2012