Once upon a time...

This is the tale of how and why Glen and Katharine ended up stuffing all of their belongings into a moving van and taking their show on the road to Bend, Oregon. It's full of thrills, chills, drama, and excitement. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll wonder why anybody would take the time to type all of this and then you'll wonder why you took the time to read it.

It all began with a case of airsickness. Honest. Several years ago we were flying in a Cessna 205 (8436Z for those of you who care about such things) up to Seattle to visit my parents. The weather was marginal and around Klamath Falls (the south end of Oregon) it began to rain. We had been experiencing mild turbulance throughout the flight and it finally got to be too much for Katharine who announced that we had two choices: land the airplane or face the prospect of having to clean the interior of the airplane. Since I'm not fond of cleaning airplanes I chose to land. The nearest airport was Sunriver (15 miles south of Bend) so that's where the wheels touched down.

Sunriver turned out to be a pretty cool place, and we ended up visiting several times over the following years. On one such visit in the summer of 2000 Katharine accidentally bought a house (it wasn't her fault, the darn thing just jumped out and grabbed her wallet when she wasn't looking). Soon we were visiting Sunriver on a pretty regular basis and we noticed that every time we left we would look at each other and say "why are we going back?"

Fast forward a bit to February of 2003. Katharine was very successful in her position at Bank of Marin while I was starting my second year at Turin Networks Incorporated, a telecommunications gear startup. This is the part of the story where we get into serendipity

ser·en·dip·i·ty ( P ) Pronunciation Key (srn-dp-t) n. pl. ser·en·dip·i·ties The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident. The fact or occurrence of such discoveries. An instance of making such a discovery.

One Wednesday I went into work as usual. I wandered into the cafeteria and happened to run into the H.R. director who said "Hi Glen, How's it going?" For no particular reason I replied "Great! My prox-card still works which means I still have a job!" She smiled and laughed at my incredible sense of humor. That day I rode my bike to lunch with a friend who works at another startup nearby. During lunch I asked him "hey...I hear you guys are hiring these days, what's up with that?" (all of the local telecomm companies had been laying off people so it was odd to hear that somebody was hiring). He told me about the skills they were looking for (which didn't match with mine) and then said "but if you want a job I'm sure I can get you an interview". I laughed and said "Naah, I've got a great job, why would I want to leave?"

I hopped on my bike and toodled back to work. About 30 minutes later I got called into the office of the Director of Software with my boss (who looked like he was going to keel over). They gave me the usual line about cutbacks, etcetera, handed me a box and told me that I had to leave immediately (for those of you who may be wondering, I don't recommend this experience). By the time I got back to my desk (about 20 feet) I was locked out of every system in the company and the head of the I.T. department was looming over me asking for the root password on the Linux box under my desk. I went from trusted employee to corporate liability in the blink of an eye.

I decided that it might be a good idea to make a phone call or two so I called Katharine who wasn't available, so I left a short cheery message asking her to give me a call back. I then called up my friend from lunch and said "about that interview..."

While I was packing up my desk (and ignoring the large looming I.T. manager) Katharine called me back. I said "are you sitting down?" to which she replied "Why, did you lose your job?". No kidding, that's the actual conversation.

Within a week I managed to get an interview at my friend's company, and the interview went quite well. Meanwhile, out of the blue, a friend of Katharine's who now works for a bank (brand X) in Oregon called up Katharine on a Tuesday and said "hey, you guys are always threatening to move to Oregon. If you're serious about that then you should come up to Bend this Friday. Brand X is having a seminar and all the right people will be there, they'd love to talk to you". OK, that was weird. Why would she suddenly make that kind of call right when we're suddenly evaluating our options? Katharine told me about it and said "gee, there's no way we could get to Oregon this Friday is there?", to which I replied (and I quote): "Seems pretty simple to me, open car door, insert butt, watch unemployed husband drive to Bend".

Now we have to digress from the mainstream of our symposium a bit for some background information. A few years ago, when Katharine was starting up the Trust and Investment department for Bank of Marin, she helped found a group of west coast trust departments in order to share best practices and help each other through the process of starting and running small trust departments. As a result, whenever we went to Oregon she would check in with one of the members of this group who worked for Bank of the Cascades. Since we were heading up to Bend, she called up the bank and ended up with a Friday morning appointment with the bank president.

Back to our story, we drove up to Bend on a Thursday night. On Friday morning Katharine got a call from the head of the trust department at Bank of the Cascades (with whom she had not spoken earlier). He said "hey, I just heard that you're in town and will be talking with the president this morning. Before you go in you might want to know that last night I told her that I'm going to retire." OK, that's weird squared. We just happen to be in town, we just happen to be at a rather important crux in our lives, Katharine just happens to have an appointment with the president, and the head of the trust department just happened to retire the night before.

The remainder of Friday went like this: Katharine talked to Bank of the Cascades, they were impressed with her and she was impressed with them. Katharine then went to the Brand X meeting and things were less encouraging there. Finally we met up for lunch at which time I got a phone call from my friend's company with a job offer. The salary was over a 33% cut in pay and I would be working for a company that would have the same longevity concerns as my prior employer.

Time to weigh the options. On the one hand, we lived in a great neighborhood with great neighbors and Katharine had a great job. If we stayed, however, I would be earning far less money, we would have to significantly modify our lifestyle, and the new job could disappear as quickly as the last one.

On the other hand, we could sack California, the hour long commute to go 15 miles, the lifestyle that dictated that we only saw Aaron in those rare moments when we weren't both scrambling to get to work, and a state that would actually be better off with an Austrian body builder in the Governer's mansion than the current inept occupant. We could move to a place where the cost of living is 40% lower, the environment is 200% healthier, and the recreational opportunities are almost endless.

That pretty much bring us up to date. These days Katharine is commuting 7 minutes to work (8 if she stops for coffee on the way). Meanwhile I'm playing house-dad while trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. One of these days I'll find a job, we're just not sure in what industry. In the meantime there are miles and miles of single track mountain biking right outside of our doorstep, skiing is 20 minutes away, there's a beautiful river that flows through the heart of the town, and when we wake up in the morning we can look out our windows at views of the mountains. Add a wireless LAN so that I can type web pages like this one while sitting with my feet up in front of the TV and you've got a pretty good idea of the present lifestyle.