October, 1977, I arrived in Silicon Valley with the woman I
had met during my sailing adventure. The plan was to work hard, save money,
build a new boat and go back to sailing. I had fallen in love with California
during the year that I worked and lived aboard my boat in San Diego so it was a
no brainer to come back to California to look for work.
Before I got here, I hadn’t even heard of Silicon Valley. I
came looking for a job that would pay well and finance a new boat and a
circumnavigation. A friend pointed me toward San Jose. I quickly found a good job and
it looked like I was on my way. But, as is often the case, the plan didn’t quite
work out.It is heartbreaking to look back and see how easily it could have worked if I had stuck to the plan. The employee stock plan I signed up to when I went to work at Four Phase Systems would have been golden if I had stuck with it. Motorola bought out Four Phase and the stock turned out to be worth considerably more than I had paid for it.
Unfortunately, I had gotten caught up in Silicon Valley’s “money, sex and power” ethos. I left Four Phase thinking I would become an entrepreneur and get rich quickly. I sold my stock, squandered a windfall from an earlier startup and lost my sailing companion, friend, lover and wife through my foolish behavior. I had bought a lot of steel and parts for the new boat and ended up selling them off for next to nothing when I lost my focus.
Some wonderful things did come out of the disaster. I learned to fly and enjoyed two years of working as a flight instructor teaching everything from basic private pilot skills to aerobatics. I learned to fly sailplanes and worked as a tow plane pilot. I experienced life in the desert – 11 years in Phoenix, Arizona.
I remarried and became the father of two girls who brought me great joy. They taught me about dimensions of love that I would never have known otherwise. The marriage ended but I have been fortunate to be able to continue the relationship with my daughters.
Through all of this, I continued to think of myself as a sailor – a boat person. It wasn’t a daily obsession but there were recurring flashes of the contentment of being at sea, of standing night watches and watching the moon go through its phases, of learning the names of stars and using them to navigate to a little island in the Pacific, of being self-sufficient, of learning to plan to deal with all the things that could go wrong, of tying knots, changing sails, sleeping in a berth with the sound of water rushing past the hull.
By the time my marriage ended, I had pretty much convinced myself that I was never going sailing again. I married again and enjoyed six years with a woman who is as close to an ideal partner as I can imagine. Our relationship started in Placerville, CA, and took us to the Portland, OR, area. I retired (I thought) and we moved back to Placerville to renovate our house and settle into a quiet, orderly life.
But it hasn’t worked out that way. (Do I hear the universe laughing at my plans again?) I felt smothered living in Placerville. Placerville is in El Dorado County – the second most conservative county in California. I am nowhere near being a conservative. It was hard to find like minded friends. I had planned to develop my interest in photography and, perhaps, sell some of my work. I thought I might start writing. I wasn’t sure what – but surely something would surface.
As we worked through refurbishing the house and trying to find our place in our community, the sailing dream/fantasy resurfaced. After finishing one of the milestone projects on the house, we took a weekend off to go to Santa Cruz, relax and talk some more about what we wanted to do with the rest of our life. At some point, I blurted out that the only real passion in my life was to finish my uncompleted dream – build a boat and sail it around the world.
My wife/friend/lover/companion did not take that well. From her point of view, this was pretty much out of the blue. She knew of my past sailing adventures but believed (as I did) that it was all in the past. She had never spent time on boats and had no desire to learn to love sailing. Things spiraled out of control and, in short order, I had used my 401(k) money to buy a boat, moved aboard and started working on fixing it up for the long dreamed of circumnavigation. We are struggling to keep some semblance of a marriage together under these new conditions.
The boat, Laelia, turned out to need more improvements than I anticipated. That translates to needing money. I started looking for work again.
Thirty five years after I arrived in Silicon Valley with a dream, I am back. This time, I have a boat but I still need money to finish outfitting and go sailing. I have learned the value of staying focused so I think this time, the dream will be realized.
I am working just a few miles from where I first lived when I arrived in Silicon Valley and started to work at Four Phase Systems. As Yogi Berra put it so well, “it is déjà vu all over again.” Sorta. Lots of things have changed. When I arrived, Apple Computers was just past the garage shop stage and was advertising to hire software developers. I didn’t take it seriously – they were just hobby computers, not real computers.
Now, the apple orchard I used to walk through on the way to work is now Apple Computers’ headquarters. The old Four Phase buildings were damaged by an earthquake and have been torn down. Apple has built new buildings and expanded into that space too. The place where I now work used to be known as Hewlett-Packard but some years back, HP divested themselves of this operation and it became Agilent Technologies.
The house that I lived in when I arrived was a post WWII flat-top cracker box that our landlords upgraded by putting on a pitched roof. It has since been entirely rebuilt and is not recognizable as the same place.
But, despite all the changes, some things have not changed. I am still working toward the dream. Some of the friends I had back then are still here. We get together once a month to have dinner and compare notes. As old farts are wont to do, we talk about the old days as well as where we are today. Traffic is even worse that it was then and the general pace of life is even more frenetic than thirty five years ago.
So here I am after thirty five years. I am back in Silicon
Valley. I am working toward the original goal - a boat and a round-the-world
sailing trip. I alternate between the joy of being on a boat, living on the water again and despair at the condition of my marriage.
So much has happened and I am back and barely past the starting
point.
What a long strange trip it has been...
... and it’s not over.
