Me In A Nutshell

I was born in 1972 in San Jose, CA, and moved to Los Altos, CA when I was 6, and lived there for the next 12 years. My family had a keen appreciation for music, and that definitely passed on to me as well. When I was young, I would only listen to classical music (espeically J.S. Bach), and complained if my folks were listening to anything else (you know, devil-music like Pete Seeger :). Once I was in Junior High School, my musical tastes started to expand considerably to finally become as eclectic as they are now.

I went away to college at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1990. I liked Santa Cruz a lot, and got a job at SCO (who've since sold off the division I worked in to Caldera and re-formed the remainder as Tarantella) after I got my Computer & Information Sciences bachelors degree in 1995. I got my first car in 1997, having never really needed (or wanted) one during college, and having driven motorcycles prior to that. What a lemon! Word to the wise - stay away from 1993-vintage Mercury Sables (or their sibling, the Ford Taurus)!

Early in 1999, I returned to my lifelong love affair with bicycling after a several year haitus when career and other concerns took the foreground.

In May of 1999 I left SCO and joined Sun Microsystems. After commuting 45 miles over Highway 17 4 days a week for 10 months, I decided that as nice as Santa Cruz was, it just wasn't worth 3+ hours per day of commute time, and I moved to Fremont, CA in March of 2000.

After reading Felix Wong's accounts of his ultra-cycling experiences, I got into ultra-cycling myself in 2001, riding 3 double centuries (that's 200 miles in one day) and getting the California Triple Crown. I finally got fed up with the horrible Mercury Sable in early 2001 and got a 2002 Subaru Outback Sport - muuuuch better!

I signed up for a 8/11/2002 Mt. Whitney day hike, and in the summer of 2002 returned to my lifelong enjoyment of hiking in the course of preparing for that. I met my girlfriend, Sarah, also in 2002, while on a Multiple Sclerosis charity ride in Sonoma - cool!

After a couple years using basic point and shoot digital cameras, in January 2004 I took the plunge and purchased a Canon Digital Rebel SLR. Thus begins a bottomless money pit :-). Equipment cost notwithstanding, photography has become another passion, tying in nicely with my interest in hiking, birding and wildflowers, and providing endless opportunities for learning and improvement.

In May 2004, I moved from Fremont to San Francisco's Outer Richmond district to be closer to my girlfriend and city life, and in November 2005, we moved in together into a lovely Edwardian flat in the Haight-Ashbury district. Although it's taking some getting used to living in a dense'ish urban setting, I am loving that I don't have to drive very often, and can walk to a good grocery and many stores/restaurants/bars.

I've mostly stopped doing organized bicycle rides these days, but try to ride casually when I can (not nearly often enough lately!), and haven't at all lost my passion for riding. Hey, it's hard training for 200 mile bike rides and keeping a happy girlfriend! :)

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