buckle-up

There is a lot of truth to the saying, “being in the right place at the right time” and you can tie yourself up in knots trying to figure out just how it all happens. But as I look back through the years at the people that have entered my life it’s all happened without any planning or scheming and yet, many of these accidental encounters have turned out to be life changing. Top of the list, naturally, was how Margo and I met – me from Sydney, Australia, and Margo from Warsaw, Poland. Even as our paths had crossed almost the day I stepped onto the campus of Tandem Computers, the journey wasn’t linear by any means. And then there was the chance encounter with John (JR) Robinson in the offices of Nixdorf Computers at a time when his company was just three people and the future looked anything but assured. It was JR who encouraged me to go to California to join Tandem Computers and work on a mutually beneficial program featuring his product. In the 1960s we called it “the flying fic...

There was a time, way back in the early 2000s, when the idea came to Margo and me to ride motorcycles. Together, we signed up for lessens that eventually led to us both to getting our motorcycle riders endorsements added to our respective drivers’ licenses. Cool! We were still very young back then and immortal. And so a two decades long adventure began. Of course, any opportunity to purchase an entirely new wardrobe meant a lot to Margo and while she stopped short of buying nail polish matching her purple trimmed motorcycle, I have to believe the thought crossed her mind more than once.  My own adventure with motorcycles began when I was still a teen and at high school in Sydney. Friends at my school bought motorcycles as our final year came to an end and I thought that bikes were pretty neat and there was many a later afternoon spent hanging around their homes as they “played” with their bikes. Honda was the manufacturer of choice back then and, for a while, 250cc / 305cc ...