So we planned to escape California. The job, as great as it was, ultimately felt like I was wasting my time. I mean, I'm getting old. How many more years do I have opportunity to do what I really want to do? That is, something more like the sum of my lifetime of experience and training and desire? Shouldn't I be doing that instead of dancing on the edge of the corporate highwire? So we bought property in Prescott, Arizona. After a year of looking, this was an 1100 sq. ft. shop. It started out as an engine rebuilding shop, so it already had 220, gas and water, and drains in the floor. Oh, and there was a house in front of it. Perfect.

We made plans. We would gradually get the shop equipped and the house in order, though it had recently been remodeled and looked pretty good. We would visit from California regularly until all was ready. We were thinking two or three more years before I would leave corporate Kawasaki. We built out the shop, started moving in equipment, put in lots of shelving, and a year went by. Then one day we just said, the heck with it. We pulled the plug, resigned from our jobs, got a super-accommodating mover (he moved household things and shop equipment) to do the deed, and moved to the what was to us, a kind of homestead.

It's hard to appreciate now, but wow. Life was instantly slower-paced. In fact it took that first year to realize I no longer had to work as hard as I had at KMC, or for that matter my whole life. And though we had lived in another part of the state for more than 20 years, this was very different from the big city, and even more different from Southern California. Which was the plan. Very nice.

It does get warm, even at over 5,000 feet. But we also get snow, typically two hard snowfalls between December and February, usually over a foot each. Also rain and hail, temps down in the teens. Marvelous.

And cicadas. We're used to them, though the first year was an adjustment. And Javelinas, which we were not at all expecting and will never get used to. They run wild, and they are protected by the state. One year a whole family of them basically took over the property. Nasty, smelly, five-inch-long teeth. Not good. My wife, a midwesterner who is far from conversant with Spanish, once called them, in a slip of the tongue, Jalapenos, which has stuck. Comic relief is helpful in this case. Very. We may have to put a fence all around the house.

Postscript 2026:
It's been ten years now. Still here, still busy, still liking it. We've slowed the business down a bit, made changes. But I am doing the things I want to do. And we like it here. Quiet, shaded, a slower pace. We're blessed.