On Being in Connecticut for Thirty Years...

So I was gettin' my hair cut with some friends the other day...*

...and small talk turned to visiting family in Louisiana over Christmas, and the long drive, and how long I've been in CT, and...suddenly I realized that I was approaching 30 years of having lived in Connecticut.

Thirty. Years. That means I've lived in Connecticut more than I haven't.

When I got home I researched some old Quicken files and found a charge on my Discover card (remember them?) to a Days Inn in Roanoke VA on February 7, 1992, with the category "moving expenses". I remember that trip, I was driving up in my Rabbit convertible with a few bags stuffed in the back.**

That means on February 7th 1992 I left everything behind in Wichita Falls Texas and began a brandy-new life...in Connecticut.

Connecticut! To suggest that my life totally changed on that date is an incredible understatement.

So why move? Well, auto racing, of course. From the mid-80s onward racing had been the tunnel-vision sole focus of my life, from SCCA amateur club racing to a few tasty shots at professional racing with massive (misplaced) expectations of more.

But why Connecticut? Well, also an easy question. I had met some racers from New England during the SCCA Runoffs at Road Atlanta the prior September and was invited to visit Connecticut over Christmas. And given I had just gotten laid off from my engineering job (while at the Runoffs, natch) it was an easy decision to take up that invite. And as I was visiting I got to talking with my close friend, JJ Gertler, and he got to talking about well maybe if I moved to Connecticut he'd buy a Showroom Stock car for us to race in 1992...and then during the same Connecticut visit I caught a classified ad (remember those?) about a company in Wallingford (CT) that had an engineering job opening doing exactly what I had just gotten laid off of doing - and they were a smaller competitor to that giant prior company and wanted the know-how. One job interview later - during that the same visit to Connecticut - I had a job offer.

And then I drove back home to Texas to mull it all over.

Despite a job offer, a tasty prospect of free access to a competitive race car in the Northeast (with half a dozen race tracks within reasonable driving), and pretty much no competitive racing prospects left in Texas (my current race car was obsolete and there weren't many race tracks in Texas anyway), it really wasn't as easy a decision as it may seem. In fact, it was a pretty g-damned hard decision, leaving behind family and good friendships that I had built over the prior 14-ish years (half of my life at that time). I was pretty stressed over it, as I recall.

But, I made the choice to move and found myself alone in Wallingford CT.

I blame JJ.

Of course, I have to blame Bill Aston before that, as he's the one that got me into this racing thing in the first place.

But I still blame JJ.

1992 was a whirlwind year, between a new job that expected my full attention coupled to a racing season that actually got my full attention. And that racing season was incredibly successful, with my having met Matt Kessler and his stepfather Bill Wittstein and getting them involved in racing and their invaluable support for that racing year. And we almost won the damned national championship that year to boot.

But such close, constant, high-stress associations coupled to competing inflated Type-A egos resulted in a team split at the end of that year (can't blame Matt for that). And then I learned in November that my not paying attention to my job resulted in yet another racing-related layoff (deserved).

I was alone, no job, no racing prospects, no friends. No future, past the end of my (short) checkbook and (long) credit card debt.

So I got a short-term contract engineering job to run out the remainder of my lease to March 1993, which I stretched a month or two longer 'cause the money was good (I rented a spare room from an elderly widow after my lease expired).

That April I got invited to attend a Civil Obedience Day event run by Bob Whitworth, the CT State Chapter Coordinator for the National Motorists Association (we were protesting the 55 mph national speed limit; remember that? It was a hoot -- the event, not 55mph...) And during that event I met my future wife, Thea Moritz.

And I stayed in CT. The rest, as they say, is history.

So I blame Bob, too.

And these are just a few of the impossibly vast number of people that have affected the directionof my life. I can look back at the numerous influences and decisions, large and small, that have resulted in my being where, and who, I am today. I can only imagine who I'd be today, had I not met Thea and instead moved to Palo Alto CA (something I was actually working on at the time) or moved to Louisiana to live with my father (also pondered) or to move back to Wichita Falls (not seriously considered -- been there, done that -- but mom and a lot of friends were there).

Without these chance interactions, I would be nothing or nowhere who I am today.

So you may ask if I'm curious what would have happened, if I'd made anyone of these decisions instead to leave? Of course I am! Any regrets? Nope, absolutely none, zero. For me, "regret" means you'd want to change things. But while I'm curious to see what would have happened, my life is so good that I'd never want to risk changing it.

So thanks, Bill, Matt, Thea, and Bob.

Maybe even JJ.

But thirty years in this state...woof. Here's to thirty more, I guess...

GA

P.S., what about retiring in Connecticut...?

*Obscure Letterkenny reference.

**Don't hate. It had the suspension, drivetrain, brakes, wheels/tires from my rolled 1983 GTI Improved Touring car and I really liked it...drove that convertible all over...should not have sold it but I was generating cash for my move away from CT...read on...