Landed back in Pittsburg, stint as short order cook, quickly ended when I realized there was more to life - applied to schools in the NW USA and whola after pitching the dart it landed closest to Corvallis Oregon - off to school I went. After 4 years, summers pouring concrete drive ways, pumping gas and teaching rock and mountain climibing - got tired of being poor, went to the Olympics in Washington and became a choke setter (yes logging those old growth cedar).
After months of near death daily workouts, but money rolling in like I had never seen, figured out the folks really making the $$ in logging were the tree fallers, so graduated to a knot bumper at the top of the landing site, waited for an opening in the tree faller group, then tree falling was my game. This lasted about a year ($100/day guaranteed wages with 6 hours of back breaking work was not so bad). Then tried a stint at tree falling as a business, this lasted until my partner was killed in a road accident (go figure we escaped the trees, but not the cars).
Back to Oregon, worked as a fire fighter for the US Forest Service (one year, yes now I was falling Hazardous Trees) mixing in with fun was ice climbing in BC every year for a decade - so I do have a wild side of getting out on the edge. Then on to furniture maker, running my own sawmill, then building tract houses, then running a business to build timber frame houses then going out of business in the late 1970's when interest rates climbed to 15%.
That finally ran me out of business, I turned around and got emplyment with Oregon State Parks running a regional carpentry crew (the most constant bug in me has alwyas been around construction) this lasted for four years then decided I too can be a manager, jumped over to the Oregon State Marine Board and for the next 15 years developed more than 1,000 public boat access sites in the state for public recreational boating - which along the way, I became involved in several national associations, president, lobbying in WA D.C and gaining a far deeper understanding of government.
After two marriages, the woman of my dreams Brenda landed in my life via an e-mail connection through joint best friends, and she moved from D.C to Oregon and along this trip I was contacted by the City of Portland Development agency for a position managing their construction services section. Brenda and I purchased an old home here in Portland, plenty of fix-ups and I have been working for the City for more than 5 years.
The City team I manage handles construction project management, environmental due diligence and cleanup, prevailing wage compliance and construction contracting - the sum that keeps me very busy. Along the way as I can finally see retirement on the horizon, we purchased some property just outside of Bend with one of "oh my god views" of the mountains right on the rim of the Deschutes River that we are slowly getting ready to build our dream retirement home.
So that brings me about current with the past 30 years.
Thanks again for being what you are- and so good to connect with you again after all these years. (Sid Stewart came to Vancouver on September 8th, 2006 and Dave and Brenda drove up from Oregon to have dinner with us.)
Dave (and Brenda from the cheering section too!)
