Day 5, Tuesday, June 21.

Today I rode up to Motorola for lunch with my ex-coworkers. It doesn’t seem like a month since my last day there. It was great to the guys and it was also good for me because it reconfirmed my decision to chase this dream I’m chasing right now. They are a very talented group of engineers and a great group of people who are faced with one of the toughest projects I ever had to work on at Motorola. The phone they’re working on, the Pebl (yes that misspelling is intentional…Motorola seems to like to misspell phone names….see Razr for example) is a very complex little phone, extremely overconstrained in package that’s a few cc’s too small, and packing an opening mechanism that’s been promised by upper managers as the next best thing since sliced bread. I don’t envy them the task but I can’t think of a more talented group of people to throw at the task.
In the 8 years I worked at Motorola I made a lot of good friends, but I want to mention two in particular that I was really lucky to have had the chance to work with. When John Lindstrom started work with Motorola he and I shared a cube. John is a great guy and has a great sense of humor. He was also the only person from work who actually came to visit me when I was laid up in bed after my motorcycle accident back in 2001. That meant a lot to me. Chris Carlson and I had the unusual circumstances of getting to work together for 7 ½ years. In fact during that time we started out as cubemates and then once Motorola moved us each into our own little three sided boxes, we never ended up sitting more than a few yards apart. As I was leaving Motorola on my last day of work, feeling a bit choked up I’ll admit, I came to the realization that, apart from my parents and my brother, I’ve spent more time with Chris and John than I have with anyone else in my entire life. More than anybody else, Chris and John kept me sane (though they might claim differently) during my years at Motorola. Thank you both very much.
I had originally planned to spend several days in Chicago during this leg of my trip but due to a tardy departure from NC, I had to cut it to one. In particular the person I didn’t get to see this time who I had really wanted to see is my roommate Jin Sim. Jin and I are friends through volleyball and sort of decided to live together on a whim. Turned out that was one of the best decisions I’ve made in a long time. I got an outstanding roommate and a very close friend out of that snap decision. Jin and I were roommates for two years and while we’ll each admit that the other is quirky it really says something for the friendship when you consider that never once in that two years did we have an argument. Jin is another person who I am sure will be a life long friend. Thanks for two great years, Jin. Sadly I also had to miss making connection with Jen and John Nock. I’ve known Jen since my junior year in high school, 1987, (you do the math). I don’t really consider these two friends. They are as much family to me as my parents and my brother. On the return leg of my trip I absolutely will not miss seeing them.