beatbyrd wrote:Welcome back, Paul. Would you be willing to share any info as to your activity during those missing years? The decision to leave one's country for another is (to me anyway) a real major decision. Why Italy? Why now? I moved from SoCal to the Dallas area two and a half years ago. For me, it was mostly a quality of life decision, but also partially political in the sense that the 2 states in question handle themselves very differently. Was something similar involved in your choice?
It's fine if you don't want to elaborate, but my guess is that you still have a bunch of fans here that would be interested in some of the sharable details. You have quite a reputation for excellence, at least IMO.
I had a nice, well-written, semi-detailed response for you, Tom, and then as I was ready to post, my computer crashed as I accidentally kicked the plug out of the wall...
I'll redo it, but in less detail.
This is a timeline. I should point out that the major events that have occurred since mid-2012, have each taken all of my spare time each year, to deal with and resolve. The details of each year would each be a novel-length book, too. It sounds dramatic, but when life events hit fast and hard, it interrupts the established flow of things. My daily involvement in the RRF was the first thing to go, and the last to return.
I've virtually left Facebook after more than a decade, out of disgust and what I'll call, for lack of a better term, "Facebook Fatigue". The raw emotions and contempt for a proportion of my fellow Americans, coupled with the conviction that that type of unmoderated social medium was bad for our discourse, relations, and brains, pushed me off the edge of frequent posting, and brought me back here. Hopefully other Rickenbacker enthusiasts will see the unhealthy form of communication that FB encourages, and settle in this softer, friendlier place.
2012--I'm beginning to be wrapped up in an exhausting divorce, which carries on until late 2014.
Besides the "usual" Rickenbacker work, I'm in the middle of designing a new line of "Pulstar" solid body guitars to use the new solid state dedicated Light Show circuitry that my other company has been developing for four years.
My posts on the RRF decline precipitously.
2013--Early in the year, my Mom suffers a stroke. I have to travel back to Chicago several times. Later in the year, she passes away.
The "Pulstar" project sits on hold, Meanwhile, patents and copyrights are procured in the company's name.
2014--I move house and shop across the Bay to a new larger location. It takes three full months to build out the shop. I swear that I will never move again. (See below, 2020).
Mid-year, my Dad passes on.
Later, my divorce is final.
I miss both parents terribly. I feel like an orphan sometimes. They were kind and always supportive.
2015--I leave my position at the University to pursue guitar work full-time. I'm constantly busy, to this day. "Pulstar" picks up, again. We begin to look for a factory to produce the first run of these guitars.
2016--Every free minute outside of guitar work is spent finding a college for Juliana and arranging for her college loans (actually, MY loans for her college!). "Pulstar" patents and copyrights are granted, one by one.
2017--Juliana begins college in Canada. She transfers to a law school in the Netherlands, and after three more years in the Netherlands and Copenhagen, she completes her degree studies in 2021, but I'm getting ahead of things here...
Mid-year, I meet Rhonda, and we begin dating. Guitar work is full-time, and I'm completing most of the "Pulstar" engineering details and building one last prototype by hand using production electronics.
2018--Rhonda and I discuss a new fantasy--what if we "retired" to Europe? Hmmm...
We attend a charity auction for the Ronald McDonald House in Palo Alto, which she donated many hours to, organizing the interior design of the huge addition. We bid on a two-week deluxe package vacation in Northern Italy, and are the high bidders.
Do you see where this is headed??
2019--We take that vacation--the first for us in several years. We return and settle on Northern Italy as our place to "retire", and begin to search for a house to purchase. We review over 900 listings. The house needs to have a certain amount of space, be close to or within a city's limits, convenient to transportation, in move-in condition, with space or a separate building to house my workshop. Out of 900+ listings, the pickings are mighty slim, but we plan a trip to view 7 possible listings. The plan is to move in early 2020
Rhonda and I decide to get married, so on August 21, 2019, we tie the knot (cliché, I know) at SF City Hall.
The first production "Pulstar" guitars arrive from China, and we put them into storage. I build a "Pulstar" web site, and design another for INDIEGOGO. Were unusual for INDIEGOGO, as we've financed the first production run ourselves. We have actual product to sell, not pie in the sky.
January, 2020--We spend ten days in Italy looking at properties. The very last one is a two-level loft conversion (VERY rare in Italy, where 70% of the populace lives in flats). It has its living area on the upper level and a garage and workshop below. It's in town and a ten-minute walk to the railway station, which puts us within a couple of hours of anywhere in Northern Italy and only a few more from the South. The airport is 15 miles away, and most of Europe is between one and three hours by plane.
We make an offer and sign a contract. We get our Italian tax numbers, and open an Italian bank account to handle bill paying in Italy. It's a whirlwind.
We return to the Bay Area on January 18, the very day that our area of Italy is hit with the COVID pandemic. Somehow we dodged the bullet.
We watch helplessly as Italy is overwhelmed by the pandemic. The entire year is lost before they get a handle on their response.
The rest of 2020 is spent arranging financing with an Italian bank, procuring three shipping containers, booking ocean shipping for the household, workshop, and two cars and my Ducati, selling off excess possessions and giving away much more, seeing the closing date move back twice, and putting together financials for the mortgage bank and the Consulate in order to secure our extended retirement visas.
The Italian Consulate closes, from March 25th through October 1st. Our visa applications are in limbo but we proceed on sheer willpower. On October 10, we finally secure a hearing at the Consulate and appear in person to present our financials and be interviewed.
We close on the house on October 10th. We book flights. Guitar work continues uninterrupted until November 10th.
Meanwhile, there's no word from the Consulate. I write one last desperate email asking for status. Two days later, on November 22, our visas arrive by FedEx.
Our containers arrive at the house on December 1st. With a crew of eight, we pack two containers with 507 boxes, our furniture, and my machinery and tools. The containers leave on December 3rd, and we fly to our new home on the 4th. This is us on the flight from SFO to Frankfurt. We are the ONLY people in Business Class. The doggies are on the floor at our feet...
It is the darkest days of the pandemic. We cannot leave our house except to buy food and supplies for the house remodel.
It takes until roughly April to finish redoing the living part of the loft, and I put up 100 running feet of walls in the workshop, run new wiring for the machines, install lighting, and build out a spray booth. That's finished in May.
I've been back at guitar work since then.
Italy has come out of the pandemic with flying colors, thanks to a new PM who reviews the stats weekly and adjusts response accordingly. Masking is universal and mandatory indoors, compliance is nearly 100%, with no political nonsense. Vaccination levels are high and growing. We carry a computerized green pass with a QR code that cannot easily be forged. Life here is normal except for the indoor masking.
That's it.
Meanwhile, Juliana completed her studies for a degree in International Law (many of you will remember her from NAMM and SoCal Rickenbacker get-togethers, as that cute little blonde girl!), and will take her diploma later this month (October 2021). She has already begun working for a "four-letter international governmental body in Brussels". We'll see where that leads, but I can finally breathe freely after nine years.
Don't ask me about the cars...that's a true RANT.