Born in LA, the last of 6 I've been spoiled with love my whole life. We moved to Sacramento when I was 3 and filled the next 10 years with memories of baseball, swimming, and I'm guessing about 10,000 miles on bikes and skateboards.  Baseball was big there and I found my very freckled face grinning when I figured out that this young (the youngest in the league) pitcher could take down the biggest guys with a ball, by striking them out of course although I definitely hit a lot of batters, I apologize if one of them were you.  The sharing of knowledge like those Coaches did with me inspired me to try to listen and share knowledge with all the people that cross my path, there is nothing better then learning something new from a complete stranger.  5th grade brought a move to Beautiful Annandale MN and the start of small town living, this might sum it up: Lazy Sunday evening and a gang of 15 BMX'ers riding wheelies and jumping anything we could find decided to scatter when the Chief of Police drove by and he was all in!  We flew down the alleys with Billy in hot pursuit, we would lose him by going across lawns and soon he would be back on our tail kicking in the 4 barrel on the crown victoria police interceptor, totally sweet!  Water skiing, downhill skiing, girls and parties kept adolescents a pleasant blur until I joined the construction trade in 1986 and moved to the Reno / Lake Tahoe area. Once again great Coaches shared with me their craft and before long I was helping to build stunning homes in a remarkable place.  1991 got me back into school in Minneapolis at Dunwoody Institute where we kind heartedly referred to it as Red Neck Tech.  Once my eyes were opened to mechanical design I knew there was no turning back, CAD was just getting legs as well as many advancements in fabricating techniques. The next few years after graduation had me working on projects from huge structures that encapsulated a 747 to the machines that make foil balloons I was all over the spectrum and loving every minute of it.  2000 brought a job that I did not see coming but the wonderful world of visual merchandising grabbed a hold of me and just wouldn't let go.  I've always enjoyed seeing projects come to fruition, but being a part of the entire design process from concept development to mechanical design to fabrication and having to make it functional and appealing is always an exciting challenge that I will never tire of.