San Diego was starting to wear thin. The shipyard grind, the endless cycle of welding, cutting, grinding, and inhaling enough toxic fumes to qualify for early retirement in a cancer ward—it was all getting old. Sure, I was a lead man, practically untouchable, last in line for layoffs, but what the hell did that mean? A secure spot in a prison? A guaranteed future of punching in, punching out, and drinking myself into a stupor just to forget the monotony?
And the marriage—Jesus. I wasn’t exactly Husband of the Year. Too much drinking, too much of that macho bullshit I thought was supposed to make me a man. Instead, it just made me an asshole. My young wife, fresh into the world of being legally bound to a guy who smelled like burning metal and Coors Light, was starting to see the cracks. So, we did what all lost souls do when they hit rock bottom: we joined the Mormon church.
I don’t know if it was desperation or divine intervention, but something in that culty little gathering cracked open my brain. Made me want to be better. Not a saint—fuck no—but maybe just a little less of a bastard. I prayed, trying to soften whatever was inside me. My idea of “manhood” wasn’t working, and I knew it.
Meanwhile, the shipyards were slowing down. Some union goons from Washington were trying to weasel their way in, ships were getting pulled for maintenance elsewhere, and work started feeling as uncertain as my marriage. We were getting paid for 40 hours but only working part of that thanks to some job-sharing program. I had time to think, and thinking is dangerous.
One day, I decided, “Fuck boats. Let’s do buildings.”
I started my own business—Pro Installation. No business plan, no capital, just a half-baked idea and a stolen hour at Kinko’s to print some flyers. The world was just getting its hands on fax machines, those prehistoric contraptions that spit out curling paper if you looked at them the wrong way. I hit up the Yellow Pages, found every goddamn hotel in San Diego, and started blasting out faxes. Hilton. Marriott. Renaissance. Hotel Del. Every single one of those places had HVAC systems, hot water boilers, plumbing—shit that needed insulation. And I was the guy for the job.
Amazingly, it worked.
First call came from the Renaissance. I walked in, took some measurements, wrote up a quote in carbon copy, and suddenly, I was in business. One job led to another—laundromats, diaper boiler systems, ceiling pipes. Then I landed the motherlode: the downtown convention center Marriott.
They took me into the industrial underbelly of the hotel, past the grease-stained maintenance corridors and humming machinery, and finally, they opened a thick steel door. Inside was a massive cooling unit, sweating condensation, leaking efficiency like a politician leaks integrity.
“What can you do with this?” they asked.
I took a long look, pretending I hadn’t just pulled half of my plan out of my ass. “Rubberize it,” I said. “Seal it tight, increase efficiency, reduce condensation. Hell, I’ll even make it look good.”
Fifteen grand. That’s what I quoted. Fifteen grand for some rubber and a roll of military-grade fabric. When I was done, that thing looked like a goddamn art piece. Wrapped up tight, seams perfect, like a Michelin-star chef had gotten into the insulation business.
The maintenance guys were in awe. They kept dragging people down just to see it. It didn’t just work—it was quiet, which meant no more thundering machine noise rattling through the floors. They were so impressed, they swapped out the industrial door with a new one with a window, just so people could gawk at my masterpiece.
Even my father-in-law was proud, and that meant something. He was a good man, the kind who didn’t hand out compliments unless they were earned. He kept showing it off, using his maintenance key to give his buddies a tour like it was the Sistine Chapel of insulation.
And then they threw another $20,000 at me for extra thermal blankets.
So there I was, standing outside in the blazing San Diego sun, wrapping pipes in fiberglass insulation, wearing nothing but a dust mask and a pair of jeans. Tourists walked by, half-naked women in bikinis stopping to chat, inhaling god knows how much airborne glass just to ask me what I was doing. It was the ‘80s. People still thought smoking was healthy.
I even got work at Hotel Del, the place where I had my honeymoon. Wrapped pipes, installed thermal blankets. The work was good. The money was rolling in. But there was a problem.
I was just one guy.
No sales team. No crew. If I was working, I wasn’t selling, and if I was selling, I wasn’t working. And my wife, supportive as she was, wasn’t exactly cut out for cold calls and contracts. I had built a business, but I had no idea how to scale it.
Then, one day, I was flipping through The Oregonian—because for some reason, I had convinced myself Oregon was the promised land—and I saw an ad. A guy looking for a business partner. He had a painting company but had just bought a blower truck. Wanted to expand into insulation. Said there was a killing to be made.
He told me, “Move up here, bring your family, I’ll give you a van and you run the insulation side. Let’s make some money.”
So we packed up.
Looking back, could I have just stayed in San Diego, kept grinding at the shipyards? Could I have stuck with Pro Installation, figured out how to scale it, become the next big insulation mogul? Maybe. But something in me knew I needed to go.
I wasn’t wired to settle.
And for once, I wasn’t making the move alone. I had a wife who believed in me, a life waiting to be built. So we went. Not because it was easy. Because it felt right.
