It’s the usual story: boy meets girl at radio station with a country artist, thinks she’s with someone else, but follows her to her car for her phone number anyway. (With much persistent prodding from a friend, that is! – Thank you Adam!!)
Ok, so, we met in March 2000 in Reno, NV started seeing each other. Two years later moved in together. Two years after that went on a life changing vacation to Fiji.
We learned a lot from the people there. The native Fijians are gentle, happy, and kind people and seem to love their lives even though they still live in small villages in huts with dirt floors and wash their clothes on rocks by the river. (No, they aren’t cannibals anymore!) They live simply and enjoy their lives.
When we returned to our daily lives of working our butts off forty plus hours a week to pay for our million dollar home, brand new cars, and other luxuries, we didn’t feel the same. We felt that “something” was still missing. We felt that there was more to LIFE.
Two years after that we bought a bed and breakfast business in Montana. This was a lifestyle that was supposed to afford us the “luxury” of being together more and enjoying life. However; the timing was not good for us and we both spent all of our retirement on a dream that we quickly woke up from with nightmare results.
Two years later (see a pattern here?) – Tom was back in radio and Lori back in an office, but in California. Hating life again. Then, two years later (again), an opportunity to go back to Montana, in radio surfaced. So, back to Montana for, you guessed it – two years.
One day, Tom received a phone call asking him if he’d be interested in working at the legendary radio station that Buck Owens started in Bakersfield, CA. We said, “…no thank you!…” “…we’re happy here…” But, then we got to thinking about how far away we were from family (mostly in Reno) and how much we missed our friends on the west coast, and our youngest daughter in the central valley of California, and after many offers, Tom finally accepted and off we went, back to California.
Now, in all this time, we got married in 2008 and still hadn’t given up the dream of a simpler life, with more time together and less hassles from other people and annoying jobs working for other people and not working for ourselves. Tom loves his radio, but the “corporate’ business it has become just makes it not so fun anymore. We talked about wanting to travel and how much we like to drive. We joked about being truck drivers and having one of those great big semis and living and working in it. Or… we talked about buying a motorhome and traveling and living in it when we retire.