I was born in NYC in November 1971, the son of a Hungarian immigrant and a Mom from the Midwest (Michigan). We lived in West New York, NJ until 1974, when we moved to Miami. I grew up there. My parents did a pretty good job with me and my younger sister Anna. My dad ran a small sales business while my mom alternated between being stay-at-home or working as a legal secretary. We weren't always the happiest family, but we had some pretty good times as well. My parents wound up getting divorced in 1990. As a kid I read a lot of comic books and surfed the BBS's with my Atari 800. I read a boatload of novels, mostly science fiction, horror, and fantasy. In grade school I was good at math and enjoyed science. I was and still am a great big dork.

Started swimming in the summer of '81, did my first ocean mile race in '86, and first triathlon in '89 in Tallahassee. I was a bit dorky in grade school and was socially awkward my first two years in high school, didn't break out of my shell until I discovered booze and girls. I dated a nice girl from Pinecrest HS (a boarding school) my last few months in high school, then she went off to Boston without a goodbye since her parents were apparently crazy people from Saudi Arabia and she didn't want me to meet them. We liked each other but it wasn't the end of the world. So it goes. I have one good buddy I stay in touch with from high school, but everyone else has drifted out of my life. I did well my first two years of HS, okay my 3rd year, and barely got through my senior year. My final GPA was 2.4 or less. I got into college because of good test scores and entry essays. I applied to and was accepted at FSU, Auburn, and Clemson.

I decided to go to Florida State since it was in-state but still a good distance away from home. I needed to get out of Miami. I never really liked it there for reasons I couldn't put my finger on. Now I know it's because the city is a horror show of materialism, crime, and crowding. I walked onto the swim team in '89 and swam for two years before we went our separate ways. I wasn't really enjoying the 80,000 yard weeks, wasn't getting paid for it, and my focus wasn't 100% on swimming, which is what the coaches were looking for (and rightly so). I really enjoyed going to school in Tallahassee and I liked the smaller town lifestyle. I made some lifelong friends at Florida State who I keep in touch with.

I enjoyed staying fit and competitive and started competing more regularly in running races, open water swims, and triathlons in 1991. A friend from New Jersey talked me into moving to the Jersey Shore in the summer of 1991 to work as a beach lifeguard. I did this in Ocean City, NJ, during the summers from 1991-1996 and that was a great way to become more involved with and exposed to non-traditional multisport events (row-run-swim / beach run-swim / etc). I made some good friends here. I had a lot of fun and made some great memories. I also represented the beach patrol in several out of town competitions and helped the OCBP win several competitions, including the 1992 South Jersey Lifeguard Championships (3rd place swim), the 1991 Dutch Hoffman Memorials (2nd place swim), and two or three Cape May County championships from 92-96 (the years get fuzzy but I was 1st, 2nd, 3rd in the run-swim-run over the years).

I swam in a few marathon ocean swims in the 90s. I once swam around Absecon Island (Atlantic City) in a race that is still occasionally put on if they can find the funding. That was 22.5 miles. I also did a 25 kilometer swim in the Schuylkill river (Philadelphia) and two 15 kilometer races in the bay around Ft. Lauderdale. My last one was Around Key West, which was 12.5 miles. These days I have zero interest in anything longer than 2.4 miles!

I graduated from FSU in '94 with a dual major - Psychology and English Lit. It took me five years and I had no idea what I wanted to do afterwards. I knew I didn't want to get some office job. I thought I could be a writer. I was high on youth and optimism.

During the summer of 94 I met and dated a nice girl from Philadelphia. At the end of the summer I headed off to try my luck in California, while she went to school in Pennsylvania. We stayed in touch but there were no strings. Fate had me return to the Jersey Shore in 95 and we got back together. We got along great and were in love. But I was selfish and immature, and had already decided to take a job in Florida at the end of the summer while she had one more year of school. I thought our relationship was strong enough to handle the distance for a few months, but thinks went downhill rapidly. Before I could turn around, she found somebody more convenient and finished school with a fiance and a baby on the way.

It blew my mind that someone I trusted could turn so quickly. I got pretty depressed and had a bad couple of years. I lost my focus, put on a lot of weight, and in general didn't accomplish much. I dated another girl but that deep feeling wasn't there. Not the happiest time of my life!

In the summer of 1998, I went back to school at the University of Central Florida in Orlando for a grad degree in Technical Writing. My sister had enrolled in the program and thought I might find some direction with it. I decided to give the program a shot. It was a long process but I was feeling better about myself and where I was going. I gradually found myself back to being the happy, easygoing guy that most of you know. I had gotten badly out of shape, but had been getting back into training over several months. Exercise helped me re-find my center. I started racing again and over the next couple years became a pretty good triathlete.

I lived on my sister's couch for a few months, then by myself in a cheap apartment on the east side of Orlando near UCF. My neighbors included a friendly Guatemalan family of ten one on side and a drug dealer upstairs. I didn't have a huge social life, but wasn't depressed either, so everything was copacetic. The course of study at UCF led to an internship at Lockheed Martin Information Systems (now called Simulation and Training). This was my first 'real' office job. I started full-time at a company called Dimensions International in April, 2000. At that point I had no savings and $8,000 in student loan debt. I finished the MA in Tech Writing with a defense of my thesis (Navigation and Modularity in an Interactive Electronic Technical Manual) in 2001. From 99-2005 I worked variously as a technical writer, logistic engineer, and reliability engineer at either Lockheed Martin or smaller companies in the simulation industry, all in Orlando. I was happy to have found a job I was good at, real money coming in (relative to the pennies I had been earning), and some sort of definable career path going on.

Bri and I were introduced through a mutual friend at the St. Pete Mad Dogs in the summer of 2000. Our first date was a run on the trails at UCF, then an evening hanging out in downtown Orlando. I knew on our first date that she was a great girl and a total keeper. After a couple dates I realized I could spend the rest of my life with her. I swore on everything holy that if she gave me a chance, I would not screw it up, no matter what, so help me God. She never realized what hit her. ;)

Eight years later, we're still hanging out. It's wonderful being able to travel through life with my favorite person in the world. If there is such a thing as soul-mates, we are it. We shopped for a condo together in 2001 (5% down with credit card leverage, by the way), were engaged in December 2002, married in 2004, and honeymooned in Aspen. Bought our dog Tassie in December, 2006. Bri puts up with all my nonsense and enjoys hanging out with me. I worship her. I am the luckiest guy in the world.

There is no angst or undue drama in our relationship, except when I act like a moron. Otherwise, I do what she tells me and we have no problems. :)

One of my school class projects in 1998 was developing a website - this eventually morphed into our homepage you see here. The original site has been lost due to so many server and computer changes.

Between the local racing scene and the website I slowly discovered there was a demand for coaching services. I'd been helping people out with swimming/triathlon since the 90s but didn't realize you could actually charge for it. ;-) I put up a coaching info page on my site in '02 and soon had a little side business going.

In 2002 Bri and I also started the MBA program at UCF together. She finished in 04 but it took me a bit longer - 4 years going part-time at night all told. I enjoyed it. As an undergraduate I did not have the focus and discipline to deal with moderately challenging material, hence my degrees (sorry you Psych / English majors). My intellect is OK but intellect without focus = dummy. Going back to business school with a little more maturity was a good move. It has provided me with some mental skills for dealing with our world and provided an impetus to break out of the system. I do enjoy reading and learning about finance and economics.

At the beginning of 2004 we talked it over and decided neither of us saw our current jobs as 'a career.' I was really struggling with the whole "going to work at a job I don't like every day" thing, what a soul crusher. In a given day at any of my jobs I tended to work about two hours, then just had to kill the rest of the time. I was probably in the wrong job category, I'm sure financial analysis, electrical/mechanical engineering, or law would require more attention. But hey, that's not where I was. We started saving money with the plan being to travel around the world in 2006. We'd see where we wound up after that. We couldn't really see Orlando as a place to grow our long roots and raise a family. We have lots of friends and family in Florida, but there are other places in the world to live. We had been seriously looking at moving to North Carolina or Colorado, both places that ranked high on quality of life and lower on the crime and traffic that Central Florida was becoming plagued with.

I also took a step back and looked at my coaching business - not just as an enjoyable hobby but as something I could do full-time. Could it be done? What would it take? I incorporated in '04 as One Step Beyond, wrote up a business plan, developed a separate website, and pursued what you could call aggressive growth. In 2005, I applied to and joined Joe Friel's Ultrafit Associates. I also ran a triathlon swimming program at the local Y. 2005 wound up being a very busy year for me. I trained for Ironman Arizona and then Ironman Hawaii, worked full-time, took one MBA class each semester, and coached roughly 20 individuals throughout the year. I barely slept. By November, I was totally cooked.

Fortunately, our saving money thing worked and we were able to put in our notices with our jobs, pack our condo, put it on the market, and take off for parts unknown. Bri's boss told her she was immature and making a mistake. We sent him a postcard from Europe. ;-) What fun. We sold the condo at the peak of the market. We visited 13 countries and did some really great stuff. Highlights were bike tours in Tasmania, the Cantabrian coast in the north of Spain, and Montana. We went skydiving in New Zealand on Bri's birthday. Visited four national parks in the US. Saw my father's home village in Hungary. Drank liters of beer at Oktoberfest in Munich. Had breakfast at a cafe in Vienna. It's a great big world out there, lots to see and do. You can read all that stuff on our trippin06 page.

We wound up in the Triangle area of North Carolina as we've visited for races in the past and Bri has a sister who went to UNC. It is on the east coast and close to plenty of our friends and relatives. We didn't blow through our entire savings on our trip and were able to put twenty percent down on our first house. I am a cheap SOB with regard to everything except beer, entertainment, and food. Our new home town is a great place to live, work, and train. We plan to be here for a long time.

That's it! The completely unabridged version. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. What a long, strange trip it's been. And there's still so much more to go.