After 12 years in the Air Force, a bit over 5000 hours of flying, and one non-working eardrum, I left the service to work as a contractor for Electrospace Systems in northern Virginia. Of course I ended up mostly working on projects for ABNCP aircraft. Did a fair bit of work on Silk Purse projects and the last three of ten years working on the KW-7 replacement project. After 10 years, plenty of it spent on the Shirley Highway, I decided to head south.  So, I took a job in Florida doing QA for Volkswagen and Audi - checking out the owner’s manual and such. Ended up being a test driver, then test station manager in Tampa. It was great fun driving high performance cars in some great locales - Sebring, Daytona, Phoenix and smaller tracks too. In spite of a bit of glamor with the test cars, it was long hours, up to 75 hours a week. Managing the station was a bit better, but with 65 employees the personnel headaches outweighed the pay and hours. After a divorce, I took stock of life; my kids were grown and I thought I’d take a lark and move to the birthplace of my parents, Ireland. Came here in 2000 and haven’t looked back. I’m remarried to a lovely Irish lady and we own a little corner store. We’re the hot spot of local gossip and chat, and we also sell a bit too. A couple of days a week I work on editing technical manuals part time from home which keeps me at the keyboard (my roots in TTY (lol)). If you’re headed to Ireland let me know - we’ll role out the ‘green’ carpet for ya!