My 8 year itch

There seems to be a pattern of 8 years between major events in my life.  Some of these were in my control and some were not.  8 years after my first memories I was transported from the only home I could remember to another place.

I remember it being very traumatic.  My parents ripped me from a nice cozy school environment and placed me in another school where I did not know anyone.  I think that set the 8 year cycle in motion.

Eight years after that I married Robyn in Colorado and made that my new home.  Again 8 years later, we moved from our condominium into a house that we built from the ground up.  That adventure took 18 months to complete.

It was not long until I needed another adventure. I found a position in a well known classical French restaurant in the mountains outside of Estes Park, CO, about a 40 minute drive from our house.  I cooked there for over 2 years before returning to the software industry to make some money. 

I worked consistently in the computer industry until about 8 years after my cooking adventure when I came up with another big adventure.  I had been dabbling in adventure racing, where you orienteer, kayak, mountain bike, repel off cliffs, continuously for 48 hours to 7 days, depending on the length of the race.  I was rehabing an ankle injury and thinking about how to get into shape for the long races.
I had read about people running ultra marathons and traversing great distances. I thought that would be fun.  I had also heard of people running across the state, East to West, or North to South, but I had never heard of someone running the perimeter.  Should be easy!  So I started planning it out.

Robyn and I accomplished this adventure between January 1, 2001 and December 23, 2001. I started running from the four-corners monument and headed north.  After four days I had covered 96 miles.  We headed home only to come back about three weeks later to start another 4 days of running.  All told I covered 1814 miles in 89 days of running in less than a year, averaging 20 miles per day.  After that I was pretty much a slug for a few years.  Until the clock started to hit 8 years again.

I was a bit bored and began taking some computer classes. I had been working with some scientists in Molecular Biology who needed computational support for analysis of their experimental data. The work was fascinating and I kept asking why did they do it this way or that way.   Finally, they told me to go take some biology classes.  Once I started, I was hooked.  The biology is fascinating and they need computational people to help with the analysis.  I finished a Masters in Computer Science, applied to a program at the medical school down in Denver for Computational Biology and was accepted for 2009.  Eight years after the run around the state was completed.

I should finish up my research this year and graduate. This means that another change should be coming up.  What adventures are in store at the next 8 year cycle in 2017?  Next year we hope to be able to head to Europe for a couple (or three?) years as I pursue a post-doc position to gain more experience and exposure to different areas of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.  After that I hope to return to Boulder and find a teaching/research position at a major university.  Hmmmm, that would be 2017, fitting into the 8 year timelines.

After that, what new adventures will I be able to take on in my 60's, 70's and 80's?  I hope to retire by then.  Or maybe I have been retired my whole life, doing what I want to do, and working only enough to let me have fun?  My wife would emphatically say YES.