Hood River Real Estate and Columbia Gorge Real Estate

Well……..And this is a good story. I’ll try and make it brief, mostly because this kind of rambling belongs in my personal blog………..

The tree is a proxy photo for myself, and here’s how it came to be that…….

Many years ago, during the Dot Com boom, I worked for about a year and a half on a project in Palo Alto. It was like compressing an MBA into 18 months. Very intense, very exciting, everything you could ask for.

With high hopes we moved into an “Incubator” site that had recently been vacated by a very large, very successful Dot Com…..So in my office, on my desk, in an otherwise completely empty 20,000 square foot office building sits this dwarf tangerine tree. very pretty, but very lonely. Under it is a note. “The Office Mascot, treat nicely and it will bring you great luck! Enjoy!”

So we made it our office mascot. It moved around for a bit, from desk to desk, and generally was happy…….

Among many other “dot commie” things we did for that website was to all decide that we needed glam photos for the website. One of our staff was none other than Bryce Kanights, an incredibly accomplished skateboard photographer, and very nice guy.

So late one night, Bryce comes by my cube to borrow the tree, to use it as a stand in for his makeshift photo studio. He shoots a couple of photos, and we get on with the glam shots of the entire staff……….

Well, the photos never made it. We ran out of money a few weeks later, and the rest is Dot Com history. Huge Flameout.

As the custodian of the remnants of the company, I closed everything up, and at the very last, I stumbled across this photo.

By this time the tree had become a casualty of the bust. Trash bin, I guess. I remember seeing it and it’s pot had cracked, and as I walked past it a dozen times in the hallway I briefly thought about adopting it, but never did. All that’s left is the photo, but now it looks rather………….I don’t know, full of promise and tales, and former adventure, and maybe some melancholy.

So anyway, My MBA experience taught me what I needed to do what I’m doing today….No boxes, no limits, only the knowledge that I can choose my Family and my town…. and that’s more than I deserve…..