At first it seemed that everything would be ok, my teeth were fixed so I had a nice smile but little did I know that it would be the start of a decade and more of pain and despair.
I had been investing in a stock, of which I owned 128,000 shares, I’d been informed that they would go for their IPO at anytime but that wasn’t the case. An extremely wealthy man, Geoff Squires had invested millions of pounds in the company so the shares were consolidated which basically meant my holding was reduced to 12,800. Obviously GS thought very highly of this company because he poured more money in so the shares were again consolidated reducing my 12,800 to 1,280. At this time I had to return to England and find a regular job.
A couple of years later I started my own business, a web media company selling advertising and web pages, it was good but hard work.
At the end of 2001 I met a woman through some friends and moved to the States, my first thoughts were to meet this woman and see how things went but after a short time it became obvious that we felt a lot more for each other and we married.
Dona was a graphic designer and had her own business near Denver, Colorado, I got a job working for A.D.T. in the newly formed Fire Systems Group, a division aimed at servicing the fire and security needs of companies in the Denver metro area.
My life seemed good to me, although my wife’s personality seemed to change. In hindsight the change in personality and attitude towards me should have alerted me to what was really going on, but, ever the romantic optimist I ignored the signs.
I continued to exercise daily although it worried me that my stamina was failing, I couldn’t ride my mountain bike as far or as hard as I did before. Even though I worked out with weights 3 times per week I seemed to be getting weaker not stronger. We sold the house near Denver and bought a bigger place in Castle Rock, it wouldn’t be finished for six months so we moved in with some good friends.