Fifteen years ago today Ali and I walked down the aisle. I had graduated college three months earlier and was working at Beneficial, a loan agency designed simply to make the poor even more so by wrapping up all of their 29% credit card debt into one 35% loan. Looking back I can’t believe it was even legal. I wonder if they are still in business. I can’t imagine so. My salary was $22,000 a year. That’s what a Minnesota kid with a degree in Finance and another in Economics gets with average grades from an average state college. Ali meanwhile was making a fair bit more than me as a secretary.

We lived in a one bedroom apartment about two blocks from where I had gone to elementary school. We hadn’t strayed far. I remember the apartment was one of those handicapped accessible places with wide doors, no cabinets under the sink, and enough handholds to make getting on and off the toilet possible for even the biggest drunk.

After six months at Beneficial I spotted a job listing for a pit reporter at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. I interviewed during my lunch hour, got the job, returned and gave my two weeks notice. I’d lasted six months as a bill collector. The new job paid eight bucks an hour, was only part-time, and was another twenty minutes further commute, but Ali and I had talked about it and it was a foot in the door to what I really wanted to do. I don’t think she really had any idea then what a commodities trader was or how he would earn a living, but she was behind me either way. It helped that I’d also called my old boss from my college days and gotten him to hire me on for the afternoons putting up vinyl siding at fifteen bucks an hour. Blue collar work paid.

Not long after I started there we moved to a one-bedroom place in Minneapolis. Ali had been calling almost daily to see if the building had any openings because they didn’t have a wait list. It was in the Warehouse District, had sixteen-foot ceilings and was all brick. About as New York chic as one could find in Minneapolis. We loved it. I walked to work and Ali had a ten minute drive.

Nine months later I was now working as head clerk for Frontier Futures. Basically I stood ten feet from the trading pit with one, two, and sometimes three phones to my ear flashing orders into the pit, relaying them to the Chicago pits, or punching them into the computer system for customers. That was twenty minutes a day anyway, the rest of the time we pretty much stood around and bullshitted while waiting for something to happen. I was making eight bucks an hour still, but it was full time. Woo-hoo. Ali had also changed jobs and was working right downtown too.

This is when mortgage rates hit 6.5% (damn cheap back in the day) and our parents said we really should buy a house. Seems funny to me now. Ali probably made $28,000 and I was making eight bucks an hour, yet for three percent down we were able to buy a brand spanking new home in a booming suburb for $144,000 with no points and a rock bottom interest rate for thirty years. The year was 1999.

While living downtown we had sold one of our cars, and now in the suburbs we sold the other. We took half the money, $5,000, and put it into a trading account, the other half went down on a new Dodge Durango. Ali was still behind me becoming a trader though was hedging her bets a bit now by saying, “This is it, five grand, if it doesn’t work you’re going to have to get a real job.” I couldn’t disagree with that. We were now living large on about $45,000 a year. We had no debt besides the house and car.

The trading account went up exponentially from the start. I had learned a lot during my time there and was eternally grateful to my boss for first teaching me the art of trading and then for actually letting me trade as well as work. After a while Ali and I discussed it and decided it was time to move to Chicago so I could get really serious about trading. She was still my biggest booster and was equally as excited about the adventure of living in Chicago. We sold the suburban home nine months after moving in for a $24k profit.

We loaded up the moving van, bought a condo three blocks from the Sears Tower where Ali got a job, and I got down to the business of trading against the big boys. That was January of 2000. By 2003 we were living on a boat. And that’s where this blog picks up. Another nine years have flown past and here we are at anchor in Baja Mexico with two babies that wear us out day in and day out. It’s hard to believe it’s been fifteen years and even harder to believe that we are old enough to have been married that long. The days are long but the years are short, an apt saying for life with kids as well as married life on occasion. I’m still amazed by all that we’ve done together, and I still cringe at the thought of what might have been had we not taken the riskier of the choices at each step along the way.

2002: The only picture that exists of me as a trader. Hint, I’m offering to sell at a quarter. I wore the same tie, never untied, for five years. Wearing a tie was an exchange rule, despite the fact that we all just wore golf shirts. Another rule was no jeans. To get around that most guys wore black jeans. We look like such slobs compared to traders just twenty years earlier. No wonder it’s almost all gone electronic. Ali used to take a late lunch and come down to the viewing gallery at the CBOT every week or two. After the market closed we’d go have hot dogs at Luke’s. The picture is crap through the glass but I’m the guy near the center in the blue and yellow jacket with my right arm out and my left full of paper. It’s funny, I can name every guy’s badge, CAC, FJC, TLW (“Tender Loving Woman” is the chubby bald guy next to me), but can hardly name a single one of them. My badge was PKS. The other pic is of us around Christmas time that year on Michigan Avenue.

I laugh now when I think back on the traditional track we were on, and how we completely derailed. Ali’s mom likes to say, “We expected more for our daughter Pat.” She says it tongue in cheek, but I’m sure that many times over the past decade her parents have wondered just what the hell happened to us. After a year or two in Chicago we were what most people would call successful. We were free to do what we wanted. We were twenty-seven, had money in our pocket, and we answered to no one. By all accounts our family picture today should have been taken by a professional photographer in the foyer of our great big house north of Chicago with Ouest and Ali in matching dresses, and Lowe and I in khakis, polos, and leather boots. Instead we’ve got this. No haircuts in months, swimsuits that have been our only clothes for a week now, a three day old beard, and a ten-second delay self-timer portrait. Happy Anniversary.

On the ride over today we had dolphins. Lots of dolphins. Ouest squealed with joy at the sight of them jumping around her. Her face simply lit up with excitement. It’s an awesome feeling to see her old enough now to really appreciate this. These are the sorts of experiences that we’ve always dreamt of sharing with the kids and just another reason that we’ve chosen to live life on a boat.

Along the way we also passed good friends of ours. Of course cruising the Sea of Cortez means being able to pull up right alongside another boat and have a chat. There just is no wind here. Nobody has a sail up for anything other than keeping their boat from wobbling back and forth. So we sat out there a mile offshore and talked for a while before saying goodbye and, “We’ll see you next time.” It’s how it goes with boat friends.

It’s getting so close now. So close. He seems to really want to walk. He stands straight up in the middle of the room, balances for ten seconds or so, looks around for something to lunge for and then makes his move. Usually just a step and crumple right now, but it’s close. Those stairs behind him are his new favorite past time. He goes straight up them in a matter of seconds. There is no taking your eye off of him these days.