In 2016, I began taking welding classes through CCC&TI while still working as a programmer. I fell in love with it immediately and began a journey of learning, repairing, and creating with metal. In 2019, I was laid off after 38 years of IT. IT had been a great career and I met and worked with many awesome people, but … 38 years is a long time! I continued to learn and create with metal. In 2021, I learned to use a CNC plasma table (due to wrecking my motorcycle … a story for my blog!). In the summer of 2022, I designed the American Pledge of Allegiance flag, and worked with my welding instructor (and now longtime friend) Steve, who helped me build the first several prototypes (the very first flag is hanging in his classroom). When we finished the first flag, we were blown away at how beautiful it was. We knew it was going to be good, but not THAT good! Without exception, everyone who saw it had an initial “Wow!” reaction, and after a short pause, would say, “You should sell these.” I realized I had just stumbled on my second career! Here we are (my wife LuAnne and I) almost 12 months later picking up our first load of production flag parts from the powder coat company in my 22-year-old Tacoma pulling a utility trailer (almost as old) to carry home 1,100 pounds of metal! Then we gotta figure out how to unload it.