California to Colorado: A Love Story Told at 5,280 Feet

Exerpt: After 45 years in Southern California, I traded traffic, taxes, and $7 lattes for Colorado’s thin air and thicker neighbors. Here’s what no one tells you about reinventing your life at altitude.

If someone had told me that my “golden years” would begin at 5,280 feet, involve learning new definitions of the words winter, retirement, and thin air, and consist of golfing 120 rounds a year while trying not to freeze my face off in February, I might have stayed in Southern California.

But then again, I might have missed the best chapter of my life.

I spent 45 years in Orange County—a place where sunshine is a birthright, palm trees lean like they’re posing for headshots, and the only thing we shovel is avocado toast into our mouths. When my wife, Janus, and I told our friends we were moving to Colorado, the reactions varied:

“Why?”
“Are you okay?”
“Do you own chains?”
“My cousin visited once—he turned blue.”

We ignored them all.

We had close friends in Aurora. We wanted a change. And in the back of my mind, I sensed that life had another reinvention left for me.

Welcome to High-Altitude Life

The first thing you notice in Colorado is that the sky is bigger—dramatically, theatrically bigger. In California, the sky is a polite backdrop. In Colorado, it’s an IMAX movie that follows you everywhere you go.

The second thing you notice is that your lungs were liars in California. They pretended they were efficient. At altitude, they behave like disgruntled employees working the night shift.

Walking up a flight of stairs? Olympic sport.
Carrying groceries? Call 911.
Talking while walking? Absolutely not.

But you adjust. Slowly. After eight months and a gallon of water a day.

Reinventing Retirement

Retirement in California often means slowing down, relaxing, easing into a comfortable rhythm.

Retirement in Colorado means being adopted by a community of people who play golf six days a week, walk their dogs seven times a day, and treat pickleball like a contact sport requiring mouthguards and an updated will.

These people don’t age—they reload.

At our community in Heritage Eagle Bend, I discovered something incredible: friendship accelerates reinvention. It keeps you engaged, curious, laughing, and more alive than any paycheck ever did.

Marriage at Altitude

Moving after 45 years of marriage is a special kind of adventure. It’s like opening a restaurant together where both of you are the chef, the dishwasher, and the customer who sends the food back.

But in Colorado, Janus and I found new rhythms. She built two income streams: one caring for dogs (Colorado has more dogs than people, I think) and one treasure-hunting at estate sales, where basements overflow like archaeological digs. She buys picture frames, crystal, knickknacks, doodads—anything with a soul and a backstory—and sells them on Etsy and eBay.

This year she’ll make $60,000 doing it.

Colorado has been very good to her.

The Curveballs You Don’t See Coming

And then, cancer came back.

I was diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer years ago. I fought through the treatments, the surgeries, the terrifying nights, and the long recovery. Moving to Colorado felt like the reward—clean air, new friends, endless sunshine, and a calmer pace.

But survivorship has its own story arc.

When my PSA crept upward again, it felt like a punch to the chest. I went through ADT, more radiation, cystitis, and finally 20 hyperbaric oxygen treatments—each one an exercise in patience, breathing, and gratitude.

Colorado gave me something no doctor could prescribe: perspective.

Survivorship isn’t about avoiding fear—it's about not letting fear run the show.

And Then There’s the Fishing

One of my proudest life achievements is simple:

I have never been skunked.

Not once.

Not in the Blackfoot River in Montana (where I earned the name “Blackfoot Bill”).
Not in Mammoth Lakes.
Not in the headwaters of the Colorado River.
Not in Grand Lake or just west of Granby.
Not even in Rainbow Falls near Woodland Park.

Colorado fishing is therapy with gills.

Why Colorado Was the Right Move After All

I came here expecting a quieter life. I got a louder one. One full of dogs, golf, friendship, trout, reinvention, and a marriage that continues to evolve in ways I never saw coming.

Moving to Colorado didn’t just change where we lived—it changed how we lived.

And for that, I am grateful.