Dave & Jan: Puzzles, Penguins, and Turning Up the Volume

So many people find the open stretch of retirement harder than they expected. How have the two of you built a life that stays this full?

Dave: My advice is simple: turn the volume up on something you love. For me, that thing is mechanical puzzles. The passion was always there. Retirement just let me turn the dial all the way.
Jan: For me it is penguins, and the wild places they live. We are both happiest when we are pouring ourselves into something completely.

Dave, where does a passion like that take root? 

Dave: A lot of it traces back to my father. He spent his whole career making airplanes work for American Airlines in Tulsa, and he raised us on the principle of doing everything right, doing it once, and doing it carefully. I was a first-generation college student, and I carried that into electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford. The puzzles found me there, in January 1978, in a Scientific American column about a craftsman named Stewart Coffin. I wrote him a letter saying I was a poor graduate student who could not afford much, and asked what was available and what it cost. I scraped together the money for six or eight of his puzzles, around fifty dollars apiece, which felt like a fortune at the time. There is also a collector’s instinct in me. When you are raised by Depression-era parents, everything becomes valuable, and if you can get your hands on something as beautiful as a puzzle, why would you ever let it go? That is how a few puzzles became a collection of forty to fifty thousand.

What does it mean to you to be making them now, not just collecting?

Dave: When I was working in Silicon Valley, life was too intense to be a woodworker. Once I retired, I set up a shop and started designing my own. Every year I make more than a hundred precision wooden puzzles for the International Puzzle Party, where about a hundred of us commit to bringing copies of an original creation to exchange. This year’s design is a small tray puzzle in wenge and walnut, with a laser-cut window and a hidden magnetic wall that lets a stumped solver start over. I made 110 and I am carrying 104 to Italy, where the party lands in Assisi this year. We are also visiting the World Puzzle Center in Panicale, Italy, where a castle now houses something like 100,000 mechanical puzzles.

Jan, what draws you out to the far corners of the world?

Jan: We are curious people, and we are happiest doing the wilder, harder-to-reach things while we still can. It started with a bird book. On our first trip together, to Costa Rica, we grabbed a thick field guide the day before we left, and watching birds became our thing, a kind of treasure hunt that gets you outside and into beautiful places. On our honeymoon in the Galápagos, a childhood dream of mine, I was snorkeling when someone shouted penguins. Five Galápagos penguins came swimming straight toward me, and then right underneath me. That was the moment. Seeing all nineteen penguin species in the world became our goal, and we are down to the very last one.

What do you get from chasing something that difficult?

Jan: A reason to be fully present, and a story you carry forever. Some of the islands are nearly impossible to reach. The Snares, south of New Zealand, are a good example. If you look them up, they are not really islands, they are rocks. We found our Snares penguin in six-foot swells and cold rain, hanging off the side of a Zodiac. We have had close calls, too. Kayaking off Elephant Island in Antarctica, a twelve-foot leopard seal surfaced right at my knee with its mouth open. We had just adopted a sensitive rescue greyhound who taught us to speak gently, so I looked at this enormous animal and said, no, no, sweetheart. It paused, looked at me, and slipped back under. Is it life-threatening? Probably not. Is it uncomfortable sometimes? Absolutely. The last penguin, the Northern Rockhopper, breeds on Tristan da Cunha, the most remote inhabited island on earth. We will reach it from Cape Town, and then the list will be complete.

You pursue all of this together. Where does community fit into a wealthy life for you?

Dave: The puzzle world is a community of its own. About a hundred of us come from all over the world to the exchange each year, and you shake hands with friends you have known for decades and pick the conversation right back up. Jan is right there beside me as my assistant at the table.
Jan: Birding and these expeditions have always been something we do as a couple. It pulled us closer, and along the way we have found fellow travelers who chase the same sense of wonder. Doing it together is most of the point.

How has Wealth Architects helped you live this wealthier life?

Jan: From the very beginning they framed it as leading a wealthier life, measured in far more than money. They asked what our goals were, what our passions were, and how we wanted to leave our mark. They wrote it all down, and they still point back to it when we start to drift. With the wills and advance directives handled, we simply stopped thinking about that machinery and got on with living.
Dave: I am a worrier by nature, and I was never quite convinced we had enough to retire. What settled me was seeing the plan. They showed me the model, ran the numbers out to age 100, and asked, now do you believe us? When we found our home in Santa Fe, our advisor Iris Nguyen and CEO Mark T. Johnsen had already made sure the money was in place. There was no dance required. They help you line up your ducks so you do not lie awake at two in the morning worrying about the ducks.

What would you tell someone hoping to live a wealthier life of their own?

Jan: Do not wait. Time moves quickly, and the chance to get out and live fully should not be postponed. We also keep working, even though we no longer have to. We are both on nonprofit boards and active in the causes we care about, just not for pay.
Dave: Find the thing you love and turn it up. It never has to slow down. Ours certainly has not.

Thank you, Dave and Jan, for sharing your story and helping to build wealthier communities for all!

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