Alan Calderwood
Career, Education, Military Experience:
Attended Weber State College and Graduated with BS Degree in Electronic Engineering Technology. While attending Weber State, I worked for ACE TV and Radio in Ogden. I also married Vicky Pinney whom I met at Weber State. Vickie divorced me in 1983 and I married Marlene Young in 1989. After Graduating from Weber State in 1974, I worked in the rocket industry at Morton-Thiokol Corporation west of Brigham City. I installed and repaired close circuit TV, automatic batch procession, and digital milling machines, mobile radio and one day working on the gigantic X-ray machine used to check the rocket motors... In 1975 I started working for Utah Power and light as an Electronic Technician in Ogden area. Here I installed ad maintained microwave radio equipment and the special substation control equipment, Telephone system, and mobile radio. In 1976 I took a Maintenance Engineering position in Salt Lake City. This involved finding problems on the system level instead of at the individual sites. I also became an instructor on the different types of electronic equipment used by the power company. I became a supervisor over the 5 Maintenance Engineers and was place in charge of developing the new apprentice training program. But about this Vickie divorce me in 1983 and I didn’t like management so I and took a position as a Telecommunications Design Engineer which I kept until retiring in 2014. In 1998 I married Marlene Young. During this time Utah Power was merged with Pacific Power, forming PacifiCorp, which was purchased by Scottish Power, and finally purchase by Brookshire Hathaway and became Rocky Mountain Power. During all this acquisition I had the privilege of traveling to the remote microwave site for various reaons, even in helicopter during winter over 9 western states of Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado. I can remember belting off on top of a 200 foot microwave tower on top of a 10,000 foot mountain near Bryce Canyon UT and looking for 100 miles in all directions and thinking ‘I can’t believe I get paid to see all of these beautiful sites’. During my time at Utah Power, I went from working on equipment with old vacuum tubes to the newer fiber optic digital system installed on the power lines.
Favorite Memories of Weber High: Friends, Football Games, Running aroung the Track backwards one with Jeff Williams during Phys Ed
Have you traveled? where? why?:
As a design engineer at Utah Power, I traveled to several locations for factory test evaluation of the equipment I purchase as part of my job. I have been in Manhattan Island, Boonton New Jersey, Coral Spring Florida, and Sioux City Iowa. During the first marriage, my wife decided she wanted to adot a baby from Mexico. After 5 year of preparation, she and I went to Oaxaca, Mexico to adopt my son. We spent two week living in Oaxaca doing the adoption and three weeks in Mexico City doing the immigration paperwork. Later when Aaron grew up we went to Mérida Mexico (100 miles from Cancun) to visit him when he spent a semester at the business college there.
Hobbies/Interests:
Even in high school I had a love for motorcycles, you may even remember me riding my 1958 Harley Davidson to school. I have had a motorcycle ever since then. But motorcycling shared Hunting, Fishing, and Hiking until 1983 when I was divorced. Until then I was commuting and taking occasional one day trips. But in 1983, I started trail riding or desert riding every other weekend. I was riding with riders that had raced a lot and had a hard time keeping up. When I turned 50, they talked me into desert racing the over 50 class for 5 years. The bestI did was a 2nd place in one race, but was 9th in my class most of the time. I fractured my knee once during practice and that ended the racing, but I still go trail riding. Everyone I used to ride with quit, so I am trying keeping up with the younger riders at age 68. I also started buying old street motorcycles and restoring them in my spare time. I presently own 6 motorcycle 3 dirt and 3 street. I have done several one week road tours, some with riding groups but mostly alone. I have the Pacific Coast Highway 3 times, the Red Lodge Montana rally, and Sturgis ride. The all time best ride was to Juneau AK. I put the Buell on the Ferry and took 3 day Ferry trip to Juneau to visit my brother, then came back through the Canadian Rockies to the Jasper I fields and down through Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks. It took me 3 weeks. I plan on going back to Alaska.