Name: Len Colamarino

Family--I have been married to my one and only wife, Katrin, since 1982. Our daughter, Rachel, lives abroad with her husband and our four grandchildren, whom we miss a great deal.

My mother and sister still reside in my hometown of Rochester, New York. I enjoy the good fortune of having a large extended family, most of which remains based in Rochester, including 24 first cousins and almost twice as many second cousins. I grew up amid a classic, big Italian family—an experience which I heartily recommend.

Current Occupation -- Business lawyer and consultant. Corporate investor, manager and director.

Past Jobs -- Before coming to California in January 2005, I practiced corporate law and business litigation in New York City for almost 30 years. Before that my occupation was primarily that of a student. I had many jobs, however, while I was in school and during my hiatus period between high school and college. From the age of 14, I began working full-time in the summer and on Saturdays during the school year, doing unskilled maintenance, landscaping, construction and factory work. After my last year of college and first year of law school, I also interned for a local lawyer/politician in Rochester.

Schools -- Law School: University of Pennsylvania (J.D. 1976).  Undergraduate: State University of New York at Buffalo (B.A. Economics 1973).

Past Hometowns -- Rochester, NY, Boston, MA, Buffalo, NY, Philadelphia, PA, New York, NY, Woodstock, NY.

What I Enjoy about Team K-Man -- As a devotee of bicycling, I enjoy the Saturday rides, and the challenges and good companionship that those rides bring. The monthly parties—or meetings, I suppose I should say—are also a source of considerable enjoyment for me and Katrin, which is due to our appreciation of the people who attend then—fellow members of Team K-Man and their significant others. In addition, style-conscious as I am as a cyclist, I should mention that I enjoy donning the Team K-Man colors on the Saturday rides, as I like the looks of the Team attire.  

Other Interests and Hobbie -- Listing things in which I am uninterested would be easier than listing the many things in which I am interested. Music, film, sports, travel (international and local), current events, wine, food, etc.—there really is no end to it. Here in California I am taking particular pleasure in pursuing my interest in wine in our exceptionally well-endowed wine region. All of those interests, plus working and bicycling, leaves too little time in the day.

Some Favorite Places -- Cefalù, Sicily and the Madonie Mountains behind its seacoast. The Amalfi Coast of Italy, particularly Positano and Ravello. Monte Grappa, the Asiago Plateau, the Dolomite Alps and the Brenta River Valley in northeast Italy. Lake Como in north-central Italy. Central Park in New York City. John Joy and Platte Clove Roads in Saugerties, New York and Kauterskill Creek Road in Catskill, New York. Bollinas-Fairfax and Ridgecrest Roads in Marin County. State Highway 229 and Nacimiento-Ferguson, Old Creek and Peachy Canyon Roads in San Luis Obispo County. Those are some places that I enjoy most from a bicycling perspective. If I had to make a list of favorite places from all perspectives, it would go on far too long.

A goal that I have -- is to break 30 minutes in the Las Pilitas time trial(addendum, Len did a 29:39 on August 6, 2007). Beyond that mundane obsession, when I re-evaluated my life goals at or about the time that I passed the 50th birthday milestone, I committed myself to the goal of living a healthy, active and enjoyable life for as long as possible, in the company of nice people, in pleasant surroundings. I feel as though a great stride was taken toward meeting that objective when I relocated to the Central Coast, and look forward to making continuing progress toward achieving that goal in the years ahead.

Brag Box -- Though I would like to be able to measure up with the outstanding athletes in this club, the truth is that I cannot cite any athletic accomplishments to boast about that are in their league. In an attempt to make up for that shortcoming, I could strain to bring up some academic and professional achievements of sorts, but this hardly seems the place to go into such matters.

So let me confine my bragging to two things: I was gifted with the greatest parents a person could imagine. And the most important deal in my life—my marriage—has worked out all to my advantage. Being able to make those boasts allows me to feel like one of the luckiest people alive.

Tidbits of Information

1. I was a member of a notorious high school fraternity in Rochester—Sigma Delta Rho.

2. My efforts to reform Bishop Kearney High School were rewarded with an invitation to leave in April of my senior year, requiring me to finish high school at Eastridge High School, the public school in my town.

3. I did not proceed directly from high school to college, but took a little time off in between.

4. I spent a few weeks at the Woodstock Rock Music Festival in 1969, working on the preparations and the clean-up, among other things. I resided during that period with members of the Hog Farm commune, who ran the Festival, and found my way into a frame of the feature film that was made of the event. Woodstock was a watershed experience in my life, as it was there that I saw my idealistic vision of “enlightened anarchy” magically materialize for a few days. While that experience provided ideological confirmation for me, it also made me realize that Utopian conditions can only be sustained for brief periods at this stage in the evolution of mankind.

Anything Else You’d Like to Tell Us

1. My first job out of law school was with the large Wall Street law firm where Richard Nixon had been a name partner before his successful run for the Presidency in 1968.

2. I am a dual citizen of Italy and the United States. My wife also recently acquired Italian citizenship by reason of her marriage to an Italian citizen.

3. My wife is an attorney, too, though she left that line of work upon receiving a retirement package from JP Morgan Chase Bank in New York. She is now a consultant to non-profit companies in the Central Coast area.

4. Since 1994, I have had a chronic cardiac condition called atrial fibrillation. The condition entails an irregular heartbeat, and also means that the atrial chambers of my heart never participate in pumping blood to my muscles. When I was first afflicted by the condition, I was a runner and found that it cut my pace by about 20 percent. Over the years, I have trained around it to the extent that my disadvantage is probably now in the range of 10 percent.  The condition is one that I can live with comfortably, carries no risk of sudden death or heart disease, is not the product of, or related to, any other cardiac condition, and does not limit my activities. It sure could be a lot worse.

5. Because everyone asks how we happened to move from Manhattan to Atascadero, I guess that I should address that. When my wife and I decided that we wanted a second act, after the fast-track, workaday, New York lifestyle that we loved for so long, we were initially uncertain about where to locate. The obvious move was to go full-time in Woodstock, where we had owned a country house and spent weekends for a number of years. Dissatisfaction with the weather and the occupational and social opportunities there, however, dampened our enthusiasm for that idea. In the course of considering other possibilities, we eventually came around to California, where we had both spent a lot of pleasurable time over the years. Starting out in California did not appear to be much more challenging than starting out as full-timers in Woodstock, but we felt that the upside potential here was greater due to the climate and the special attractiveness to us of the surroundings. We then began thinking of where in California we might like to be, and focused on the Central Coast because it struck both of us in our travels as the most appealing place in the United States that we had seen. On a visit in early 2004, we found a house and an area in Atascadero that captured us both immediately. So we plunged ahead and bought with the idea of renting it out for a few years until we were ready to move. Events then accelerated more rapidly than we had expected when my wife’s employer became a party to a mega-merger, opening up the possibility of a valuable retirement package for her. Finding ourselves facing what looked like a one-time opportunity, and attracted by the prospect of escaping another harsh Northeastern winter, we scrambled to arrange to move up the date of our relocation to the first week of January 2005.

While our long experience in the East and our many remaining ties there have caused us to look back a lot since our move, it has never been with even an ounce of regret. We are thoroughly pleased with our new community and the life that we have found here, and could not be happier with the outcome of the leap of faith that we took when we decided to move here.