Chapter 22

In planning for our move we had to take into account all of our personal properties. One of the first things we did was to sell our pizza parlor back to its former owner, Bill Wagner. However, we did reserve the right to use his recipes in a future noncompeting pizza business. He agreed to help us train our pizza parlor staff when we set up a new pizza parlor. After being around us and overhearing our board meetings in the backroom, he knew we were entrepreneurs at heart. He predicted we would have a chain of pizza parlors within five years of arriving in New Zealand.

We made arrangements with a real estate firm to sell our homes after we moved out of them. We would need to make arrangements to sell our Chocolateen properties in the Van Nuys area after we announced we were shutting down the facility.

Frank asked, “Jim, what are we to do about our Chocolateen plant’s building once we have removed the equipment we want to keep?

“What do you mean, Frank?

“One of our competitors could buy the property. Part of the secret of making Chocolateen has been the chemicals we use to make Chocolateen and the order in which the chemicals are combined. A competitor could conceivable analyze the pipes to determine the chemicals transferred by the pipes. We routed our pipes through large pipes to conceal the rooms to which each pipe was routed. A competitor could trace the routing of the pipes to determine the order in which the chemicals were added. If the competitor were to do that, it’s possible that they could figure out how to make Chocolateen.”

“I didn’t realize that, Frank. I think we should flatten the building and haul the remains to a recycling plant, or to a landfill. I would prefer a recycling plant.”

“That was basically what I was thinking, Jim. Although, I didn’t think of disposing of the remains at a recycling plant. Do they accept concrete?”

“I don’t know. That is something we will need to look into. If not, we can send the recyclables to a recycling facility and the materials that are not recyclable to a landfill.”

We hadn’t noticed any pizza parlors in Pukekohe during our time in the downtown area, so Frank and I decided we would start our own company there. We did a bit more research and learned that there were at least five pizza parlors within the city limits, we just hadn’t seen them. We decided to wait until we were settled in the Pukekohe area and tried their pizzas before we built our own pizza parlor. If their pies weren’t up to Bill’s recipes, we would start our own pizza parlor. If business was good enough, we might even turn it into a chain restaurant as Bill predicted.

Frank and I finally got around to filling out our Investor Plus Visa applications and submitting them to the New Zealand Immigration office in Santa Monica. The gentleman assisting us was surprised that we had already incorporated multiple businesses in New Zealand. He was really shocked when reviewing our submissions to learn that we had each transferred over five hundred and thirty million NZ dollars to our New Zealand bank accounts to capitalize the two businesses. Before leaving, he said he didn’t think we would have any problems with obtaining our visas, and should hear from their office within ten business days.

During the next five months, we made several business trips to Pukekohe. As we were preparing for one of the trips, Ward surprised us by offering to fly us there in his new Gulfstream G550. Actually, it was a preowned aircraft that he had picked up at a reasonable price. He said that unless we had business in Hawaii, we could fly direct to Auckland. Ward and his wives had been impressed with our Airbus A319, and decided to purchase something for them to use for Ward’s business and Mission travel and their vacations.

Ward told us that once he was settled in New Zealand and had his R&D business established, he was going to begin Task 1 and start laying the ground work for Task 3. Those tasks would require him to do extensive travel throughout the world, so he wanted something fast with a long range and a reasonable passenger capability. With just one refueling stop, he could make it to almost any destination in the world.

We had completed the incorporation of F&J’s Real Estate Development, Limited and Maxine officially became its first President. During the first month of business, she purchased several properties in the area, and one in particular was perfect as an interim home for Frank and my family. Ward, Frank, and I commiserated with each other at the thought of the shopping sprees our wives would have furnishing our temporary homes.

Our plan for the move had been for my wives and me to be the advance party, while Frank and his wives finalized the details of moving the Chocolateen Corporation to New Zealand and disposing of our personal assets in the Van Nuys area.

My family would be departing next week. Ward’s family was finalizing their business activities and preparing to depart. They would most likely be leaving in three to four weeks. Maxine had an interim house waiting for them that Ward and Sam thought would be suitable to their lifestyle. We estimated that it would be close to a year before Frank’s family actually left the US.

One of the important activities Frank and I took care of during our trips to Pukekohe was to try the local pizza parlors. We decided that they were okay, but they were nowhere close to Bill’s pizza. Frank and I decided that one of the first things we had to do was to create our own pizza parlor. Bill had taught us that the secret to good pizza was in the crust and sauce, so he agreed to train our pizza parlor manager in how to make his version of pizza crust and sauce. Getting the business incorporated and started was the first task I would take care of once we were setup in our interim home. Our wives felt that our priorities were wrong, but Frank and I knew what was important to us!

Once the Chocolateen production plant was built and the equipment installed, we would do a phased shut down of the Simi Valley plant. The employees going with us would make the move, bring the new plant online, and train new employees. That would probably take about two months, and it could be longer if we had problems with suppliers. Once production was high enough to meet the needs of our US customers, we would shut down the Simi Valley plant. Of course, there would be a number of things that we would have to address, such as, registering our Honolulu and continental US distribution centers as foreign-owned companies.

Ward, Frank, and their families were at the Van Nuys airport to see us off. We were finally leaving to make New Zealand our new home. It was an emotional occasion. Ward would be leaving to join us, in about two or three weeks.

Bob and Jill had the A319 ready to go and our luggage was already stowed. My wives herded our kids onboard and got them secured in their seats. The door was closed and our plane started taxiing toward the runway.

Once we lifted off and climbed to our cruising altitude, we were able to let the kids out of their seat. The kids hadn’t flown with us over the past couple of years. So this was a new experience for them. We planned long lay overs in Hawaii and Fiji so the kids could see how other people lived.

Our flight to New Zealand was very much like the trips I had taken when we were checking out New Zealand as a possible new home. We finally landed at Auckland International Airport and made our way through customs. Paul and Sally were waiting for us with a chartered bus to take us to our hotel in Auckland. Frank and I had talked about who would need the Airbus the most. I had no plans for flying anywhere, so Bob, Carol, and Jill would lay over for several days and then return to Van Nuys airport. They would support Frank’s business trips until he and his wives left the US for New Zealand.

One of the things we offered Bob, Carol, and Jill was the use of a house in New Zealand at no charge as part of their benefits. Jetting around the world as we had them doing was hard on them. Frank, I, and our wives decided the least we could do was to ensure they had a comfortable lifestyle while they were at home in New Zealand. They were thinking of starting a family after they moved to New Zealand, so we may have to hire more pilots and another hostess for our planes. We will wait and see how our current plans for a new plane and a second travel crew work out.

My wives and I were tired for it had been a long trip, but our kids had been confined and they were wound up like the Energizer bunny. Once we checked into the hotel and were shown to our room, Sara and I took the older kids down to the swimming pool, so they could work off their energy. Sandy and Helen remained in the hotel room to care for our younger children.

Frank and our wives had decided which of our household furniture and goods we would ship to New Zealand now and which they would leave for Frank and his wives. We shipped what we would need, plus our personal belongings, two months before we left the US. Tomorrow we would make arrangements for the shipping company to deliver our things to our interim house. My wives let me know that once our new house was built, Frank’s wives would join us in New Zealand for a shopping trip to buy new furniture and decorate our new house.

The day finally came when my family and I left for New Zealand. Jim and his family had left three weeks earlier.

Jeff and my shop crew had finished testing the second prototype vehicle over a month ago. Jeff told me the additions for the third prototype would have no impact on the functionality of the car, so he saw no need to build a third prototype. He updated the production car’s manufacturing drawings and the drawings for building the production line.

My shop crew and automotive engineer were a valuable resource to me for future efforts in solar-powered vehicles. Frank and Jim would need them to help get the automotive production line built and operational. I wanted them to work on a number of other solar-powered devices. Most of them agreed to move to New Zealand, when the time was right, and go to work for me full-time in the R&D company that I would start.

To keep them busy until they left for New Zealand, I told Jeff and the crew that they were to work on producing three new solar-powered, vehicular products: a farm tractor, a pickup truck, and a tractor-trailer rig. We discussed the priorities to be placed on each and decided to work on the farm tractor first. The left-hand / right-hand drive issue did not apply to a tractor, so it should be a relatively simple thing to create. The design issues turned out to be more complex than I had thought they would be. I had overlooked the affect that dirt would have on the Solar Cell Tray and the electronics that controlled the motor-generator.

During the week after Jim left for New Zealand, I had Jeff and his crew pack up the shop, and ship everything to Auckland. They flew out to New Zealand last week. I had stayed behind to take care of some final business, which took longer than I had expected.

Frank and his wives would be the last of our group to leave the US. My wives said they would really miss it, but we left the Suburban behind for Frank and his family to use. We departed the US in our Gulfstream G550, and as we lifted off the ground, Cathy contacted me.

“The Guidance Council asked me to pass on their congratulations, Ward. They also want you to know that you will be given the information to build nine machines that can produce a series of components for your super computer.

“They suggest that you do the basic development work at your R&D company in New Zealand, and build the manufacturing facility in Australia. The Council recommends that you locate it in Brisbane, Australia, but they feel that you should wait to begin this new business in Australia until the New Zealand companies are well established. This new business will require a very large capital investment and a lot of your time. So before you launch the business, you need to ensure that Ward’s Products, Limited is producing enough revenue to support the expansion.”

“All right, Cathy, I’ll add that to my list of projects and schedule for producing the computer. I’m going to have to say goodbye for now. You may want to stay connected for Sam is watching the kids, Karen has gone to the bedroom area, Mary is waiting to escort me back there, and we should be at least a mile above sea level by now. You know the effect the thought of the Mile High Club has on Mary. She rejoins the club every time she gets the chance.”

As I rose from my seat, Mary took my hand and led me to the rear of the plane. Cathy said, “Yeah, let’s have some fun.”

I think we were around eight hundred miles east of Hawaii when Mary went to the forward portion of the G550 to relieve Sam, and Sam joined Karen and me in the bedroom. My wives were normally passionate with considerable sexual endurance. Karen was even more so on this trip for it was her turn to have a baby and she was ovulating; it was virtually impossible to wear her out. It was times like this that my women turned me into nothing but a limp, totally wrung out washrag. I would have to ask Cathy for a boost to my endurance.

When we landed at Auckland International Airport, Jim and his wives were there to meet us. They had leased a bus and driver from the charter bus company, which we usually used, to take us to our new home. Well, the house was actually a rental that Maxine Swanson, the President of our Real Estate Development and Management Company, had located for us until our new home was built.

We had shipped our household and personal goods to New Zealand over a month ago. Jim and his wives had made the arrangements for everything to be delivered to our temporary house. They had arranged the furniture, opened everything except the boxes marked Personal, and put everything away. All we had to do was shift everything around to where we liked our furniture and belongings.

During the next couple of months, we dealt with the little annoyances that most emigrants encounter. Things like learning to drive on the left side of the road and replacing my ladies’ electrical ‘Cannot Live Without’ appliances in 220 volts.

It had never registered in my mind that our appliances wouldn’t work properly on New Zealand’s 220 Vac, 50 Hz electrical power. I knew we would need step-down transformers to change the 220 Vac to 110 Vac, but I overlooked that curling irons and hair driers didn’t get as hot on 50 Hz power as they did on 60 Hz power. The PAL broadcasting format for television in New Zealand was different from the NTSC format used in the US. Since we did not have a dual format TV, we had to replace our televisions. The rental had a stove and refrigerator, but we had to buy new countertop kitchen appliances. When we moved into our new home, we won’t have to buy a new stove and refrigerator for commercial models would be installed as part of the construction effort. We would also have a walk in cooler-freezer installed. We would use the cooler for bulk storage, and move what we needed as we needed it from the freezer to the refrigerator.

We also had to become accustomed to different brand names for food and other products, and different units of measure: like kilometers, kilograms, liters, degrees Celsius, etc.

Jeff Timmons and I worked with Frank and Jim to get the automotive manufacturing facility designed and built. Jeff spent most of his time helping Frank and Jim with the automotive production line, while I setup our new facilities for producing the Solar Cell modules and screening contractors to build the subassemblies and other parts.

It would take a long time for my new R&D and production buildings to be completed, so I had leased a suitable building to use as my temporary research laboratory and an interim shop for Jeff and his crew to work out of until I could build them a new shop near my new R&D facility. I began my efforts in New Zealand by creating spinoff devices. Rechargeable batteries in sizes double-A, triple-A, C, and D were the first products along with a single solar charging unit that would recharge all four sizes of batteries. That product was followed by a solar powered lawn mower. In addition to helping Frank and Jim, Jeff and his crew finished building the prototype of the farm tractor.

When it came time to test our tractor, Jeff, the shop crew, and I took the tractor out to the property where I was going to build my new home. Karen had convinced me that we needed a garden. She felt that since we were going to test the tractor, we should use it to prepare a section of our property for use as a garden. I selected an area that was set well back from the area where we would be building the house.

Our tractor test was very different from our car test. We had proven that the Solar Cell Tray, battery, and motor-generator combination worked in a normal car. However, a tractor is about power, not speed, so Jeff had to add gearing to create a low-speed, high-power drive system. In addition to the other sensors that the test would use to monitor the tractor’s performance, Jeff had added a strain gauge to measure the pulling power the tractor generated in pulling a turning plow through the ground.

Andy Johnson and Nick Hansen were going to be our test drivers, but neither of them had any experience using a tractor to plow a field. Nick had been a race car driver, so he took a bit of kidding about plodding along as a lowly tractor driver.

We started our test on a Monday morning with Andy driving the tractor. From what the prior owner told me, the land had been used as pasture for sheep and cattle during the past eighty years. No one knew when it had last been plowed, if ever. He drove the tractor down the field, and then turned around and came back up the field.

My neighbor Paul Harrow and I had met when I first bought the land. We had run into each other in town several times, and I found Paul to be a very friendly and helpful person. Andy and Nick had been plowing the field for most of the morning when Paul stopped by and gave us some advice.

He told us we were plowing the field the wrong way, and pointed out the problems we were creating for ourselves by going back and forth like we were. Our plow was turning the soil to the right of our direction of movement. In going down the field, we turned the soil over and dumped it on unplowed ground. When we came back up the field, we were misaligned. We were turning more soil over onto a narrow unplowed strip that was hidden beneath the soil that had just been turned over in going down the field. To further complicate the problem, by turning the soil to the right when going in each direction, we were creating small mounds of soil with low areas between the mounds.

He explained the proper way to plow a field and why it was done that way. After thanking him for the information and explaining that our primary purpose was to test our prototype tractor, we followed his advice for the rest of the day. After all, Karen wanted to plant a garden and we had to plow a portion of the field for her.

Thinking back on the area we plowed that day, I decided that it was probably more area than Karen wanted as a garden. The next day, we turned the strips that we had created the prior day. Once that was done, we switched to the disk cultivator and broke up the plowed ground.

We were almost done with disking the field when the tractor stopped running. The test data had looked pretty good on Monday, but Jeff had noticed that the Solar Cell Tray’s output current had dropped off to a very low value and the battery charge was down to seventy percent when the tractor stopped running.

That afternoon, Jeff and his crew trailered the tractor back to the shop. The next day, it was apparent that the low charging current had been due to a heavy coating of dust being deposited on the clear cover of the Solar Cell Tray while testing the tractor on Monday. That dust was turned into a thin coating of wet mud by Tuesday morning’s dew. The additional dust Tuesday morning had added to the problem. The thin coating of mud-dust had absorbed most of the energy from the electromagnetic spectrum and the charge current had dropped to below that normally seen at night.

Jeff and the crew also discovered that the computer control box’s fan had sucked in dust, which had accumulated around the CPU chip blocking the normal airflow that cooled the chip, causing it to overheat and burnout. They also noted that the fine dust had gotten into the connectors, and that could potentially cause further problems.

Jeff came to me to discuss the problem and his solutions. Jeff said, “Ward, the problem is the dust created when plowing and disking a field. There is no way to stop the dust cloud from forming around the tractor.”

“Yeah, I can understand the problem. What are we going to do about it?”

“Well, the guys and I decided that we could install an easily removable pane of clear acrylic over the Solar Cell Tray. The control box problem can be resolved by installing a three-stage, washable filter system before the control boxes cooling fan. We can also change all of the connectors to hermetically-sealed connectors. That should stop the dust from entering the control box and connectors.

“The only thing is, the user will have to remove and clean the acrylic pane and the filters at the end of every workday, or more often if necessary. Then they can be washed and reinstalled.”

“That sounds as if will solve the problems, Jeff, go ahead and do it.”

When we conducted further tests, the test data proved that we had plenty of power to perform the tasks normally accomplished by a farm tractor. The only problem we had with power was when our plowshare encountered a very large boulder that was just barely covered by the soil. The point of one of the plowshares became imbedded in the boulder. There was a sudden jolt, but the tractor kept going without slowing. The heavy-duty plowshare was ripped off its frame. Yes, our tractor had plenty of power.

As the tractor testing continued, we ran into additional problems with the dust. It built up in the Battery Box and worked its way into the motor-generator. Jeff had to redesign the motor-generator to create a sealed unit that the dust could not penetrate. He couldn’t create a sealed Battery Box because of the gases the battery generated in charging had to be vented, but Jeff found a solution. Of course, we folded those design changes back into the car design for it was also susceptible to dust.

We eventually worked all the bugs out of the tractor design. I turned the prototype tractor over to Paul Harrow and our other neighbors that had farms, so they could use the tractor and let us know what they thought of our tractor compared to their diesel-powered tractors. The feedback was positive and they also provided suggestions for making the tractor more comfortable for the driver.

Frank and Jim delayed the creation of a new company to manufacture the solar powered tractor until after the automobile production line was operational.

As the time to start Task 2 approached, I decided to make the news of my anti-gravity device public knowledge. The furor that would stir up would undoubtedly result in the media invading our privacy.

We were gathered in the backroom of Pukekohe’s F&J’s Pizza Parlor celebrating the shipment of our first solar cars to our Auckland dealership. Yes, Bill’s prediction came true. We now owned a chain of twenty F&J’s Pizza Parlors, which we located in New Zealand’s large cities. We would be adding more pizza parlors to our chain in the coming years in the towns Frank and I went to for doing business. Ward, Frank, I, and our wives decided to host a party for our key personnel and select members of the media in the Pukekohe pizza parlor.