Mark Zaller Personal Bio:

Raised in Los Angeles, Mark stumbled into Northern California after walking the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. Wanting to be a Botanist he worked through college years as a river guide and naturalist. After another 3,100 mile cross-country walk along the US Continental Divide he moved on to commercial flying, and took off for Alaska to be a Bush Pilot, surveyor, and sea-sick oceanographer. A few dark seasons in the mid-day-night at minus 120 F, three Grizzly Bears and some 65 foot waves, the warm safe office life of a computer professional became a better choice. To keep a foot in the outdoors he started a river rafting company in the land of the mid-night-sun.

Mark eventually migrated south to work at 3Com. For business and pleasure he paid off a Cessna Turbo 210 flying people on AirVentures around the Western US, and later cut a hole in the belly of the plane for remote sensing and environmental mapping. After a decade the plane broke, and it was traded for an organic farm. Selling produce to local markets off & on for almost 2 decades, the orchards and vineyards have matured, and it now includes growing gas (BioDiesel).

Playing with LANs, WANs, phones and servers by day (and quite a few nights) really paid for the escapades. As a product manager he kept ~30 million nodes sticking to their networks. Expanding beyond America, business development with Hewlett Packard landed him in Grenoble France for a decade. Becoming a naturalized citizen of Europe, he returned to California to fly Air Attack on wildfires, develop infrared integrated Geographic Information Systems and GrowGas.

photos of places