In early 1985, Harrison decided to leave his job with Westinghouse Broadcasting Company (Group W) and return to the West Coast. Even at the time he realized he was probably committing career suicide, because he was only 35 and had one of the best jobs in radio broadcast engineering in the United States. That feeling turned out to be correct, but the move was the catalyst for meeting Sharene and going to Stanford, so it all worked out. Of course he couldn’t predict that at the time, he only knew that where he lived was always more important than what he did, that he never felt at home on the East Coast, and that the new job in San Francisco appeared to have entrepreneurial potential.
So at the end of February the movers cleaned out his rental house in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey, and he said goodbye to his colleagues at Group W. Recognizing that Europe is a lot closer to New York than to San Francisco, he decided to spend some time in Europe before driving to the West Coast. He spent a bit over two weeks there, first in England (his first trip to the UK) with friends Dave and Dorothy, and then in Switzerland with Sarah, Hans, and Amelia.