SAN ANGELO, Texas — How do I say this without sounding too much like a whiny baby.

Let me try this out just for kicks: Our retirement “trail” isn’t particularly “happy” at this moment. My wife, Toby the Puppy and I are spending the night in a Texas rest area. We’ve put the orange cones in the rear of our fifth wheel. We’ll wait for the morning before someone hauls our pickup off to a dealership service center to get repaired.

Dang it, anyway!

We were driving southeast along U.S. Highway 87 this afternoon just a few miles out of San Angelo. I pulled across the median to park briefly at the rest area for an, um, pit stop. We made the turn and then — boom! — just like that, the power steering went out. The engine overheated dramatically.

We limped into the rest area. We made a few phone calls, most of which were futile. Then we made a command decision: We’ll unhook the truck from our RV in the morning after we call a towing service to retrieve our truck for what we hope is a fairly quick service.

It’s not all bad news. We have electricity available. We hooked up our lengthy power cord to the outlet. We have some fresh water in our tank, so we can wash up.

Hey, we knew all along that our journey along the retirement road wouldn’t always result in a pothole-free drive. There would be this or that bump along the way. We’ve had a couple of them already but they involved a fifth wheel we owned prior to the one we purchased in 2017. This is the first truck-related boo-boo we’ve suffered since we embarked on this retirement trek.

We won’t sweat it. We’ll just get past it.

Then we’ll head on down the road.