Tag Archives: retirement

International news

Happy Trails, Part 89

I don’t like doing this, but this post is going to mix a bit of current politics and public policy with another musing about retirement.

You see, I’ve mentioned already that my wife and I intend to visit North America while hauling our RV behind our (now repaired) pickup truck.

What I’ve neglected to say is that North America includes another set of countries. They are south of the United States, starting with Mexico and going into Central America.

We are a bit concerned about traveling into Mexico. It has nothing to do with the people there, or the country. We’ve both ventured across the border. The last time we crossed the border was in 1974, when we drove from San Diego into Tijuana and then to Ensenada. We took a cruise with our sons from Galveston to Cozumel in 2011, but that doesn’t actually count as a “border crossing.”

What is troubling to me is the rhetoric coming from Washington since the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the United States. He campaigned on a pledge to build a wall across our southern border; he vowed to make Mexico pay for it. He accused Mexico of “sending criminals” into the United States, as if suggesting that the Mexican government is responsible for some so-called deluge of illegal immigration.

He has continued to sound sharply critical of those who live in Latin America.

My fear is the potential fomenting of anti-American bias in that part of the world, which could put tourists — such as, oh, yours truly — at risk of harm by those who might notice the Texas license plates on our RV and our truck.

Do you get my drift? Of course you do!

I ventured to Mexico City in 1997 on a four-day journalism-related trip. I love that city. I want to show my wife the Aztec pyramids I got to climb. I want to take her to the spectacularly colorful Folklorico Ballet that I watched. I want to treat her to tacos the way they are prepared in Mexico.

At this moment, though, I am fearful of hauling our RV there to see those sights.

If only we could cease this in-your-face rhetoric that I suspect is not being lost on those wonderful continental neighbors.

State news

Happy Trails, Part 88

SAN ANGELO STATE PARK, Texas — I chatted up a young tow-truck driver this morning and then said something that sort of just flew out of my mouth.

I was telling him about being retired, about selling our house and how our fifth-wheel RV is our “residence.”

“That means we have nowhere to go,” I said. An instant later, I corrected myself. “Or, you can say that it means we have everywhere to go.”

Yes. I should have said the second part first, and then omitted the rest of it.

You see, the RV lifestyle we have adopted means that (a) our “house” is hooked up to the back of our pickup and (b) we have an entire continent to explore while we are still able.

We have embarked on another fairly short-term trip. It’ll last about two weeks.

We’ll depart San Angelo State Park soon, heading to Lockhart State Park just south of Austin. After that we haul our “house” to Village Creek State Park just north of Beaumont.

We owned property in Beaumont fro 1988 until 1995. We loved that house. We enjoyed the street. It was quiet and heavily wooded. A hurricane took care of much of the tall timber in our old neighborhood not long after we departed for the Texas Panhandle.

Hurricane Harvey inundated the Golden Triangle this past summer and we want to see the damage that the storm did to our house. I hope it’s intact these days.

After visiting friends in Beaumont, we will shove off for North Texas to see our son, daughter-in-law and our granddaughter.

Then we return to Amarillo.

I hesitate now to call Amarillo “home,” for the reason I cited at the beginning of this blog post. Our “home” is riding along with us wherever we go.

***

Pickup update: I am happy to report that our pickup truck, which broke down on U.S. Highway 87 yesterday afternoon, is fixed. It’s healthy. Good as new … or almost!

I spent a good bit of time trying to find a towing company and then a mechanic to repair our truck. The power steering broke. It turned out to be that the water pump also blew apart.

It’s all repaired.

And we are on the road again — in search of the next big surprise. We just want it to be a pleasant one.

State news

Happy Trails, Part 87

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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.

local news

Happy Trails, Part 86

I ventured today into a place where I worked part-time for about three years after my newspaper career ended. I have a lot of fond memories of my time at Street Toyota in Amarillo, not to mention a lot of friends.

One of them, a sales manager, and I visited this afternoon for a few moments. “How are you doing?” Matt asked. “What are you doing thee days?” I answered “fine” and “not much.” He thought it was being cryptic and asked, jokingly, if I was “on the run.”

Nope. I didn’t mean to be vague with my friend. But it occurs to me now as it did earlier today that I am no longer attached to many things that I need to do.

We have no hard-and-fast plans. We get to awaken every morning, have our coffee and breakfast at our own pace and then ask ourselves, “What do we want to do today?”

This retirement life is really nice.

My wife and I spent a lot of years working hard to provide for our family and ourselves. This life of ours has produced a new set of challenges, which is deciding how we’re going to spend the day that opens up before us.

Right now our lives of full of chores around our fifth wheel. We’re getting ready to hit the road for a couple of weeks. My wife’s tasks are more complicated than mine as we get ready to embark on our next journey. She takes care of the inside of our RV; my task is to prep the outside.

In the meantime, we spend time just doing … whatever the heck we damn well please!

My friends who still are working for a living lament that their time is so far — too far — into the future. My answer to all of them is essentially the same.

Your time will get here in no time at all. Then you’ll wonder: What the hell just happened to all those years? I also tell them that separation anxiety from whatever they were doing while they were working is vastly overrated.

So there you have it. At this moment, we are living from day to day.

It’s good to be us.

local news

Puppy Tales, Part 48

Toby the Puppy’s vocabulary is growing.

Yes, he understands English. He is now forcing his mother and me to spell more words to avoid getting him too excited.

We live in an RV park on the east side of Amarillo. We have horses grazing in a pasture to our east. Our RV park is swarming with rabbits. We’ve begun seeing some cats wandering through the site and among the vehicles parked throughout.

So, rather than say the words “horse,” “bunnies,” and “kitties” when we notice them, my wife and I now must spell the words out.

Why? Because if we say, for instance, “look at the horses,” Toby’s ears perk up, he jumps on the chair at the rear of our fifth wheel and starts peering in the direction of where we have spotted our equine neighbors. Then, quite naturally, he insists on going outside. We get the same reaction from Toby whenever we mention “bunnies” or “kitties.”

The words “walk” and “treat” long ago became grist for the in-house spelling bee. If we mention either word out loud in Toby’s presence, well, you get what happens.

Here’s some other info for you to consider: When we mention our granddaughter’s name, Toby gets excited beyond all reason. “Do you want to see Emma?” we ask him as we approach where she lives in Allen. He knows Emma’s name and responds with excitement in the extreme.

What’s more, he gives the same response when we mention Madden, the large black Lab who is part of Emma’s family. When we mention Madden, or “Mad Dog” as we also call him, Toby goes ballistic, as he and Mad Dog are good buddies.

So help me, I never thought puppy parenthood could get so complicated.

State news

Planning for an education on Texas history

We’re heading downstate soon for a two-week tour and we’ve made a tentative decision on one of the sights we intend to take in: the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin.

I regret I have not yet toured this place.

It’s not far from the State Capitol and it carries the name of one of the state’s more legendary political figures: former lieutenant governor and Texas comptroller Bob Bullock.

Bullock died some years ago of cancer. He was an irascible, often grouchy politician. He was a crusty, traditional Texas Democrat; by that I mean he wasn’t what you’d call a squishy liberal. I met him once while I was working in print journalism; it was near the end of his life and, to be candid, he looked like death warmed over. Lt. Gov. Bullock did not take good care of himself.

But, oh man, this man — who died in June 1999 — loved Texas. He was fond of finishing his public speeches with that gravely “God bless Texas” salutation. His political descendants from both parties have adopted that blessing as their own.

The museum in his memory opened in 2001 and it tells the story of Texas history like no other such display.

Now, I offer that view with no disrespect at all to the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum on the campus at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, just down the highway a bit from Amarillo. I’ve been to the PPHM many times and have seen the flyers proclaiming it to be the “finest historical museum” in Texas. It’s a wonderful exhibit and I see something new every time I visit it.

Our RV travels are going to take us downstate for a tour of the Hill Country and later to the Golden Triangle, where we lived for nearly 11 years before moving in early 1995 to the Texas Panhandle. We’ll finish our jaunt in the Metroplex before heading back to Amarillo.

I am so looking forward to touring what I have heard for many years is a beautiful exhibit in Texas’s capital city.

local news

Happy Trails, Part 85

I’ve heard it hundreds of times in my life from friends: Autumn is their favorite season of the year.

You won’t hear that from me. We are now entering my favorite season. Spring portends a season of hope. Of renewal. We are coming out of the type of darkness that winter has blanketed over us.

It’s a season of change. This year particularly brings immense change for my wife and me.

Winter in the Texas Panhandle has been a challenge, to be sure. It’s been the driest winter we’ve ever experienced here. We’ve been through 22 winters on the High Plains and none of them has been as tinder dry as the one we’ve just endured.

From what I hear the dryness is expected to continue for the foreseeable future as well. But the coming warmth is going to awaken the dormant grass and assorted flora around here.

This post, though, isn’t really about coming out of the barren and dry winter. It’s about the change that we have initiated.

A big move awaits. It likely will occur soon. We have sold our house. We have moved completely into our recreational vehicle. The roof over our heads is perched on four wheels, which we tow behind a muscular pickup.

Our destination is somewhere in North Texas, in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex,, near our granddaughter. We have no definite plan lined out just yet, but one is coming into a little sharper focus as we ponder the next big step in our life together.

We won’t sever our ties to Amarillo. We intend to remain highly mobile, even after we resettle in North Texas. We intend to be frequent visitors to the city we’ve called home for 23-plus years.

The spring of 2018 will be unlike any season we’ve ever experienced. Of that I am absolutely certain, although the winter of 1996 was a beaut as well. We took possession of the house we had built in southwest Amarillo the day after the Winter Solstice and had a delightful Christmas opening boxes and rediscovering possessions we had stored away for nearly two years.

That was then. The next season of big change is at hand. It’s my favorite time of the year.

local news

Happy Trails, Part 84

My faith in our first responders remains strong.

They answered the call last night and fought some wildfires just west of Amarillo. The fire, fueled by howling wind and tinder-dry fuel, for a time threatened portions of the vast medical center way out yonder.

I awoke this morning and learned that the fires had been contained; no loss of life or even any injury. The wind is still brisk and the TV forecasters are telling us they’ll subside sometime this afternoon or evening.

It cannot settle down quickly enough.

Thank you, firefighters. You are heroes in every sense of the word.

***

There. That all said — with great sincerity and respect — I want to share a nasty “fantasy” I’m feeling.

The other evening, with the wind screaming just outside our RV, I had this nightmare scenario. We’re about a quarter-mile south of a high-speed freight rail line. Trains roar past us day and night. The TV weathermen and women tell us about the sparks generated by trains and the potential for starting fires.

The nightmare goes like this: We’re lying in bed. Someone knocks on our fifth wheel door. We open it. The park hosts tell us we have 10 minutes to vacate our spot and get as far away from an approaching fire that has just ignited along the rail line to our north.

Don’t laugh! Please!

I am now thinking it might be appropriate for my wife and me to come up with a 10-minute evacuation drill in case someone knocks on the door in the middle of the night.

Either that or we’ll pack it all up on our own time — and head to the next place.

The latter event is far more likely to occur than the first one.

local news

Puppy Tales, Part 47

I’m kicking myself at this very moment. Toby the Puppy and I went for a walk on this wind-whipped Texas Panhandle day across the RV park where we’re holed up for the time being.

We walked to our east toward a wire fence. We saw a horse grazing near the fence. I thought, “Oh, let’s go see the horse.” I said something out loud to Toby, whose ears perked up and he started looking for the equine critters.

He spotted the horse, a young gelding, near the fence line.

Toby pulled real hard on his leash, wanting to rush toward the beast.

We approached the horse. I reached across the fence. The horse inched toward my outstretched hand. I began stroking his snout.

I had picked up Toby at this point, trying to settle him down just a bit.

Then I looked a little bit away and noticed a younger horse sauntering toward us. He came up close … as in real close.

Then came the moment that makes me want to kick myself. I didn’t have a camera in my hand to record Toby and his latest young best friend going nose to nose for a brief get-acquainted encounter.

For just a brief moment, I thought Toby — who fancies himself to be much larger than he really is — was just a bit skittish at this much-larger critter sticking his face close to the puppy’s face.

Toby got over his nerves. He extended his nose toward the horse. They got along just fine.

Then we walked away.

I am hoping for a return meeting. I also hope when it occurs I’ll be prepared to record it for the rest of the world to see.

local news, State news

Happy Trails, Part 82

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I have to credit a fellow recreational vehicle camper for this term, but I have come down with a case of the “hitch itch.”

It strikes me whenever we’ve been parked for a length of time, yet the open road beckons us. It is beckoning my wife and me. Thus, I get the “hitch itch,” or the “itch” to hook our fifth wheel RV to the bed of our pickup and hit the road.

The cure for the itch will come quite soon as we head out on another road trip. It will be an intrastate journey, keeping us inside Texas for its length.

It will be a lengthy trip.

Our plans are to make ample use of three state parks, which is our RV campsite of choice. We have a Texas Parks & Wildlife park pass, which waives our entrance fees into any state-run park in Texas. There happens to be a lot of ’em. They’re everywhere! They’re all well-run, well-maintained and well-groomed.

They’re also inexpensive!

We’ll be heading to San Angelo State Park to start off. A couple of days later we’ll shove off for Lockhart State Park south of Austin for several days. Then we drive to Village Creek State Park just north of Beaumont for a brief visit before winding our way back to Amarillo — with a stop in the Metroplex to visit our precious granddaughter and her parents.

This “hitch itch” strikes periodically. Frankly, we suffer from it more than we don’t. We have enjoyed this lifestyle so much that we want keep enjoying it for as long as humanly possible — health permitting.

To date, we both enjoy good health. We both have our wits. We enjoy the open road. Toby the Puppy is a serious road warrior as well.

The only nagging “health problem” we cannot eradicate — nor do we want to get rid of it — is that hitch itch.

It will disappear the moment we hook it all up and hit the road.