Tag Archives: retirement

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Happy Trails, Part 41

DURANGO, Colo. — I want to proclaim that RV campers are the friendliest, most cooperative, most helpful and most eager people my wife and I have ever encountered.

We pulled into our RV park in the middle of a magnificent setting in southwest Colorado. We thought we had a pull-through site reserved for our 28-foot fifth wheel and Big Jake, our 3/4-ton Dodge pickup.

Wrong! All they had were back-in sites. We quibbled only for a moment with the park host, telling him we were promised a pull-through site when we made the reservation a couple of weeks ago.

“Can you back it in?” he asked. “Sure,” I said. “We’re not expert at it, but we’ll make it work.”

“I’ll be out in a minute to help,” he said.

We didn’t need him.

We pulled up to our site and began the process of backing ‘er up.

Then, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere came two gentlemen. They were roughly our age. They began guiding me back. They were barking out instructions. My wife was left merely to stand there, smiling and chuckling at the fellows’ wonderfully noble intentions.

I tried to tell one of the fellows that I am not a complete novice at this, that I am able — with some thought and patience — to back the rig up. It didn’t matter. He actually reached into the truck while standing outside the driver’s side door and began cranking the steering wheel to get our fifth wheel angled just right to back into our site.

Meanwhile, the second fellow stood at the back guiding the first fellow toward where the RV was supposed to go.

After just a couple of mid-course corrections, we got our fifth wheel lined up properly with our utility connections.

Mission accomplished!

I want to mention this because it is one of the many pleasures my wife and I have discovered as we have begun our serious travel journey throughout North America.

I’m pretty sure there are many more of these types of guys awaiting our arrival. And, indeed, we intend to offer our own knowledge and RV experience to other newbies as we meet them along the way.

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Happy Trails, Part 40

I ran into a fellow I’ve known for almost the entire time we’ve lived in Amarillo, Texas … in other words, more than 22 years.

We chatted this afternoon about this and that. “Are you liking retirement?” he asked. Why, yes! Of course!

Our brief visit turned immediately to our immediate plans, which include packing up the house we’ve owned for more than 21 of those years, fixing it up a bit and putting it on the market to sell.

My friend looked somewhat astonished. “Where you going?” I told him we plan to move to the Dallas area to live nearer to our 4-year-old granddaughter, Emma, who — I told him — is “growing up way too quickly. Time is getting away from us.”

My friend gets it.

I told him that at my age — 67 and counting — I’m ready for “one more major life’s challenge. And this is it!”

The best news for me is that I am married to someone who knows how to manage this kind of challenge. I’m more or less along for the ride. She adapts well to big changes in life. And so do I, actually, as I believe I’ve have mentioned to you before.

Our move from Oregon to Texas in 1984 constituted a major challenge for yours truly as I sought to advance my career in journalism. It worked out well for both of us. I’ll admit to trepidation when it began but I realized soon afterward that I am significantly more adaptable than I ever gave myself credit for being.

So it is with this latest challenge. I am not nervous about it. I am anxious for it to occur.

We are moving at an ever-accelerating pace toward that end.

I suppose you could say that challenges in life make it all worth living. I’ll be sure to keep you posted on how this all turns out. It’s going to be a hell of a ride.

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Happy Trails, Part 39

Our retirement trail is going to take us west quite soon. Indeed, we’re going to put ourselves and our RV and pickup to a fairly stern test.

We’ll be parked for a few nights in Durango, Colo.

The test will occur on our way there. We expect to climb significantly in a fairly short period of time.

We’ve been through Durango already — years ago. We haven’t spent any significant amount of time there. This adventure will provide us proof that our truck is, indeed, strong enough for us and our fifth wheel. We already believe it. We just sort of need some affirmation of it.

We are inching our way toward (more or less) full-time RV living. Family obligations likely won’t allow us to be living exclusively in our RV while we hunt for a new home. But we intend to spend significantly more time in our RV exploring this and/or that bucket list destination.

North America, as you know, contains a number of towering mountain ranges. The Rocky Mountains loom huge out there just to our west; farther out west are the Sierra Nevada and the Cascade Range. We’ve hauled our RV over the Appalachian Mountains and the Ozarks and, yes, we’ll go back … again and again.

But as we prepare for this next big adventure in our lengthy life together, we are looking at this moment for one final road test that will give us complete confidence in our vehicle assembly’s ability to take us to wherever we intend to go.

It’s a big world out there. We intend to see every single bit of it that time will allow.

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Blog creates a form of separation anxiety

You know already that I suffer no separation anxiety from my working life. Retirement is good, man!

It’s not the case with this blog. High Plains Blogger occupies a good bit of my time these days. People ask me about it. “I write daily, usually several times each day,” I respond. “It’s therapy. It’s what I do. It’s a big part of my new life.”

Then there are those days when I am away from the computer for extended periods of time. Such as today. It’s now mid-evening and this is the first item I’ve posted all day.

I am suffering acute separation anxiety from High Plains Blogger. This single post will go a long way toward ridding me of it.

I’ve long believed that empty-next syndrome is overrated. Our sons left home after high school and never looked back. We’re glad they remain independent and have established themselves in their chosen professions.

My retirement came when I wasn’t expected it — entirely. Once it did, I didn’t look back either. Nor did my wife when her time to call it a career arrived.

Separation anxiety from work? Forget about it!

My “work” these days is this blog. I do it not just for pleasure, but also to release pent-up emotions; I do so to rant when the spirit moves me; I write these posts to share some life experience, not that mine are unique or anything out of the ordinary.

When I cannot write these posts regularly during the course of a day, I suffer from a bit of blogging withdrawal.

I’m getting past it, however, at this very moment.

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Happy Trails, Part 36

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I’m staring a big anniversary — if you want to call it such — in the face. It’s two days away, but I thought I would share a thought or two today and then call it good.

First, I wish to make this declaration: Separation anxiety from a professional career is vastly overrated. I am living, breathing proof of that reality. It’s true and I’ll tell you why.

I won’t belabor you with many details of my sudden departure from daily journalism, which occurred on Aug. 30, 2012. Two days short of five years ago, I was told — in the midst of a “company reorganization” — that I no longer would be doing my job at the Amarillo Globe-News, which was to edit the paper’s opinion pages. Someone else — a colleague who formerly worked under my supervision — would do that job. We competed for my job and my employer decided to go with him.

Thus, a career that produced untold joy and satisfaction for yours truly for nearly 37 years came to screeching halt. I worked at the Globe-News for nearly 18 years and I thought I was doing a pretty good job. Silly me.

I walked out of my office, went home, came back the next day, cleared out my office — and was gone. I decided to quit immediately.

But I moved on. I stayed in the game, more or less, over the next few years. I was able to land part-time freelance gigs: writing a blog for Panhandle PBS; writing news features for KFDA NewsChannel 10’s website; helping edit a weekly newspaper in Tucumcari, N.M. I worked for six months as a juvenile supervision officer at the Randall County Youth Center of the High Plains. I worked as a customer service greeter at Street Toyota for about three years.

One by one those jobs went away. The Street Toyota job was the last one. Then in March, I decided to walk away from that.

I’ve been a full-time retiree ever since.

I also have spent little time looking back on the career that in many ways defined me. I have many more pleasant memories of those many years than negative ones. I got to travel around the world. I was honored to meet and interact with the most fascinating characters imaginable. I helped chronicle the stories that make communities tick. I got to help shape public opinion on pressing issues of the day.

I used to joke that I had the “best job in town, because I am allowed to foist my opinion on thousands of people every day.”

That was then. My final years as a journalist became a lot less fun than the earlier times. The Globe-News fell victim to the changing pressures being put on print publications. The top management didn’t do nearly enough to salvage employees’ morale as the paper struggled to build a new business model in this changing climate.

I’ve discovered this truth, too. It is that full-time retirement is all that it’s cracked up to be. My wife and I have been able to continue traveling. We’ll do much more of it in our fifth wheel RV — while we prepare to relocate to another community so we can live closer to our adorable granddaughter.

The Globe-News has been purchased by another corporate media company. Morris Communications, which owned the paper for more than four decades has decided to get out of newspaper publishing. They’re saying all the correct things publicly about how sad they are, and how GateHouse Media will continue its commitment to “community journalism.”

We’ll see about that.

I’m left, then, to offer a word of backhanded thanks to the company that told me five years ago that its plans to enact — in Globe-News publisher Lester Simpson’s words — “radical change” wouldn’t include me. It dawned on me some time ago that he spared me from the misery many of my former colleagues have endured.

I appreciate the freedom — and the time — to write this blog. I’m unfettered, unchained, unrestricted, unleashed, unencumbered … you name it. I can speak my mind.

Separation anxiety from daily journalism? Pfftt!

Life is great, man!

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Happy Trails, Part 35

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Our retirement journey is now getting ready to depart in another direction altogether.

We’re heading west. All the way west — to the Pacific Coast states. I figure we’ll be about 80 or so miles from Pacific Ocean. It’s still pretty close to the Big Blue, right?

This test will give our Dodge Ram pickup its sternest test to date. Big Jake has done well already on our jaunts eastward. Our beastly 3/4-ton truck hauled our fifth wheel with little strain through the Appalachian Mountains, along the Shenandoah Valley, through West Virginia, through the Ozarks.

We have supreme confidence in our truck’s ability to do the job it is about to do.

We’ll be crossing the Rocky Mountains. We’ll travel near the edge of Death Valley. We’ll climb into the Sierra Nevada Range. We’ll trek north and cross the southern edge of the Cascade Range and then drive through the heart of the Cascades on our way back home.

Then we get to do it all over again on our return to the Texas Panhandle. Through Utah and crossing the Rockies yet again.

Our outings are becoming more frequent. Indeed, soon — perhaps even quite soon — we intend to empty our house in Amarillo and then move into our RV full time.

That’s when the fun really begins. We’ll need to maintain our base of operations in Amarillo for a time as we await the sale of our house. We need to keep an eye on an elderly family member as well.

We have a number of “bucket list” destinations in store. We plan to drive the breadth of Canada. We’ll likely go from west to east, starting in Vancouver and ending up in the Maritime Provinces along the Atlantic Ocean. I’ll keep you advised on how those plans come together.

Until then … the next big adventure is on tap.

national news

Happy Trails, Part 34

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A word to the wise: Read road signs very carefully when traveling far from home. If you fail to do so, you might find yourself tooling down some road to nowhere … but it will cost you!

My wife and I returned home this past weekend from our latest sojourn across the United States of America; we opened our mail and found a notice from the Interstate 495/95 Express Lanes toll authority in northern Virginia.

We had been assessed a “toll violation” because in June we found ourselves driving in the “express lane” with no way on God’s Earth to get off.

The violation won’t cost us an arm and both legs, so we’ll pay it. I called the toll authority this morning to “protest” the notice. I was told after explaining to the robotic-sounding “customer service representative” that the “invoice is still valid.”

I applaud the toll authority for being so efficient in its handling of my call. Believe me, I actually doubted I was conversing with a living, breathing human being even though she gave me her name when she picked up the phone on the other end of the line. That’s the good news.

The bad news, if you don’t mind my calling it that, is that the toll authority representative didn’t quite grasp the nature of the “protest” I was filing. It’s not that my wife and I don’t think we broke any rules; we did when we ended up on that express lane. It’s just that the highway was under construction, rendering the GPS on our truck virtually useless, the signage was imprecise, traffic was heavy and we found ourselves — quite by accident — on a toll road without the proper “express pass” tag attached to our vehicle.

Furthermore, we had to travel several miles southbound from suburban Washington, D.C., toward our RV campsite before we could exit the express lane.

This all happened while we were visiting our niece and her husband, who live in Washington. We drove to a metro train station, and rode the train into the district each day of our visit. We would return to the Franconia-Springfield Station, drive our truck out of the parking garage and then head back to our RV site.

Somehow, on this particular evening, we got a bit befuddled by the road construction. On June 12, zigged when we should have zagged and got caught in that seemingly endless journey along an express lane.

Hey, that kind of thing happens to out-of-towners, am I right?

I told Robot Lady we’d pay the fine. She offered nothing in the way of a word of sympathy for our anxiety or frustration over the signage, heavy traffic and road construction. She merely instructed us to “stay away from the left lane when you see those white signs.”

Gee. Thanks. Will do.

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Happy Trails, Part 33

This ongoing series of blog posts is supposed to chronicle the joys of retirement that my wife and I are enjoying.

We are enjoying many of them. We just returned home today after traveling 3,175 miles from Amarillo, to East Texas, to Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota. We spent some glorious family time with our sons, our daughter-in-law and her sons, our precious granddaughter, our daughter-in-law’s parents, my cousin and her husband.

My wife and I saw a lot of beautiful country along our sojourn and spent plenty of great “quality time” with our family members.

We had a serious blast, folks.

But …

Our trip had a couple of serious hiccups, which I’ll explain.

On our return home from St. Paul, Minn., we pulled into a truck stop/travel center in Springdale, Ark., where we discovered one of our RV’s wheels was seriously out of alignment. We looked closely and discovered it had burned through some bearings. The wheel was shot.

We summoned a service guy, who told us the axle was damaged. We needed a new one. He brought it the next afternoon — after my wife and I, along with Toby the Puppy, spent a sleepless night in the truck stop parking lot. The noise of semi-trailers coming and going all night — along with the oppressive heat — kept us up all night. We ran our fifth wheel off the battery, which didn’t run our air conditioner.

The service guy replaced the axle the next day and we proceeded onward.

Then came the trip home from Allen, Texas, where we spent a couple of days and nights with granddaughter Emma and her parents.

We journeyed home with our shiny new rear axle holding up just fine. We pulled up to our Amarillo house, got out, then tried to open the slide on our fifth wheel so we could empty our pantry.

The slide doesn’t work. No response to the switch. It’s deader than dead, man.

We’ll get that problem fixed quickly.

So, the upshot of this story? Not every excursion is trouble-free. We have to learn to cope with stumbles and hiccups along the way. I believe we did all right in that regard.

We don’t need more opportunities to present themselves.

national news

Happy Trails, Part 32

WOODBURY, Minn. — This blog isn’t about my being a mechanical dunderhead, although that will become evident as you peruse this brief post.

It’s about the recreational vehicle community and the overarching friendliness that pervades it.

My wife and I found ourselves without hot water at the start of the day. We pulled out the user manual for our fifth wheel. I pored through it looking for ways to troubleshoot the problem. I flipped switches, checked breaker fuses, tested the propane levels. I came up empty.

Then we spent the day visiting my cousin and her husband before all of us returned to our RV park; my cousin wanted to see this “mansion” in which we travel. Her husband is a general contractor, but admitted to having limited knowledge about RV propane fuel systems.

We fiddled around outside in the dark, flashlight in hand, flipping more switches and getting a bit more frustrated with each passing minute.

Then up walked a young man named Andrew. “Hello. Are you fellows having trouble with your water heater?” he asked. “Uhh, yeah!” I said.

“I’m an RV tech,” Andrew responded. Quite suddenly, when I heard the words “RV tech” I’m quite sure I saw a light shine on Andrew as if the darkness was lifting all around him.

He checked a few switches, asked about whether my wife and I were running our water heater on electricity or propane. We turned off the electricity, turned on the propane switch and then — presto! — the pilot light lit.

We now have hot water. Andrew offered us a helpful hint on how to operate our water heater. I’m still uncertain what caused the system to fail on us a few hours earlier, but I have an idea on what to look for when we take it in for service.

We thanked Andrew profusely. He said he was parked two spaces over and saw us lurking about in the dark. So he thought he’d come over and lend a hand.

Therein lies the spirit of the greater RV community as I have long heard it described. We all pull together, lend a hand when appropriate and seek to smooth the rough patches for our neighbors who we believe might be in some distress.

Andrew came to the rescue. I appreciate him more than I expressed in the dark of night.

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Happy Trails, Part 31

STRAFFORD, Mo. — As we travel around the country in our pickup truck and fifth wheel, we meet the nicest people, most of whom are chock full of helpful information.

So, we pulled into an RV park just outside of Strafford, which is a bit east of Springfield, Mo. We checked in. The nice woman, the co-owner of the park, walked us through the usual stuff: directions to the public shower, the Dumpster, TV listings, Wi-Fi connection, directions and approximate distances to the nearest retail outlets.

Then she pointed out something that kind of caught me by surprise. “Here is the county where we’re located, Webster County. The other counties around us are this, this and this. You need to know where you are if you’re watching the weather and we have some serious storm alerts.”

Gulp!

I said nothing to the RV park co-owner. However, of all the RV parks where we’ve stayed, I believe this is the first time we’ve been told about the potential for — how should I put it? — potentially deadly weather.

As I noted, the vast majority of RV park hosts are gracious in the extreme. I appreciate greatly this lady’s willingness to share some emergency information.

I guess my question is: What happens if we have to bug out — in a hurry? I guess I’d better develop a quick-exist strategy … pronto!