Tag Archives: North America

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Open road awaits

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This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts commenting on upcoming retirement.

I happen to be a good place right now. At this moment.

One week from today, my wife and I will become fully retired.

What lies ahead? Well, we don’t know — precisely. We have lined out a general blueprint that involves travel in our pickup nicknamed Big Jake, our fifth wheel recreational vehicle, spending more time with our precious granddaughter and eventually — let me emphasize, eventually — moving from the High Plains of Texas to the Metroplex region.

I am having a wonderful time telling colleagues at the auto dealership where I work part-time about our upcoming plans. Invariably, they ask: What are you going to do? Where are you going?

My answer: I don’t know. That’s the answer to both ends of that question. We do not know.

It’s the adventure of it all that excites us at this moment.

I’ve been telling friends all over Amarillo that my wife and I believe we have one big challenge left to meet. This appears to be it.

We have decided to pick up and move everything we own down the road a good bit. Do we have a detailed, finalized plan lined out? Not yet. It’s coming.

Our plan at this moment is to simply “go on down the road.” We don’t yet know the location of our final destination. Our immediate plan is merely to travel, to see the sights and hear the sounds of this wonderful continent of ours.

We’ve set foot in 47 of the 50 states; we will make it a clean sweep — possibly very soon. We have visited four Canadian provinces: British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia. We’ll get to the rest of them, too … at least we hope.

The open road awaits us.

We will embark on it with joy in our hearts.

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Land line may go when retirement arrives

This is the latest in an occasional series of blog posts about impending retirement.

Having spewed already about the difficulty of cutting ourselves loose from our home telephone, some friends have reminded me of what I’ve noted already.

Retirement is going to bring a whole new lifestyle for my wife and me that more than likely will require us to cut the tie that binds us to our safety line.

Gosh. I didn’t even think of it.

Our retirement hopefully will feature travel. Lots of it, in fact. We’ll be on the road for extended periods of time in our fifth wheel. We intend to visit most of North America. We hope to take our fifth wheel to Mexico as well, but first things first: Our southerly neighbors will need to get control of the drug thugs who are running rampant, terrorizing tourists and other innocent victims.

But I digress.

The land line that has been such a staple in our lives isn’t going away any time soon, at least not immediately.

Eventually? Yes. That will be determined at a later date. For now, I’m having a lot of fun working my three part-time jobs. The RV awaits. When we climb aboard in our retirement years, I’m expecting to be fully mobile.