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This is our adventure Work and save, then retire....it's the American dream, right? My wife and I worked for decades, and we saved our money, as much as we could save on salaried jobs. ....and then I was diagnosed with a serious illness, and we retired. I obtained treatment for my illness, and hopefully I beat it, but I won't know for sure until 2016. But regardless of this particular disease, we're in our early 60's, and who knows what other maladies or illnesses we might contract or already have but not know it. So we are acutely aware that we're going to die some day. We have no illusions about living forever. So, what we did was retire, and just live for a year or so doing what it was that we were doing at the time thinking about what's next, and then after we felt like we knew what we wanted, we sold our house and gave away or threw away most of our furniture, our clothes, our things we had for whatever reason ("junk?"), and we became full time travelers. It's a liberating feeling to jettison everything, or most everything. Why full time travelers? Because if you own a house, especially an older house, you spend all of your time maintaining that house, mowing the grass, weeding the bushes, patching the driveway, raking the leaves. We loved our house, but it was loving us to death. So we became full time travelers. I loved my house and the 6 acres that it was built on with the hardwood trees that populated 4 acres of the 6. It's the most beautiful place that we'll ever own. The backyard was perfect, it was very private and peaceful. We had every kind of wild animal running through it. Foxes, squirrels, muskrats, rabbits, deer, wild turkeys, hawks, and lots of songbirds. I loved my yard. I had a garden, which I enjoyed the fruits of every year, and I planted apple trees, blackberry bushes, cherry trees. But it took all of my time. Life is a series of choices, the sum of which is the itenerary of your journey from cradle to grave. There is much that we haven't seen or done that we'd like to see and do. So we gave up what we loved to get something that would complete our life. Why exercise? Why not just slide out? We are keenly aware that as you get older after age 60 that you have to work at staying in shape. You have to run harder to stay even, and try as you may, there really is NO staying even. The best you can do is to keep as much of your fitness as best you can and against all odds. So we wanted to exercise and eat well to keep whatever fitness we have as long as we can. We like riding bikes (trikes), and we like walks (and hikes), and we like going to good restaurants with healthy foods on their menus, and we like cooking good healthy balanced meals at home. So we go to places where we can do these things. We look for places with farmers markets to get wholesome raw foods, bike trails, hiking trails, fresh air, clean water and clean earth. We go to places where there are inexpensive things to explore and see, and beautiful natural things to go into and hike such as mountains, lakes, rivers, oceans, deserts, forests. I'm also starting to develop an interest in ultralight backpacking in national forests and national trails. So that's our philosophy in a nutshell. We want to enjoy the rest of our lives, and we figured that we couldn't do that at home, so we do it "on the road". So far, so good. |
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Last Update: October 20, 2014
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