Fifty-Day trip of a lifetime!
by Irwin
(Lakeland)
There are certain times of the year that it seems a person should not catch the flu or a cold or what have you – why? – because it tends to hang on so long. Such was and still is the case with me. You got it, I apparently caught some type of flu or cold bug that has dug in its heels and doesn’t want to turn loose of me.
Add to that problem some minor surgery my wife needed that incapacitated her as well and between the two of them (my flu and her surgery), it was all I could do to do a few household chores let alone make my way to the computer to do any type of writing.
It shocks me when I don’t write as often as I would like... which makes the next sentence seem strange. I will, in fact, be taking a short hiatus (fifty days) from blog posting. Actually, now that I think about it, this will be my last blog posting until late November.
One good thing about the upcoming hiatus is the fact that I hope to gather quite a bit of material that I will be able to share with everyone once the hiatus is over. But until then, I am going to keep the details of this hiatus a secret because the closer we get to the actual start of our adventure, the more scared we become that it will not come to pass. We have been planning this now since the beginning of 2012 and are keeping our fingers crossed that nothing interrupts our plans.
While the details of the hiatus might be secret, I can divulge the reason for choosing 50 days. My wife and I will be married fifty years (fifty years – fifty days) on May 18, 2013 and so we came up with and planned for a 50 day sabbatical doing that which we have only ever dreamed about.
I even made it a point to give up my part-time teaching gig for the Fall semester (which I try not to do because it is one of my means of providing extra income for our travels). That was hard to do because I do enjoy teaching and my students do come up with some interesting questions at times.
Mine isn’t so much an on-again-off-again type retirement. I actually retired full time in 1996 but have been working part-time at one job or another since 1999. It is a way of enjoying retirement and having some extra funds available to do some of the things we look forward to do in retirement. This eliminates the worry of spending down, so to speak, our retirement funds sooner than need be.
Plus, I don’t care what anyone says.... staying involved by working part-time keeps a person both physically and mentally fit thus also allows us to live longer in our retirement years.
Being retired does require one to make changes but once you get the hang of it – you really wouldn’t want to go back to working full-time like we used to do. In retirement we just let life evolve naturally.
Doing what one wants to do when you want to do it is a freedom that is hard to describe.
For instance, even though we have things we want to do and have made a schedule of deadlines to accomplish certain things, in retirement, the beauty of it is that should life throw us a curve ball such as this flu thing that slowed me down for a period of time, deadlines can be put on hold. There truly shouldn’t be anything that definitely has to be done by a certain date.
Oh, it is nice to have dates and deadlines to follow as they eliminate a lot of the confusion and hassle of wondering what one wants to do next (another reason why I like lists) ….. but the fact remains that being retired – if it gets done today – that is OK and if it doesn’t, so what, that's OK too – tomorrow is another day.
During this fifty day odyssey, I hope to take quite a few pictures as well as write a bit about each day and will share same with you upon our return. I am sure you are wondering exactly what I am talking about and why I am being so vague.
Well, it’s because my wife and I are somewhat superstitious when it comes to things like this. We have found over the years that when we tend to talk too much about something we are planning on doing, prior to our actually doing it, something tends to interfere and the event never comes to fruition.
And there has been too much time and money put into this venture for it to fall through at this point. This flu and my wife’s recent surgery tend to put a damper on it and we can only hope that the two of us recuperate enough before the end of the month so that our plans can take place as planned.
I enjoy writing these posts and sharing some of our adventures with those of you that that take the time to read them. I am also looking forward to providing you all with some interesting tales of our adventures in future posts. I do know that if all goes as planned, I should have quite a bit of material (both in the way of photos and notes) to put a little book together. Will I actually get to write the book? Who knows? But I have every intention of trying to do so upon my return. What better way to spend one’s retirement time?
Talk to you all when the sabbatical is completed. Take care, stay safe, and if you are of a mind to “Keep on dancing!”
Until next time.
Have a Great Time... Hurry Back, Ya Hear? Wendy
