After lots of research, planning and debating, not to mention many heartaches and much gnashing of teeth, I think I have a plan for these last stages of my, what has been to me, very interesting life.

It is in a bit of a rut right now some of it due to the Texas summer and the heat that goes along with it. The older I get, the harder it is to tolerate being outdoors for too long at a time when the temperature is anywhere from 95 to a 105 degrees. Used to be that I would start work in the mornings and as the heat increased, so the body adjusted accordingly and although I would be hot and sweating like a pig, I was able to tolerate it to complete whatever it was I was working on. Not to mention that I played in two different soccer matches with the temperature hovering around the 108 mark with very high humidity. Nowadays, apart from the fact that I don’t get up very early and consequently miss the coolest part of the day, by the time I get out it is already bloody hot. Things that just have to be done, small repairs or some problem with a filtration system do get done but other things that are not urgent tend to get pushed aside to a later date. I have a long list of those.

So, to brighten up my life, I have been doing a lot of research into travel trailers with the aim of taking off a couple days a week to stay at the State Parks within easy driving distance. My neighbor from across the street has kindly agreed to feed the fish and check on them everyday while I am away giving me the opportunity to “get away from it all”.

With that in mind, I have been researching the aforementioned trailers and after much going back and forth about the pros and cons of the different types, I settled on what is known as a Toy Hauler because of the space towards the back of the trailer that is set up to haul, bikes, boats and man sized toys. My logic for that is that I have a lot of “stuff” after 35 years of living in the same house, that I want to keep and I need a place to keep it. I have always liked to work with tools and for the first 20 years of my working life, did just that. Even after taking a job as the Manager of Planning and Scheduling at the University of Texas, I still kept my hand in using the tools that I have accumulated over the years and even adding to them with newer and sometimes different ones. Some, I no longer have a use for and will probably try to sell them off, others have sentimental value like the pitchfork that used to belong to my Stepfathers brother and has to be probably at least 100 years old. I still use it around the yard when I am cutting things back. My own bricklaying tools, purchased when I was 16 are almost 70 years old. Ah, what memories they bring back when I was just a young boy starting out on this life knowing that I would have to work for at least the next 50 years before I could retire.

Now, 68 years later, I have taken that long awaited step having been retired for 18 years. That awesome day did finally arrive. Now, I am looking at adding something more to my very busy and mostly very interesting life in the form of this Travel Trailer and the open road.

Written 8/5/2020