What's After Work?

For a year and a day I have been waiting and on March 16th 2021 I received the second of the required vaccines needed to prevent covid 19. It has been a long strange journey to get here. During this time I have learned about myself and others.  Last January Jan and I took a big trip to Hawaii. It was great we flew from Tampa to Hawaii in a big plane packed in with a bunch of people we did not know. No masks or excessive hand washing. I'm not even sure we carried any hand sanitizer. While there we ate out at  restaurants and visited sights with lots of people.  I also just started my retirement in January and had planned to do lots of fun things. I was going to get involved with volunteering in my community. Jan and I were going to travel and see things. Then before I could even get started on March 15, 2020 everything came to a screeching halt.  Next thing I know we are sitting at home watching Netflix and figuring how to order groceries online. I broke out the sewin...

  The first week of February Jan and I took a trip down to Everglades. Other than driving through the Everglades on Alligator Alley Jan an I have never visited the Everglades.  For this trip we rented a class "B"rv. We had been wanting to try one and this fit the bill.  This one is made by Winnebago. It is like driving a really big van. Inside there is room for two to sleep, shower and cook dinner. On top are several solar panels that keep the batteries charged. I was also surprised to find the mileage acceptable, 16 to 17 MPG.  We camped at the Everglades Flamingo which is the southernmost tip of the Florida peninsula. This is semi-primitive camping, no hot water in the showers. But other than that is is a very nice campground. the sites are very large and spread out. We never felt that the other camper were too close. At night the lighting at the campground is very subdued and we could see lots of stars. The first full day in the Everglades we had planned a boat t...

This has been a fun week. I started off on Monday with a Zoom call to Mrs. Zacek's 4th grade class. It was great to talk to and see some of my students. I made them a Google slideshow of things that I have been doing after retiring. The kids had the most questions about my trip to Hawaii.  Even though September is over I'm still riding my bike and I'm getting Jan out on her bike also. We took a nice morning ride on Tuesday.  After the ride we sat down to check off a few more episodes of The West Wing. I guess we don't get enough politics on the news.  Thursday we went out to General RV in Dover. We are toying with the idea of getting an RV and hitting the road. Still have some decisions to make. New, used, trailer, drivable. So many choices. We have rented two RV's  to get an idea about how we would get along in the smaller space....So far so good😃 Today I started a bike scavenger hunt around Safety Harbor. I got about 14 of the 20 or so spots found and photograp...

 It is October and I'm done with the Great Cycle Challenge. Jan and I spent the first part of last week RVing it. We rented an RV to travel north to visit Austin and Morgan in Raleigh. This was our first visit with Austin after he proposed to Morgan. We are very excited about the coming nuptials. Morgan is a nice girl and we are happy to have her become part of our family.  We rented an RV from a company called RVshare . It is kinda like Airbnb on wheels.   We chose for this trip a 24 foot class "B" RV. The family we rented from were quite nice and explained about traveling in an RV quite well. My favourite part of traveling in an RV is that packing you just carry clothes from your closet to the closet in the RV. My least favorite part was empting the "holding" tanks.  Click to see the inside of our RV This trip also gave us a chance to meet Austin's new dog Roo. Roo is an Australian Blue Heeler and is very active.  She likes to play and go on long walks, f...