Winding down my southwestern family visits

Well my time visiting family in the southwest is winding down. I've enjoyed it so much and am so greatful to my cousins who have put up with my sorry butt:

Houston: Pat and Trese Coyle and family
Ft Worth: Greg and Annette and family
Phoenix: Bobbie Jean and Charlie Pratt
Houston: Pat and family again (how can they stand me once again! LOL).

I've gotten to visit with so many 1st cousins and met so many 2nd and 3rd cousins that I lost count. It's amazing how large and loving our family is!!!

Jodi and I took the "northern route" through TX, OK and AZ and got to see the Petrified Forest, Painted Desert, the Meteor Crator and the Grand Canyon on our way to Phoenix. And as much as I didn't want to see it we were in snow on our way to Phoenix. I'm not sure who pushed the cold, and at times rainy weather ahead of us (I blamed Jodi for bringing it from Seattle) on our trip. Bobbie Jean brought Jodi and I to Sedona for a day and it brought fond and sad memories back for me as that's where my soon to be ex wife honeymooned in 2002. But it's still a very beautiful place to visit. If you haven't been to any of the places I've mentioned you should add it to your bucket list. America has so many amazing and beautiful parks! After a week and a half in Phoenix it was back to Houston.

It was a long and lonely drive to Houston from Phoenix without my traveling companion cousin Jodi. But I made it here on Sunday afternoon. Today was new tires for the Jeep and some final shopping for the last of my necessities. Tomorrow is a tune up and oil change. I'm hoping to rest the final 2 days before my next long drive.

I'm leaving for Christmas with my kids in Orlando on Saturday and will come back to Houston just before the New Year to finish final preparations for heading south. I'm itching to get to Belize and plant my roots. But my kids are too important to leave without seeing one more time for who knows how long.

My trip thru TX and AZ

I'm having a wonderful trip so far and I don't expect anything less on the last leg. I've become reacquainted with family that I haven't seen in far too many years. All have gone so far out of their way to make me feel welcome. I know they will deny it but it's true. I hate to leave each place but need to head on to the next town to keep to my schedule. My cousin Jodi, from Seattle, flew into Houston a few days after I got there and has driven with me to Ft. Worth and tomorrow we're headed to Phoenix in a round-about way. We decided to extend out trip by driving I-40 thru the TX panhandle so we can see the Petrified Forest, The painted dessert, the meteor crater and the Grand Canyon before turning south to Phoenix. So instead of hitting Phoenix on Monday we'll arrive sometime Tuesday.

My plan is visit family there for about 2 weeks, drive back to Houston, fly home for Christmas with my kids, back to Houston and then head south right after the New Year. I'm also planning on taking it slow through Mexico to see what they have to offer before crossing into Belize and finding a permanent spot to call home. More later!

My trip has started

Well I did leave on Friday November 13th as I planned (chosen because 13 is my lucky number and it's a lucky day for me when it falls on a Friday). I thought it would be a nice 15-18 hour drive but that soon changed. I hadn't even left Orlando when I started having swaying (side to side) problems with the RV when I hit 50mph. I was on I-4 headed toward the turnpike when it happened first. What a scary ordeal that was! I saw cars in the 3 lanes behind me slamming on brakes and swerving. Very scary. At least I didn't cause any accidents. So I looked for the "sweet spot", which turned out to be 45mph. So that made me think it would be a long slow trip... We'll on Saturday I talked with my cousin Pat Coyle about it and he made a couple of calls. The fix was moving some of stuff I had distributed through out the RV to the front to add more weight to the tongue. I thought I was doing a smart thing by evenly distributing the weight throughout the RV. Obviously not. Plus I hadn't added water to the fresh water tank thinking I could save the gas that it would take to haul it all the way to TX. Well I filled it in a gas station that had facilities for RVs. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful but longggg. Thank God for Pat in helping me solve the sway problem I hate white knuckle drives and all I could think of was "I'm driving how far at 45mph? It's a good thing I don't have a schedule once I cross the border."

The only downer so far is that my 2nd cousin Chelsey (Pat and Teresa's daughter) hurt her knee and was in the ER when I got there. The ER did an xray that was inconclusive so tomorrow they will make an Ortho appointment to get it fully checked out. Hopefully it will just be a bad sprain and she'll heal quickly.

More later!

Setting my schedule to leave Orlando

While I still haven't packed the RV yet I am starting to put together my trip schedule out west to visit my family and friends. My daughter Carrie will be coming with me instead of my son Matt because of his need to get a job. Carrie just got laid off by my daughter Nicole because Nicole went back to part time work so she won't need Carrie to baby sit any more.

Anyway, here is my tentative schedule as it stands right now:

11/13-12/14 On the road from Winter Park FL to Houston TX

11/14-11/21 Houston (leaving the RV on Houston for the duration)

11/21-11/28 Dallas

11/28-12/13 Phoenix

12/13-12/14 Driving back to Houston

From here it's either fly home to Orlando for Christmas or on to Belize and plant myself then fly to Orlando for Christmas. Either way I'll be flying Carrie home from either Phoenix or Houston.

I am so itching to get on the road to Belize though and set up. Right now I'm headed back to Orlando from Alpharetta. Well actually I have to pack the car first. Matt and I came up here on Friday to get the very last of my stuff and say goodbye to some very dear friends who I will miss very much. So this is my last trip to Atlanta and my next to last trip through GA. I have to pass through a bit of GA on I-10 headed to TX but that will be it.

More later!!!

I bought my RV today!

I finally found my home for Belize In St. Augustine FL! I pick it up on Friday. The owner currently has it connected to his sister's house and uses it when he comes down from NY. So he has to disconnect all the plumbing and electrical, unload his personal gear, and give it a cleaning. Friday he's going with me to the Tag Agency to make sure that I don't have any problems registering and plating it and he's filling the 2 30lb propane tanks for me.

My son Richard and I made a few stops on the way back from DC today to look at RVs I'd seen on Craig's List while we were away. I had 4 that I was interested in. The 1st turned out to be sold while we were driving down to Jacksonville where it was housed. The 2nd was in St. Augustine and I was pleasantly surprised when I saw it. It's a 22' 1994 Catalina that has been well taken care of over the years. It sleeps 6 with a queen size bed as the master, a nice size fridge/freezer and it even has a solar panel to keep the 2 12 volt batteries charged that run the fridge, TV/DVD, and all interior lights. Most come with 1 battery but this owner added a 2nd for extended life. I already have a gas generator that I can use for the A/C if I ever use it. So that's one more load off my over-worked mind. I truly seem to be working harder than when I was working. But now it's for me and not a big corporation.

I have lots to do to get my retirement medical/dental benefits and finances set up so I spent a few hours on that today and hopefully will finish tomorrow. I do plan to get in some bass fishing in the morning if it isn't raining. First things first ya know!

Saturday I'll start loading the RV with my stuff and get it ready to head for TX and then south of the border. It's time to contact my relatives and set up a visit schedule too. I'm hoping to leave soon after November 1st. Houston, Dallas and Phoenix here I come! I'm thinking about a couple of days in New Orleans getting my fill of Cajun cuisine on the way though...

Back from vacation

Richard and I got back home to Winter Park around 4:30pm today. We had a great time touring Gettysburg and Petersburg battlefields and Washington DC and ate a lot of awesome seafood in DC.

It was both our 1st time visiting Gettysburg and it was an exciting experience for me. Living in Alpharetta I had the opportunity to visit numerous battlefields in GA, AL, and TN but none of those sites held my interest like Gettysburg. I still haven't spent the amount of time I would really like to there but at least I did get there. I'm sure that you know I'm into the paranormal and have had several experiences of my own. Gettysburg is a place where I would have loved to spend the night sitting in one of the battlefields with a tape recorder... I did get some eerie pictures at Little Round Top though. And only at that site and none of the others where I thought I might since they had vastly higher mortality rates like the Wheat Field and the peach orchard. All of the pictures at Little Round Top had multiple orbs floating in them and 1 had a mist. And I took the pictures with 2 different cameras and Richard took 1 of the pictures so I know that it wasn't a camera issue. We took the pictures at about 3pm in the afternoon too. Nothing was visible to us until we started looking at the pictures on the cameras. We both looked at each other and got goose bumps! It wasn't until a couple of days later when we finally downloaded the pictures that we could really see them. I posted them on my Facebook page for everyone to see.

In DC we wandered all the normal outdoor monuments, I spent about an hour at the Vietnam Wall talking to friends who's names are honored there and shed a few tears with I vet that I met that was there the same time (he was only there a year though) and in some of the same places. On Monday we did the Capital tour and then finished the night at the Jefferson Memorial with a wonderful sunset. Marine One (well not actually Marine One since the president wasn't aboard) flew by several times on what I can only assume was a flight training. Lots of people snapping pictures of it. We left about noon on Tuesday to be home today so Rich could get back into his normal sleep routine since he works 9pm-6am. The vacation had reset his clock and he needed to reset it so he wasn't falling asleep answering AAA help calls on Thursday.

My First Vacation!

You know I thought retirement was going to be easy and that I'd have a lot of free time to do nothing. Guess again! Besides looking for the car and an RV I have all the HR stuff to do like setting up my retiree health benefits, making arrangements for my pension and 401k payout, and all the rest of the stuff that goes along with the golden years. I'm trying to figure how to live on my last paycheck (coming next week) and the little bit of money that I have set aside already so I don't have to touch my pension, IRA, and 401k until I turn 59 1/2 next June 22nd. I hate the thought of having to pay the 10% early withdrawal penalty on the 3 of them if I don't have to. But I'll probably end up taking a small distribution to tide me over. Needless to say I ain't getting much sleep...

I did get my FL fishing license yesterday and plan to start hitting the lake down the street early each morning. I finally have my canoe back, and the Jeep has a roof rack, so I can get it down to the water. One of my former, and I'm sure it will be again, favorite times of the day was sitting in my canoe watching the sun come up before I started hunting largemouth bass. I'm hoping to pick up on my old motto too...feared by bass, revered by fishermen, loved by women! Actually the last part sort of has me mystified. It comes in spurts and has started again. I get these complete strangers (all women) coming up and asking if they can rub my head. Maybe I'm brain dead but I don't get it. But my son Matt told me how to answer them. "And maybe I can dip my bald head in oil and rub it all over your body!"... ala George Costanza from Seinfeld. i'll have to try it next time it happens.

In one of my earlier posts I mentioned that my son Rich was trying to schedule a vacation and head north to see the fall leaves. Well after much turmoil at work he finally got his approval. So we leave next Tuesday morning (10/13) for 10 days. Since I've always wanted to see Gettysburg I figured we'd kill a few birds with one stone. My sister Eileen lives in Charlotte and we can pass right through there on our way north and see her and her family for the night by driving up I-81. That will take us through NC, WV, VA mountains; MD and into PA. After Gettysburg we can continue heading north into NY state. We should have a couple of chances to see the fall colors.

I picked up my new (well '05) Jeep Grand Cherokee today. I actually bought it yesterday but there was a problem with the driver's seat belt. So that got fixed today. I didn't get the color that I wanted but I got me a big ol' honkin' 5.7 litre Hemi engine! Plus the 4WD I was looking for as well as the large towing capacity that I need. It's red though and it was far from my 1st choice of color. But it's growing on me. All the extras make up for the color. It's got a sunroof too which will help vent my cigar smoke. I tested it out on the way home from dinner with my son Matt tonight. We went to Fishbone's thinking we'd both order the bouillabaisse but we had everything but. We found out it was happy hour and all the sushi and appetizers were 1/2 price. So 3 dozen raw oysters, 3 dozen oak grilled oysters, 4 orders of really spicy volcano roll, 2 orders of calamari, 2 tuna tacos, and more than a few shots and beers later we rolled ourselves out the door. We were celebrating matt's getting hired today as a full time chef at the Grand Floridian Hotel in Disney World and my retirement. So, needless to say, I'll be driving west and south by myself. Circumstances beyond his control forced him to call his former boss at the Kona Steakhouse at the Polynesian Hotel and ask about available positions. The guy got really excited and told Matt he was actually firing a chef that night. Thus Matt's new position.

Well it's time I laid my bald head down and get some sleep. I plan to get up at 6am and watch NASA bomb the south pole of the moon to see if they can prove that there is water in the dust.