OUR ROAD TO FULLTIMING
September 15, 2000: AN UPDATE ON OUR PROGRESS
Almost a month has passed since writing my last installment of our progress toward fulltiming. The operative word here is "progress" or, in our case, the lack of it, until last weekend. Our home has been on the market for more than two months, and we have had only a few lookers. But, as they say, it only takes one!!! That ONE finally came!!!
Last Friday, while I was away teaching my framing class, Ron "entertained" a young couple and their two children. They were in the house for quite awhile, longer than anyone else who had looked, and we all know that this is a good sign. The following morning, again while I was away teaching my class, they returned for a second look. Now, we were really hoping that something would come of this in the form of an offer to buy our home. Sure enough, on Sunday afternoon, we were presented with an offer, and after a few counter offers over the phone, we were all in agreement. The best thing is that the bottomline is what we needed in order to accomplish our goals. This is, of course, a good thing!!! The downside is a contingency that the buyers must sell their present home (expected in this market), but they also asked for a 45 day escrow. We're keeping our fingers crossed that their house sells quickly, or that escrow period could get extended, something we don't want. So now, we are in the second "wait and see" period, but we are going ahead with the balance of our downsizing in preparation to "hit the road" around November 1!!!!!
Now, to update one situation that I have talked about in these installments, Ron has gone back to work, as of September 5, after 4 months on medical leave. He has applied for his retirement to be October 1, but because of the situation with the house, that date has been pushed to November 1. His knee is doing much better, and he has even gone back to the vanpool, which can be very uncomfortable hour and a half trip. But...he is getting as "antsy" as I am, about getting on with everything. He's ready, and so am I!!!
Questions about family and elderly relatives arise every so often when someone contacts me about our preparations for fulltiming, and I have also referred to "family matters" in Salinas and Hollister periodically. Each situation is different for each individual, and we have been faced with various situations regarding elderly relatives in the last couple of years. Ron's great aunt passed away a year ago, but resolving her estate took a year of trips back and forth to Hollister. Ron's mother has also been in and out of the hospital, assisted living, and a nursing home, also requiring numerous trips to Salinas. (These two towns are about 25 miles apart in California.) The last trip, in the latter part of August, resulted in the decision to move her to Albuquerque, NM, where Ron's brother lives. This move will ease the situation considerably; his brother is nearby and can visit anytime, and we can visit in the course of our travels. As for my parents, I helped them move into to a "retirement community" in Turlock, CA, last February. My dad has since had some medical problems, and although he cannot live in their apartment, he is still residing the same complex. As I said before, each situation is different, and each one of us will handle that situation as best we can.
On the downsizing front, I had been putting off one chore that I was not looking forward to finishing----going through old magazines. I had about 5 years of Trailer Life and Highways plus about 4 years of Sunset Magazine. While Ron was in Salinas this last time, I finally sat down, here in my office, and went through all these magazines. I organized all the articles that I tore out of them in a file box, and I also entered information about each article in an Excel workbook on my computer. Now, when we are in a particular area in our travels, I will have everything right at my fingertips. Recipes from Sunset are also filed in this box; I just hope that we have an opportunity to try a few soon.
Another chore that I have been putting off is "cleaning up" my computer. It's absolutely amazing how many emails I have stored on my hard drive!!!! I've been trying to do a little each day, but even that can be difficult. So much information about fulltiming has been stored in various folders that I have to read and reread and then decide if I still want to keep it. Eventually, I will copy and paste the information into Word and put it all on diskettes. By the time that I get to that point, maybe we'll have a CD writer, and I can copy everything to CD's. Wishful thinking, I'm sure!!!
As I said earlier in the article, we will continue our downsizing process with the assumption that escrow will close on time. This weekend we will start packing boxes to be put in temporary storage and permanent storage. We are taking our present trailer to Indiana to trade in on our Travel Supreme, and it's for darn sure that everything that we want to take on the road will not fit in the SunnyBrook!!!! Since we will be back in this area over the holidays to visit our kids and grandkids, the remainder will be picked up then.
That pretty much sums up where we are at the moment on our "Road to Fulltiming". In retrospect, I just realized that it has been almost a year since I started writing these installments. In fact, the first installment was posted on November 1, 1999, and now that is the date of Ron's retirement. What a coincidence!!! We'll just keep our fingers and toes crossed that everything goes as planned!!!
November 1, 1999 THE BEGINNING January 25, 2000 THE DOWNSIZING BEGINS February 6, 2000 RECEIPTS AND TAX RETURNS March 12, 2000 THE FIRST "DENT" April 27, 2000 DUMPSTERS, DOCTORS, AND TRUCKS May 24, 2000 OUR TRUCK DECISION July 2, 2000 BITS AND PIECES July 21, 2000 MEDICAL CONCERNS July 27, 2000 STEPS TO A FULLTIMING BUDGET August 8, 2000 OUR TRUCK DELIVERY SAGA October 2, 2000 SIX WEEKS TO GO!!! October 15, 2000 MORE HURDLES CONQUERED November 14, 2000 ALMOST THERE!!! December 21, 2000 ELKHART.....FINALLY!!! December 21, 2000 LET THE COMEDY BEGIN!!!