Retirement

I was invited to play “stick” today, which is as close as I can tell, a campground game like the carnival game played with small hoops which have to cover a wooden stake and you win a prize – in this case, beer and wine.

At the same time, I was invited to play pool volleyball with a large group of active and fun loving retirees.

Unfortunately, retirement or the pursuit of recreation and self improvement through reading, travel and socialization, is not in the cards for me anytime soon and most likely never.

While I did retire as an airline pilot for US Airways, they unsportingly decided to file bankruptcy and terminate their retirement program. So, our hobby photography business became our full time sole source of income and thankfully, we’ve made a pretty darn good run of it these past 11 years.

It will be our summer workamping job for the forseeable future and that’s good. Without the pressure to pay the bills, pay the mortgage and raise the kids, our business would probably have been nothing more than a hobby. So, thank you US Airways…right.

Anyhow, I was trying to picture myself actually retired with nothing more to do than recreate during the day, travel tour and socialize. I’m not sure if it would drive me crazy or if I would love the lifestyle and I’m afraid to find out, so I’m just not going there, thank you brain, time to move on.

After my reverie this morning, I was actually pretty productive working on accounting and invoicing and completing the final phases of a few album projects.

It was a gorgeous day here in the campground – I did sneak an hour in the pool and had a very nice conversation with a gent who loves to dry camp which for the uninitiated is camping without hookups – in the wild or maybe the Walmart parking lot. In other words, it’s taking a $300,000 motorhome with a $40,000 toad (towing vehicle) and going out looking for free parking.

Well, I was going to say that is an exaggeration but it’s not really. On the other hand, there are some beautiful state parks to visit and out of the way locations where you can commune with nature.

Is this backpacking on a glacier in Patagonia – no but it’s pretty cool nevertheless.