Excerpt
Wanderlust may indeed be linked to some recessive gene. My wife’s family on her father’s side all lived within a thirty-mile radius of the small town that they were born in even though the town itself dried up and disappeared except for the graveyard. That is all but one. My father-in-law left home as a young man and never went back.
If you have this recessive gene, “To RV or not to RV?” is a question that has never occurred to you. Of course you are going RVing. Life in the slow lane, seeing what’s around the corner, meeting new people, fishing new lakes or playing new golf courses is not something that is open for debate. You will do this because you must do this. It’s as natural as breathing. If you don’t have this wanderlust gene, well then this whole idea seems a little screwy.
I announced my retirement to my co-workers and my wife two years before I took it. I did this for two reasons. The first was for every one including my wife to get used to the idea before it happened. The second was to paint myself into a corner where I would lose a tremendous amount of ‘face’ if I backed out.
This announcement had the desired effect with my co-workers. They went through the stages one expects. At first they denied it and were positive that I would change my mind. Over time they accepted my decision and started to divide up my workload and when the season for my departure came they were fighting over who was going to get my office.
My wife, Linda, applauded my decision to retire early. She had resigned from her job several years before during a time when we were caught in another cycle that we ‘boomers’ go through, caring for our parents. First her mother and then mine had come to live with us. Linda was suffering her second bout of empty nest syndrome and was thrilled that we would have more time to spend together.
I was adamant about one thing. I did not want to become a slave to a house and landscaping nor did I want to sit around making little wooden “damn-its” and try to sell them at craft fairs and swap meets. Keeping a house that needed maintaining when we intended to spend very little time there seemed ridiculous.
We explored various lifestyles that we could adopt for this new phase that we were approaching. My wife may have inherited that wanderlust gene because she was willing to leave the three-bedroom two-bath “normal” life and move into a two hundred square foot RV and travel around the country for a few years.
We had two years to make the transition and I could not wait to begin. I had visions of yard sales where eager buyers would cart off the lawn mower and other implements of enslavement. I never wanted to see a pipe wrench again in my life. All of this stuff that we had collected over twenty-five years of wedded life was forged into shackles holding us in oppression. Linda had a rather different view of the matter.
A person never really knows how many tons of possessions she has until the time comes to sell the house and move. Getting rid of the stuff that reflected my life was pretty hard at first.
Not only did I have the accumulation of our married life together, I also had my parents’ accumulations as well because frankly I’m an ostrich and I hadn’t dealt with any of it even though they had both been gone for years.
After the initial shock of just how many belongings there were, I saw that pounds and pounds of it hadn’t been used in years so letting go of that was not hard. For example, there were lots of household kitchen items that had been put on the cupboard shelves the day we moved into the house and never once used. So yard sales ensued. Weekend after weekend I advertised and things went away. During the week I would go through more stuff and keep what I couldn’t part with and take out to the yard sale what I didn’t really care about. Some bits and pieces I just took out to the garbage can. That was both sad and amazingly freeing at the same time.
After a month of weekend yard sales, the remaining unsold items went into boxes to go to the thrift store. Tons of stuff lighter, the house still seemed full and it dawned on me that there was a lot I couldn’t get rid of like photos, my dad’s mineralogy equipment, Mom’s sewing machine, cookbooks and knickknacks I had known all my life. So getting rid of belongings got hard again and I was worried about keeping too much. We got more boxes and into these boxes I put the items I could not part with. That helped a lot and another round of yard sales began as I again found property I could let go of.
So it was hard, easy, hard and finally freeing to get rid of the clutter in my life. We went out for Chinese during this time and in my fortune cookie was this: “Let go of what is holding you back.” That is exactly what we were doing.
What kind of RV to buy became a much larger and more difficult decision than you might imagine. There are many different types of recreational vehicles ranging from little teardrop trailers to ‘A+’ motorhomes. Each type has its appeal and disadvantages.
We started our search in the typical place, the local RV show. While these shows give one the opportunity to see the various types of vehicles all at once, they do little to stop the confusion. In fact, the RV show only increased the confusion.
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