In the beginning.....

At 8:00 P.M. on Thursday, February 3rd, 2005, Margaret had filled her last prescription, taken off her white smock, and walked out of her Sav-on pharmacy for the last time. As of that moment, she was retired. She had worked as a Pharmacist for almost 37 years and had been very successful, having attained, among other things, the distinction of being only the second woman to be promoted to Pharmacy Manager by the Sav-on Drug Company. The next day, we began a journey which we have dubbed the “Gypsy Odyssey” phase of our lives.

The writings that follow will comprise my attempt to document some of what happens during this journey. Now don't worry, I'm not going to detail every little thing that happens every day. I'll try to limit myself to just relating some of the more interesting, amusing, weird, or thought provoking events that occur.

I've tried linking pictures into these writings but so far haven't had any luck. So, to see photographs that somewhat accompany the story line, plus others of events that I don't write about, you'll have to navigate separately to our picture gallery at the link titled "Photo Gallery" near the top of this page. Click on any individual picture to see a larger version.

I plan to update this saga at least once a week, if not more often. So, if you want to keep up with what is going on with us, just bookmark this website and then check back whenever you get a moment. The new additions to the story will be at the bottom of the page so just scroll down and there you are. Of course, it'll be up to you to remember where we were in the story the last time you visited so you will know where the new stuff begins.

So, if you are ready then sit back, get comfy and enjoy the trip.

In the beginning.

The idea for this journey came into being sometime during the summer of 2004. Margaret decided that she was getting just a little jealous of Jim who had been retired for almost five years while she was still working. Since the spring of 2005 would find her turning 62, she decided that the time had come to consider her own retirement. So, the decision was made. At some point during one of our discussions about what to do during retirement, we somehow came to the decision to move out of California. Margaret is a native of the state and had never lived anywhere else other than when in college. Jim had lived in California for 42 years, having moved there in 1962 from his childhood home in Oklahoma. Over our 33 years of marriage up to that point, we had traveled all over the country on many vacations and realized that there are many parts of the country that are just as nice, and in some ways nicer, than California. Also, California is becoming something other than the “land of milk and honey” that the Chamber of Commerce would have people believe. Years ago it was a great place to live but like so many things, it is becoming a victim of its own success. These days the place is just too crowded and it seems to get worse with each passing day. And, of course, with increased population comes all the other things that contribute to a lessening of the quality of life that people seek. Crime, pollution, traffic and skyrocketing prices for just about everything is making it an increasingly less desirable place to spend our "Golden years". So, it was decided to travel around for a year or two to see how the rest of the country lives and hopefully find some place to move permanently to.

So, we’ve rented out our house, put almost all our possessions in storage and have hit the road to travel around the country for a yet-to-be-determined amount of time. We plan to move to various areas of the country, rent apartments in those areas and spend several months living there. We’ll take day trips and short extended trips around the areas, playing tourist and otherwise do all we can to get to know the areas well before moving on to another part of the country... like Gypsies, frequently on the move. At some point in time, when we decide we’ve had enough, we hopefully will have decided where we want to settle down. Just based on what we already know, various areas of the country would seem to offer various benefits... and detriments. Therefore, with any luck, this adventure will help make that decision.

Phase one. Getting out of town.

Steppin’ out.

Every journey begins with the first step and for us that involved getting out of California. Since one of the main goals of our retirement is to permanently move out of the state some day, we decided to do so even before we found a place to live. Our oldest son Mike lives in Austin, Texas, and we’ve been there several times to visit him. It’s a very nice town with a lot going on so we decided to "move"” there for starters. The word move is in parenthesis because we won’t actually be physically living in Austin, at least not for a while. For now it’s just a place to store our possessions and have our mail sent. It is, however, currently number one on the list of places to move to at the end of our odyssey if we aren’t able to find some other place that we like better. That, however, remains to be seen.

Joining the army.

Another of the goals is to downsize our housing. With just the two of us now, we no longer need four bedroom/three bath houses nor all the “stuff” needed to fill up such housing. And it’s absolutely amazing how much stuff people can accumulate over 33 years. Clothing, books, kids school projects, tools, sporting equipment, electronic devices (both working and non-working), wall decorations, knick knacks of every description, and on and on and on had to be gone through to decide what to keep and what to get rid of. And as you can probably imagine, although some things were easy to get rid of, there were some pretty serious internal debates about items that had any deep emotional attachments. We especially agonized over many items that had any kind of connection with the early years of our two sons. But, we finally realized that it was the memories that were most important whereas such things as the remains of a high school science project were not. The end result of this process found us getting to know the people at the local Salvation Army donation station almost on a first name basis. I lost track of how many trips we made to unload carloads of items that we donated to them. But, in the end, we knew that it had to be done.

What was I thinking?

The move to Austin was, to put it mildly, an interesting experience and one that I wouldn’t necessarily want to repeat... at least not the same way we did it. I somehow got it into my head one day - probably during one of my frequent Dr. Pepper fueled binges - that we could make the move ourselves with a big rental truck. Well, yes, we could. But sitting here today, I wonder just where I came up with such a lame idea. Let’s just say - and I’m putting it rather mildly here - it was a bit of a chore. You don’t just wake up one day and throw everything into a truck and head toward the rising sun. No, dear reader, it’ is much much more involved than that. I could write a lot about the experience but in an effort to keep this down to something smaller than “War and Peace”, the descriptions that follow only scratch the surface of what we had to go through.

Size. Yes, it really does matter.

When doing something like this move, you don’t go out and rent just any truck. They come in various sizes and prices and if you get one that is too small, you can’t get all your stuff into it whereas if it’s too large, you waste money. So, the first thing to do was to determine just how big of a truck we needed. A list of all the furniture was made and then a visit to each item with a tape measure produced a list of sizes that was then converted into how much square footage each item occupied. Playing with this list to determine what could be stacked on top of what then produced a list that gave me a pretty good idea of the size of the truck that would be needed. A perusal on the internet of the available trucks at the various rental agencies and the associated prices resulted in the selection of a 25 foot truck from the Penske Company. So far, so good... a “Piece of cake” at this point in time. Oh how naive I was.

One thing that I soon realized was that I had somehow forgotten to include the boxes of stuff that hadn’t joined the Salvation Army into the truck size calculations … and there wasn’t a truck big enough to get everything in, short of renting a semi-trailer rig. And that wasn’t going to happen. So, how to get everything to Texas? Simple. Load all the boxes you possibly can into our two cars and drive them to Texas in a pre-move move. This would also accomplish the task of getting one of the cars permanently to Texas. Otherwise, we would have had to tow one of the cars on a trailer behind the truck while Margaret drove the other car. So, in the first week of March, we headed merrily off to Austin, our two Lexus LS400’s stuffed to the gills with as many boxes as we could get into them. Without having done that, the Salvation Army would have wound up with a whole lot more things than we had already donated. We then left Margaret’s car in Austin and returned to California.

Now the fun really begins.

Returning to California, we then began the big move in earnest. On April 5th, I picked up the rental truck and with the help of our son Bob, began the loading process. Now this, for a 60 year old youngster like me, was a bit of an eye opener. I soon came to realize that I didn’t have quite the strength or stamina that I used to have (and thought I still did). To say that I was just a little pooped at the end of the day qualifies for the understatement of the year award. Exhausted, spent, worn out, done in and being a candidate for being put out my misery are just some of the expressions that come to mind. But, with a click of the padlock on the door of the truck, the deed was done and the cross country trek began.

Truckin’… with care.

Driving a big truck like that is definitely an experience. The cargo compartment was 25 feet long and the cab/engine compartment added about another 7 or so feet, making the entire length around 32 feet. It was also around 8 feet wide. Having never driven something that big before, I was just a little nervous for the first day of the trip. We drove rather slowly until I got used to the turning radius, braking efficiency and positioning of the vehicle in the driving lanes so as to not wipe out other vehicles, bridge abutments and encroaching light poles. Once I began to feel comfortable, we finally began to rack up the miles.

Got gas?

One interesting aspect of driving a big truck like that was the fact that it got only around 7 miles to a gallon of diesel fuel. Therefore, I found I had to pay a lot of attention to the gas gauge and the distances between towns. And, as I also found out, not every gas station sells diesel fuel. Therefore, it became more convenient to fill up at the same place the “big boys” do… at truck stops. Now filling up at a truck stop is a rather interesting experience when it comes to using the gas pumps. Because the big rig trucks usually have gas tanks on both sides, when you pull up to a pump, you immediately notice that there is a pump on the drivers side of the truck and another pump on the passengers side. The pump on the driver's side is the master pump and controls both hoses. On my truck, the one and only gas tank was on the passenger side. So, the process became to turn the pumps on by taking the hose off the master pump on the drivers side and laying it on the ground since there was otherwise no place to put it. I then had to walk around to the pump on the other side and utilize that hose to fill the tank. Once finished, I replaced that hose on that pump and then returned to the hose lying on the ground and put it away. Needless to say, if a truck has a gas tank on both sides, then both hoses would be utilized, with the amount of fuel dispensed from both hoses being read out on the master pump. The system makes perfect sense once you think about it but on the first encounter, it seemed rather odd.

Aw, go park it.

Another aspect of driving a truck that big is that you can’t go just anywhere like you can in a car. For instance, parking lots at fast food restaurants can present problems. For sure you can’t go through the drive-thru lane and sometimes, depending on the layout, once in the lot, there isn’t enough room to go out the exit. I found this out the hard way when in a Burger King parking lot. I had to do what seemed like about a 16 point 180 degree turn, carefully avoiding backing into parked cars and small animals, and then exiting out the entrance. I got some funny looks during this process but then who was going to argue with a 32 foot long diesel truck? As a result of these potential problems, I found myself paraphrasing Johnny Cochran during the O.J. Simpson trial; if the truck don’t fit, out the entrance I must exit.

This party ain’t over yet, Pilgrim.

On Friday afternoon, April 8th, three days after leaving Seal Beach, and with thankfully no major damage to the truck, we pulled up in front of Mike’s house in Austin. What goes up must come down and any truck loaded to the rafters with furniture and boxes must now be unloaded. Yet another day of brutalizing what few muscles I have lay ahead of me. I had rented a 10 foot by 20 foot storage unit at a self storage place and around 1:00 P.M. on Saturday, with Mike’s help, we began. Unfortunately, after only about an hour, Mike did a major number on the big toe of his right foot and had to excuse himself from the fun for the rest of the day. When last seen, he was driving away muttering something about hospital emergency rooms (it turned out to look worse than it was; he and the toe are fine). However, that left dear old mom and dad to manhandle the remaining stuff out of the truck, into the elevator, up to the second floor, out of the elevator, down the hall and into the storage unit. The place closed for the night at 9:00 P.M. and we finished at 8:45. Ever now and then ya just get lucky.

New wheels and Gigabytes.

The hardest part was now finished. Months and months of planning and physical activity were finally over with. But the total process of moving still had some loose ends to tie up... we still had some things to do before leaving Austin. Our plan to be Gypsies, traveling around the country for the next couple of years or so, obviously meant that we would be putting a lot of miles on whatever vehicle we used. So, since Margaret’s car had over 150000 miles on it and Jim’s over 190000, it was obvious that we needed a new car. So, the process of looking at new cars began. We originally thought about getting a mini-van and looked at several but the idea of driving around in a “soccer mom” vehicle just didn’t really appeal. And, once you’ve owned a Lexus, you get rather spoiled for anything else. So, we went to look at a Lexus SUV. Still plenty of cargo room, we thought. Well, long story short, while in the showroom looking at the Lexus RX330, just for the heck of it we looked at the current year version of the Lexus LS400’s that we owned for many years … model number updated to today is an LS430. Bam. Sold. Yep, got another one. What really sold us was the trunk. HUGE!! We figured that with a little careful planning, plus downsizing our requirements of what we need for this adventure, we should be able to get everything into trunk and back seat. So, after slapping some ink on the sales documents and forking over some moola, it was a done deal.

Another somewhat significant purchase needing to be made before leaving town was a laptop computer. I knew pretty much from the beginning that I wasn’t going to be able to use, nor even have room in the car to carry, my desktop computer. So, I ordered a Dell Inspiron 9300 and had it shipped to my brother’s house in Alabama. By doing this, I saved the almost 7% sales tax that I would have had to pay if I had it delivered to an address in Texas. So, now I can sit in motel rooms, coffee shops and any other establishments where a person’s looks don’t arouse suspicion and, with the laptop’s built in WIFI capability, I can roam the internet, read and answer e-mail and gamble away all our money at internet casinos to my hearts content. Well, maybe two of those three. Anyway, I’m like a kid with a new toy.

A few more days in Austin to wait for some “important papers” to arrive in the mail finished the Seal Beach to Austin phase of the adventure. Margaret’s retirement and all the stuff that had to be done associated with it, putting our house up for rent through a rental agency and all the stuff that had to be done in that regard, all the planning for the move to Austin, the actual move its self and finally, the stuff that had to be done in Austin... all of that time consuming, arduous mental and physical effort was now over. Now the time for fun had come and boy were we ready.