We planned to retire almost two years ago, at the “end of the Five Year Plan”.  Then JoAnne was diagnosed with cancer, we had to pull the house from the market and regroup.  Which we did.  And JoAnne is doing very well today, one year later (yesterday) after ending chemo.

As you all probably know I had a heart attack on the 13th of May, went through surgery to replace a valve and have a bypass done at the same time.  The bypass was done “because we’re in there and it will cause you issues in the future”.  I didn’t want future issues.

On a tuesday about three weeks ago I saw the doctors and they released me to go back to work, and as of today I can go back to lifting weights, albeit slowly and carefully planning my training program to get my strength back in my upper body.  I went from 178 lbs down to 161 lbs at the lowest, but I never stopped walking and exercising as I could.

Last Friday was our last day at work – both of us left our jobs on the 10th of July.  Our house is sold.  Our belongings pared down to a small trailer with some tubs of kitchen items, some radio gear, personal belongings we can’t bear to part with yet and we’re ready to go.

Today I finished the paper work for our mailing address (St. Brendan’s Isle), and that will be mailed tomorrow.  Our last, and final step is selling JoAnne’s jeep.  It’s a 1999 Jeep Wrangler Sahara Edition.  She’s asking 7800 for it – KBB is listing it for our zip code at 8200.  Wish us luck.  Let us know if you’re interested 🙂  Adventure.Rick.JoAnne@gmail.com or click on the link on Craigslist!

We have nothing preventing us from leaving tomorrow (except the Jeep).  We were shooting for Wednesday this week, but might not be able to leave until Thursday or Friday assuming the Jeep is sold.  Either way… we are ready.

The bottom of the boat was painted last week, new zincs installed and a new boot stripe was put on.  I’ve asked them to stand by on commissioning the boat and splashing until we arrive – probably in about two more weeks, as we have stops to make across the country.  We plan to stop in Missouri, Ohio, and Virginia. Then off to New York we go to collect the boat, unload our junk and collect some other stuff from a storage container – all of that boat parts and such.

So here we are, 57 years old – and having worked collectively for over 80 years now… we’re done.  From now on the only work will be on our ship…. or if we run out of funds.  Which I don’t foresee any time soon.

I’ll document some of our trip.

What I won’t do is post exact locations or exact dates here.  Old security practices die hard 🙂

To my friends at the Agency, my co-workers, boss and the rest – all my best and thanks for 18 years of challenges, successes and friendships.

Here’s to the next 20 finding new challenges, new successes and new friends.