Quote of The Week:

"Retirement life is a game. Happy people are the players. Unhappy people are the spectators. Which would you like to be?
from Ernie Zelinski's How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free"

— Ernie J. Zelinski

Today, Tom and I went out to the Fallon golf course and played 9 holes. The temperature was 47 degrees, but it didn't feel that cold. And besides, it'll probably be the last time we'll get to play until we return here in September.

So for all of my golfing buddies, here are some pictures of the course. I plan to take some similar pictures in September so that you can see what the course looks like when it's in full bloom.

We didn't really keep score on a scorecard, but I know that I ended up shooting a 43. There were two holes that had what I would consider to be very unusual things happen. On the very first hole, I absolutely tagged my tee shot, and was only about 130 yards out. I've never been within 150 before. BUT, Tom had taken 2 shots by the time we got to my tee shot! That never happens! Of course, there was a pretty good reason for it. He'd had his 3 wood shaft shortened, and he'd had his irons "tweaked" a little bit. By tweaked, I mean that he had the head of the club angled just a little bit more to get more control of his shots. He just wasn't used to them yet. But as is always the case with him, he got used to them by the 2nd hole!

Then on the third hole, I hit a solid driver off of the tee, and was about 220 from the hole (it's a par 5). I totally screwed up my 3 wood 2nd shot, so I needed to hit a solid 3rd shot to even think about saving par. Well, I overpowered an 8 iron that landed on the green and bounced about 15 feet behind the green and came to rest on a downslope. The chip shot I needed to hit had to be fairly short, high and soft, because it would land running downhill on the green and I knew it would take off because the greens were lightning fast. So, I flopped a lob wedge up into the air and watched it land exactly where I wanted it to land. Because of the slope, I couldn't see the bottom of the flagstick, but Tom started yelling, "Go in! Go in!" Well, it did! A birdie the hard way! Boy, those feel sweet.

The rest of the round was much more typical for me. Good shots interspersed with the occassional bad (usually REALLY bad!) shot. I can't really complain about shooting a 43, considering that I'm playing so sporadically. If I ever get the chance to start playing on a regular basis, watch out! I may finally break 40!


( Fallon golf course )

I have to brag, at least a little bit!

Tom and I played in a golf tournament on the 12th, and we came in second place. Below is a picture of our awards. This is probably no big thing to Tom (or most anybody else), as he's use to winning tournaments. But I've never been a part of a winning golf team in this kind of tournament before. We actually took second with a combined score of 4 under. You have to understand that Tom is such a good golfer, that it's an extremely rare occasion for me to even win one hole from him when we play. But in this tournament, there were actually 2 holes that I flat out won the hole on my own, and at least 3 holes that one of my shots saved the hole for us as a team. But even more importantly, I didn't totally embarrass Tom in front of his friends. You see, he works part time at this course as the Assitant Pro and the Tournament Director. It was clear from the way everybody kidded with him and made comments about his golf game that these fellows not only respected him for his skills as a golfer, but they genuinely like Tom as a person.

I haven't figured out what I'll get with the certificate, but I'll let you know.

Proof positive that I was involved in winning a prize in a golf tournament!

Our next to the last day at "Q" found us attending a wonderful pancake breakfast. It was hosted by Snackmaster and Jan, who are very experienced at putting on this kind of meal. The food was great, plentiful, and filling. Of course, there was a lot of great conversation, which was never lacking. Later on, the first annual Class of '05 golf outing was played. Unfortunately there were only two us that were able to play.......uh......go. Playing may be subject to debate. Jeff Krug and I went over to the Blythe Municipal course and played 9 holes. When I had called for a tee time, they gave me 1:11 p.m. Fortunately for me, someone the night before mentioned that Blythe was in California, which meant they are an hour earlier than we were. So our tee time was at 2:11 p.m. as far as we were concerned. But we made it, and we had a lot of fun. We got paired with two local ladies who were very nice. Jo Ann was a real character, and she didn't worry about anything that she said or who she said it to. It made for a very interesting round of golf.

That evening we attended our last campfire. Since we've had plenty of other campfire pictures, I didn't take any at this one. We just enjoyed talking with all of the folks one last time while we sat in the desert.

The pictures include some from the pancake breakfast and the the golf outing.


( Pancakes and Golf Balls )

Well, it's Friday September 30th, the evening before we leave.

I had the opportunity to play golf with some friends and Dewey, my brother-in-law. We had a great time, and had beautiful weather. It was a nice way to say goodbye to some good friends. Jenny had her friend Connie Dregne come for a visit and go to lunch. She said they spent about 2.5 hours just talking, and had a great time. Once I got back, I installed our tow bar and hooked up the truck so I won't have to do any heavy manual labor early in the morning. We've got it planned that while I unhook from the electrical, water, and sewer connections, and take care of the outside stuff, Jenny will go through the MH and stow things away and check to make sure all items are properly secured. I'm sure we'll both miss a few things, just because we're so new at this yet. We still have to put together checklists that we can use so we don't forget things.

Once we leave here, we'll stop in Janesville to say goodbye to Jenny's folks. I think that will be a bit emotional. Then we'll head down to Rockford to have a new engine air filter installed on the coach and 2 vent covers that will allow us to keep our roof vents open even when it's raining. Once we're done there, we'll head out to Elkhart, Indiana. We'll spend Saturday and Sunday nights there, and head to Columbus to see Lori for about 4 days. After that, off to North Carolina.

We're excited, apprehensive, wary, determined, jubilant, cautious, and committed to making this all work. It might be difficult at times, but we think we'll get through it just fine. And we're looking forward to sharing the adventures with all of you! So please make frequent stops along the way with us. We'll appreciate the comments, and hopefully, the encouragement that we'll be receiving. In return, we promise to try to make your visits entertaining and informative.

See you on the road!

Hello!

We've been off line since Monday the 20th.  Boy, it's been tough!  We moved out of the house and into the motorhome that day, and our cable service, including internet service, was discontinued.  Unfortunately, we didn't realize that we had a problem with our laptop.  It turns out that when we were in Columbus to deliver Lori's furniture, I needed some tech support at the motel we stayed at to get logged on to the Wi-Fi service available at the motel.  Well, the "techie" that helped me had me make some changes that effectively blocked me from any other Wi-Fi sites.  Finally today, we spoke a friend who is a computer wizard, and he walked us through the fix.  It worked, and I'm back on line here at the RV campground we're staying at.

So from the 20th to the 23rd, we cleaned, and painted, and cleaned, and tweaked, and cleaned, and pretty much wore ourselves out getting the house ready for the closing.  A lot of our friends kept asking why we were doing all of this if the buyers had already accepted the house as it was.  Well, that's just how we are.  Neither Jenny or I could stand to think of someone coming into the house and not having it look it's best.  So I was out mowing, and edging, and trimming the lawn, and Jenny was inside cleaning, and vaccuming, and sprucing.  And to be perfectly honest, we would have preferred to have done more.

But regardless, it's over.  The closing went just fine, and we are now OFFICIALLY full time RV'ers!  And boy oh boy, are we learning a lot about this too!  We're fortunate that we had to stay here for a week after the closing for some appointments we had.  We've made trips back into town almost every day taking things back in that we found we didn't need or didn't have room for.  We're adjusting and moving things constantly as we learn what will work best for us.  But we're getting there!  And we can hardly wait for Saturday morning, because that's when we leave to head out east.  First stop will be in Elkhart, Indiana to check out the RV capital of the world.  Then on to Lori's in Columbus for about 4 days.  After that, we head out to Medoc Mountain State Park in North Carolina for 1 month to do our camp hosting thing.

We did get the decorating things done that Jenny wanted to do.  Now that we're back on line, I'll try to get some pictures taken and posted so that you can see some of the differences.  We had the coach down to the dealer in Rockford this past Monday (we needed 4 new batteries and had the satellite TV receivers installed), and one of the guys who was working inside said he'd never seen an Escaper so nicely decorated.  When we told him that Jenny had done it, he said something about he figured something like that because Damon didn't have that good of taste.

Today was a little special for Jenny.  She went to a spa and had some "treatments".  She had received a gift certificate from the ladies in my office when I retired, and she thought she'd better use it before we headed out.  She seemed to enjoy it, but I'll let her talk about it when she posts.  My special day will be on Friday when I play a special round of golf with my brother-in-law (Dewey) and some friends.  Every October, Dewey has sponsored a golf outing at the Geneva National Golf Club.  My sister and he built a house there a few years back, and their back yard looks out on the 9th green of the Palmer Course.  The golf club has 3 courses, The Palmer, the Player, and The Trevino.  For you golfers out there, each course was designed by it's name sake.  Anyway, I've never been able to play in his event because we were always on vacation.  Well, he rescheduled it for September 30th so that I could play in it this year before we left.  What a guy!!   Oh, I should also mention that my sister (Jill) and Dewey are also really bailing us out by storing a bunch of our furniture in their basement for us.  This was stuff we really didn't want to put into storage.  Originally my mother-in-law was going to keep it for us, but she doesn't have all that much room herself.  And just then, in came riding the cavalry in the form of Jill and Dewey.  Not only did they offer to store the stuff for us, but they even helped us move it!  They're the best!  Of course, I always knew that!

Well, I'm really happy to be back on line and updating the journal.  I'm not sure how regular we'll be, as we're going to see if we can make our internet activities work by just using Wi-Fi hot spots.  It might be a little difficult when we're in the boonies.  We'll have to wait and see.  We will be evaluating other options, so if we find that using hot spots just isn't working, we'll be able to make a change fairly quickly.