Stumbling Towards Full-Time

I have a bunch of rules for owning a Motor Coach. We have owned a coach for nine years.

I can create a new bunch of rules for buying one both used and new because I have experience at buying both.

I have no rules for full-timing it …I don't have a clue ... not yet, anyway.

We have made some serious decisions in the last few months that have told us that full-timing it could very well happen at some point in our future. That point may be sooner than later.

The thought of living in the coach for an extended period of time doesn’t bother me. We have done it a few times already. Just after our son Joel was graduated from college (notice my proper grammar) we took a four-week trip in our first coach. For part of that time he and his sister stayed in the coach with us. We all came out alive. At the end of the month on the road, I was not too eager to get back to work.

The idea of going full-time is entirely different. Do we move toward full-timing it slowly? Making big changes in one’s life is like running a marathon -- start out slow, conserve some strength for the end and, if you start to stumble, make sure you stumble in the right direction.

I think a long trip, say six weeks or more, should be the first thing Diane and I do. This trip would not only be the longest one we have taken, but the destination should be somewhere special like Niagara Falls or deep into the Smokey Mountains or back to Disney World. It would be a trip without looking back home. No worrying about customers. No phone calls from them either. This trip would be a time for Diane and me to get to know each other all over again.

Let’s assume that we really enjoy our two months time on the road. We take to it like ducks to water or something to that effect. Then what?

I don’t really know how to go about making the transition. Do we store some things? Do we sell our stuff? Do we give things to our kids? Do we do all the above?

Selling our house, parting with “things” we own, some for more than forty years, causes me to grieve even before it happens.

I mentioned a duck to water. I may be a duck tossed in a stream. I have to float with the flow.

Diane has been downsizing for quite a while now. She keeps telling me to carefully evaluate every non consumable item I want to buy. Her favorite phrase is:

“Do you really need it and if you do will it fit in the coach?”

She did not ask for anything for Christmas except for Kindle books.

She wants me to digitize all our slides and pictures.

I can see where her head, and more important, where her heart is headed.

I should know, after all, she is the reason we have a coach in the first place. I think she has been working toward living on the road for a lot of years.

I am not sure how to do this but I will learn.

Don't I have rule that owning a motor coach is a never ending learning experience?

Gramps
Derrick.